March 2010 – Issue #56
Domain owners who depend solely on domain parking for income are still hurting, however.
My advice remains to diversify. Diversify your income stream by actively marketing your domains for sale. Find quick and easy “development” platforms like WhyPark and SmartName to put up content-rich websites and court SEO traffic. Consider services like Above.com which let you compare parking with different companies, and connect you with Trellian’s domain leasing service.
WhyPark is marketed as an alternative to domain parking. If you have simply dumped your domains there like you would at a parking company then you are not getting the most from their quasi-development platform. It’s even possible to treat WhyPark as a complete development platform, although it means manually editing html and stylesheets.
Be Careful with Keywords.
When you initially add a name to WhyPark you are prompted for several set-up options. One of the most important options to attend to is the “keyword” option. If you put in the wrong keywords you will get off-topic articles from their collection. If you leave keywords for them to optimize you may also get off-topic articles.
Part of the Control Panel in WhyPark
My vision for the site GreenInfants.com was to provide resources for eco-friendly parenting. I quickly set the site up and went on to other projects. When I returned to the site recently I found it pulling in articles for green-colored baby furniture and health articles about green poop and green vomit. What was going on?
I examined the keywords and found: “baby shoes, carters green, green dragon costume, 4t green, green sleeper, feces infants, green babies, green stool, green blood, baby infants, constipation infants, green diarrhea, green baby, green feces, diarrhea infants, green stools, green poop, teething infants, green vomiting, coughing infants.” Is someone at WhyPark obsessed with poop?
I don’t believe these were the keywords that I had entered, and I assume that someone had helpfully tried to optimize the site (which you can request). Maybe they were using knowledge from one of their ad feeds? I deleted those keywords and entered the following: “Environmental parenting, Green parenting, green infants, green babies, green baby, cloth diapers, green diapers.” Now I get a much better assortment of articles.
Make some minor HTML changes.
The picture that shows up for your layout is editable, and a simple html snippet can also make it clickable. Many people click on the header graphic to go back to the home page, but for some reason WhyPark designs do not make this graphic clickable.
Use this html <a href=”/”>[[imgHeader]]</a> to substitute the category picture you have chosen and to make it clickable. Replace the line that refers to the generic template picture. Look for a line that includes code such as <img src=”http://www.wpimg.com/headers/filename.jpg” width=”572″ height=”174″ /> and replace this section with the code above.
(if you are using the paid version). This feed places headlines on your site from a targeted blog or news site in your field. The coding for this is done well, so that visitors and spiders see the changing text headlines as continuously updating HTML rather than javascript gobbelty gook (which some feed readers look like).
WhyPark is actually a very sophisticated platform that lets you create almost any type of site you want to. You do this by editing the layout of your site using their editing tools. When you go to edit a layout you will see two windows – one for the stylesheet for your site and one for the HTML content. This gives you the ability to edit your site at a very granular level. Some blocks of content – such ad the main article list and the ads above and below – are not individually editable, but you can choose to omit them entirely if you want to by removing the [[mainbody]] tag. (You will almost never want to do this.) Most normal HTML will work with editing your layout. You can also use a bunch of “placeholders” as short-cuts to special pieces of content.
Site Placeholders
According to WhyPark placeholders are “used to insert the dynamic pieces of your sites into your layout. They add functionality and provide a simple way to move functionality around within your layout.” Use the double square bracket terms listed below when you are editing your WhyPark site’s layout:
- [[domain]] Inserts your domain name into layout.
- [[forsale]] Insert a link to sell your domain. This placeholder is replaced with a link to an inquiry form where buyers can contact you.
- [[image]] Insert the default small image for your site’s category
- [[imgHeader]] Insert the default header image for your site’s theme or category
- [[imgMedium]] Insert the dynamic 385×261 image
- [[mainbody]] The main content for every page which includes the full articles, custom pages, etc.
- [[newsletter]] Insert a sign up link for your newsletter. This feature is only available with subscribers to the Managed tier of service.
- [[related]] Insert the related articles. Related articles show a title and summary of an article on your site to keep users engaged.
- [[rssfeed-in]] If you have an external RSS feed associated with your site, insert this placeholder to indicate where the content from it will be displayed. This feature is only available with subscribers to the Enhanced and Managed tier of service. It may take up to 24 hours to see the first data from these feeds.
- [[rssfeed-out]] Insert a link to download your RSS feed. This feature is only available with subscribers to the Managed tier of service.
- [[sitename]] Insert the name of your site as defined in your main site settings.
- [[textads]] Insert text ads you’ve setup for this site.
A few of the ways WhyPark sites can be developed can be seen at Virginia.biz and HealingSteps.com.
NameMonetizer 
