My PPC Earnings Down 50%

ck89102 · Sep 27, 2008

My PPC earnings are down 50% from last year; Have others experienced what feels like the bottom falling out?

The reason I got that PPC earnings are down: "Your parked domains are not
ranking as well as in the past. The drop is probably a result of a Google update
and as you are aware, they constantly update their algorithms, which is the
reason why search engine traffic is so unpredictable."
And I figure maybe due to Google having changed their search engine so many option choices pop up when you type in a word.

I'm going to try moving them to other parking companies so perhaps they may get indexed/ranked again and also many to Parked, a Yahoo feed company.
Hopefully this will work.

wolfis.com · Sep 27, 2008

ck89102 · Sep 27, 2008

You only mentioned "since last week." One week declines are common. My lull started Sept. 1 and has been steady all month. And I've experienced this decline with both Fab & SedoPro, not Parked.

From $3000/month to less than $1500/month

stewie · Sep 27, 2008

anyone having good parking stats?

dotNetKing · Sep 27, 2008

My stats at trafficz.com are roughly the same as a year ago.

Theo · Sep 27, 2008

Indeed, Sedo is down at least 40% in a year, but if you check your traffic numbers you'll see that you get the same amount of traffic, possibly clicks. So it's not a secret that Sedo pays less in PPC nowadays.

Sheva · Sep 27, 2008

ck89102 said:
My PPC earnings are down 50% from last year; Have others experienced what feels like the bottom falling out?

The reason I got that PPC earnings are down: "Your parked domains are not
ranking as well as in the past. The drop is probably a result of a Google update
and as you are aware, they constantly update their algorithms, which is the
reason why search engine traffic is so unpredictable."
And I figure maybe due to Google having changed their search engine so many option choices pop up when you type in a word.

I'm going to try moving them to other parking companies so perhaps they may get indexed/ranked again and also many to Parked, a Yahoo feed company.
Hopefully this will work.

You are lucky my revenue is 70% down compared to last year.

Sonny Banks · Sep 27, 2008

My PPC earnings at Parked.com are 10% - 15% down from last year.

Gerry · Sep 27, 2008

Acro said:
Indeed, Sedo is down at least 40% in a year, but if you check your traffic numbers you'll see that you get the same amount of traffic, possibly clicks. So it's not a secret that Sedo pays less in PPC nowadays.

ditto!

Not to mention days with single digit (<$10) revenue...something I have not seen in perhaps 4 years since I started at Sedo.

Since Bodis lost their Ask.com feeds, their overall PPC is perhaps 60-70% of what it was. Overall, click rate is best by far over any one else. They are especially very strong for .net, .info, and .us and decent for .org. Even my .ms gets surprisingly good traffic and CTR at Bodis. Prior to losing their Ask.com feeds, one month they pulled away from Sedopro in total traffic and revenue. Surprisingly, perhaps my best and most consistent performer at Bodis.com is AerialViews.us.

I tried domains again at Parked.com, proven performers at Sedo.com and Bodis. And as I predicted, traffic and clicks mysteriously disappeared. You can not convince me that domains getting traffic in the range of 200-400+ per day at Sedo and Bodis get only 14 or 17 per day at Parked.

As a whole, my portfolio at SedoPro is down perhaps 35% for the year.

I have placed a renewed emphasis on developing my own mini-sites for revenue generating and working on several at the moment.

Parking is about to become a thing of the past.

south · Sep 27, 2008

Doc Com said:
ditto!

Parking is about to become a thing of the past.

Slowly working on mine as well. But I find CJ & adsense are both down recently too. I'm assuming people are tight, including advertisers. Got a couple .25 clicks yesterday with adsense that would have been $1-$2+ clicks a few weeks ago. (They are financial terms however).

Guess I have to do to do higher numbers of sites to make up for it.

katherine · Sep 27, 2008

My PPC revenue has been down by 40% for months. Time to move on.

Andrew Shaw · Sep 27, 2008

Tighter budgets mean smaller advertising budgets, which lead to lower pay per click. Look at the economy. American business' advertising contribute to a large portion of our parking paychecks. Not all, but a lot of business' are not doing as well as they were last year, or even last month. There are a lot of contributing factors to the domain industry... and you better believe that the economy is one of them.

