New Domain Apps at WhyPark

Domain monetizer WhyPark released two new Domain Apps in July.  The Photo Gallery App allows you to feature keyword-based photo galleries on your sites.  The Publications App helps you integrate free publications such as eBooks, magazines, and white papers.  In some cases the domainer is paid when someone downloads the content, and visitors can get free magazine subscriptions.

Other revenue-generating apps include the Coupons app, Shopping app (similar to SmartName Shops) and Mortgage app. The Web Directory app allows you to set up paid directories on your sites and and recruit businesses to pay for a listing.  This diversity can be a really good thing, since the primary feeds at WhyPark and other monetization companies continue to generate less income than in the past.

Google's Farmer/Panda Update Goes Global, Hurts Keyword Domains

Earlier this week Google Google extended the algorithm change that penalized content farms to the rest of the world. They also incorporated user feedback - dropping the rank of sites that users block in their search results. Domainers have been reporting that his change has significantly hurt their keyword traffic - especially the traffic of international sites that weren't hurt as badly by the first Farmer/Panda update.  According to Google

We’ve rolled out this improvement globally to all English-language Google users, and we’ve also incorporated new user feedback signals to help people find better search results. In some high-confidence situations, we are beginning to incorporate data about the sites that users block into our algorithms. In addition, this change also goes deeper into the “long tail” of low-quality websites to return higher-quality results where the algorithm might not have been able to make an assessment before. The impact of these new signals is smaller in scope than the original change: about 2% of U.S. queries are affected by a reasonable amount, compared with almost 12% of U.S. queries for the original change. (Official Google Blog 4/11/11)

In addition to penalizing "low quality content" the change appears to reduce the value of having a keyword in the domain title.  The value is not zero, but without accompanying strong content a keyword domain may find it self on page 4 instead of page 1. 

This change argues in favor of content-rich solutions such as WhyPark over traditional parking companies for certain domains.  If you have seen your parked domain income drop on some of your best keyword domains, give WhyPark a try.

Google Strikes out at Content Farms

Domain owners are caught between a rock and a hard place.  Bing has cut income from many parking companies, and now Google is taking new measures against spammy content.  Ironically, Demand Media is about to go public at the same time that Google strikes out against content farms like eHow.  Google's efforts should also affect content farms that domainers use, such as WhyPark and Epik.  

Matt Cutts explained Google's efforts in his blog:

We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. We’ll continue to explore ways to reduce spam, including new ways for users to give more explicit feedback about spammy and low-quality sites.

As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.

Most of us have given-up on getting undeveloped domains listed in Google.  That's probably how it should be.  I know that I get annoyed when I get a scraped nonsensical blog post as a top search result.  It still happens too often, but that may be changing.  If your domains don't get at least some type-in traffic or expired traffic, then you should probably not expect to earn income while they await sale.  

If you do use sites like WhyPark and Epik, consider adding unique, valuable content to your domains there.  It takes more work (or more money to pay somebody to do the work) but it may pay off.

"Bing Sucks"

Donny Simonton shoots straight. After trying to spin the horrible numbers domain owners were seeing from domain parking company Parked this past month he finally came right out and sait it - "Bing Sucks."  (Read down this thread to see the transformation in his attitude.)

Domain monetization companies such as Parked (and WhyPark), TrafficZ, and SmartName, have depended on Yahoo's ads to power their services. Yahoo switched their ad inventory to Microsoft's Bing service in November and lots of problems cropped-up.

Domain monetization is new for Bing. They have had an AdWords-like platform for some time, but they have not worked with domain parking companies. It seems that their stats reporting system was not up to the challenge initially. They had to start from scratch figuring out issues like traffic quality - a multiplier they use based on how likely they think your traffic's clicks will result in an actual sale. In most cases they seemed to estimate low, and there were reports that these quality scores would change on a daily basis for no reason.

I reached out to Parked and WhyPark, TrafficZ, and SmartName with some questions about their experiences to date.  Only Parked and WhyPark have responded to date.  Donny asked Craig Rowe of WhyPark to respond for both services, since they work together to optimize their Bing feed.

Here are Craig's responses to my questions: 

Click to read more ...

WhyPark teamed with AdSense

WhyPark and AdSense can be a powerful combination.  You may recall that there was a period where some domains that used WhyPark were banned from Google's AdSense program. WhyPark scrambled to develop their own ad network, which was greatly strengthened when they were bought by domain parking powerhouse Parked.  My domains that were with WhyPark at that time still won't show AdSense ads, but new domains that I host with WhyPark usually do show AdSense ads.

I had a few domains that were getting pageviews with parking companies but little income.  These seemed like perfect domains to move to WhyPark. Whenever I move a traffic domain to WhyPark I generally use AdSense for monetization.   So far this experiment is paying off, thanks in part to the content on the pages and the fairly good keyword I am using.  The sites are being ranked in Google for terms related to the theme of the site.  While monetization with WhyPark's internal feed has improved, I get better results from AdSense in most cases.

Interestingly, others are complaining that Google is de-indexing their sites.  Ads still appear, but the sites are no longer in the Google index.How can you avoid this fate?  

1. Use their premium feed that includes more content.

2. Write at least 1 or 2 original articles (or commission them through WhyPark or Guru.com).

3. Always include a newsfeed on your site that pulls relevant headlines.

4. Modify their template and mix things up a little.  

5. Avoid the temptation to load pages up with extra ads.