Gerry · Sep 27, 2008

south said:
Slowly working on mine as well. But I find CJ & adsense are both down recently too. I'm assuming people are tight, including advertisers. Got a couple .25 clicks yesterday with adsense that would have been $1-$2+ clicks a few weeks ago. (They are financial terms however).

Guess I have to do to do higher numbers of sites to make up for it.

Cj and Linkshare has not done a thing for me. But it may be the selection. But the most annoying thing is the daily multiple emails! pathetic!

Amazon is very good. Many have lost site of the fact that amazon sells nearly everything! Plus, great support that you simply will not find elsewhere.

Adsense has really done very well for me lately.

The concern is that Google has also made it known that they are in this to make money and not to give out money. Basically, that was HINT! HINT! WINK! WINK! I think Adsense will start to dwindle.

south · Sep 27, 2008

Doc Com said:
Cj and Linkshare has not done a thing for me. But it may be the selection. But the most annoying thing is the daily multiple emails! pathetic!

Amazon is very good. Many have lost site of the fact that amazon sells nearly everything! Plus, great support that you simply will not find elsewhere.

Strange, I've had the reverse luck. CJ has done well for me the last couple of years. Mostly one niche though I must say.

The concern is that Google has also made it known that they are in this to make money and not to give out money. Basically, that was HINT! HINT! WINK! WINK! I think Adsense will start to dwindle.

Yup. Going to have to either sell the ads directly to the companies, or sell products/services based on pay per action, or outright sell the names/sites. Ultimately, I think this is what they want. Squeeze the domainers until they (we) sell cheap. And it's already happening. Problem is, once sold, we won't get that revenue stream back.

Gerry · Sep 27, 2008

south said:
Strange, I've had the reverse luck. CJ has done well for me the last couple of years. Mostly one niche though I must say.

Give Amazon Associates a try. Great widgets and ads, extremely flexible, very easy to customize and configure, and generally high profile with good results.

south said:
Yup. Going to have to either sell the ads directly to the companies, or sell products/services based on pay per action, or outright sell the names/sites. Ultimately, I think this is what they want.

I have had a few approach me on this. Problem is, no one wants to pay for it! WTF? They literally want the space for free!

I have had someone claim they represent several clients wanting to advertise on one of my sites. That means they get a cut. Problem is, they would not provide me with a list of their potential clients sites for me to view.

I told them I was not trying to squeeze them out but I wanted to be sure there was no raunch or controversial content.

south · Sep 27, 2008

Doc Com said:
Give Amazon Associates a try. Great widgets and ads, extremely flexible, very easy to customize and configure, and generally high profile with good results.

You're right, I really should spend some more time with their new tools. Have had an account there for years, but some of the new widgets & tools look good. Just had a bad taste after making near zero for years with their direct links, etc.

I have had a few approach me on this. Problem is, no one wants to pay for it! WTF? They literally want the space for free!

I have had someone claim they represent several clients wanting to advertise on one of my sites. That means they get a cut. Problem is, they would not provide me with a list of their potential clients sites for me to view.

I told them I was not trying to squeeze them out but I wanted to be sure there was no raunch or controversial content.

Tell them to put up or shut up.

Maybe put an ad on your site yourself? "this space available" or something? Apparently the companies know about your site, they will see it and either raise hell with their advertising company for not negotiating something with you or contact you directly.

Also, maybe make them sign a "TOS" agreement to be sure they don't give your site a bad name with their advertising.

David G · Sep 28, 2008

Doc Com said:
I have placed a renewed emphasis on developing my own mini-sites for revenue generating and working on several at the moment. Parking is about to become a thing of the past.

But how would you do much better with ministes?

Keep in mind the CTR on parked domains is roughly 5 times greater (on average) vs Adsense minsites.

That basically means assuming the CPC is about the same you would need 5 times more minisite traffic to earn the same revenue.

You should also know Adsense itself is down approx. 50% to 70% for many domainers in the past year or two.