fabulous Not so Fabulous

[mjreine]

Imagine this...

You have hundreds of good type in money making domains at Fabulous... (Which is located in Australia).

The sun is bright and the world is shining on you until... one day.. when the Fabulous fraud department decides that about $200+ of my traffic was 'illegitimate traffic'

Translated, this means... they keep your money (They did give me part of what I had coming) but conveniently decided to keep the rest... I wonder if they refunded this back to Google?? Doubt it.

If that wasnt enough... they close your account... You cant even manage your domains... After a couple of days in their gracious minds...they decided to change my account to a retail account so I can at least manage my domains I registered through them...how kind.

I admit it... Fabulous did pay well... but not well enough once you figure in all of this game playing. I did nothing to drive illegitimate traffic to my websites. And when you ask them... all they say is "Unfortunately, the traffic we received from your domains was unacceptable. Also, due to Fabulous.com security policies, I can not discuss the nature of this traffic, as such information could be used to circumvent our traffic quality detection."

Hmm... I didnt pay for links... I didnt click on my own sites... Didnt drive adsense traffic there...nada...nothing... So how can it be illegitimate?

Anyone???

Guess what... it cant...

Or... Can it???

I thought a long time after this happened to me...is it possible I was setup? Can some anonymous twit on the net get me banned from my domain parking place? Is this possible?? Then I came up with this....

I remember a tool called Name Server Spy....(And for the admin viewers, no I dont sell or represent any of these links. They are merely examples to prove my point)
http://www.domaintools.com/ns-spy/

I quote from this page....
"For fun, you can monitor your favorite website's name server to see when they acquire new domain names and potentially new product launches."

Hmm... Ok... so someone can see when I put new domains online before I park them at a place...

What if someone kept a list of my domains... And then while they were parked... just clicked on a bunch of my domains all from the same ip address..This would probably get their account banned.

So in my mind the possibilities are:

1. Either someone clicked on a bunch of my sites.. and Fabulous wont tell me this.

2. They are just out to get me. Which is odd because I legitimately made them hundreds of dollars a month.

3. Their super duper "found it in a box of Cracker Jacks" fraud detection system is a bunch of crap.

Dont know which one it is... Either way... I personally am staying far away from a company based in Australia (outside of US laws) who can just close my account down and seemingly hijaak my domains for 2 days meanwhile they steal hundreds of my parking dollars from me. Even if they did re-allow me access back to my domains I registered....

They aren't so fabulous in my mind any longer. :veryangry:

 

[snicksnack]

Hi,

don't be too amaqzed when the same happens to you when you go with an american parking company. In the worst case some other parking companies will not even touch your domains.

 

[mjreine]

And why would this be? They are all good generic phrases people type in... Everything from tickets, dating, auctions, etc... Whats wrong with this traffic?

 

[snicksnack]

The name might end up on a "blacklist" of the feedprovider, that's why.

There might be nothing wrong with your traffic, but possible there was something wrong with it, which rang the alarmbells of Fabulous. You will/might never find out what went wrong. Everything might work out with the next provider. Simply accept the fact and move on. I know it hurts, but it is best to move the domain asap to another parking service and start making up for the lost amount. Who knows you might make more at another parking service.

 

[mjreine]

I think this issue could happen to anyone here...which is why I mention it here. We need more transparency in parking providers...Meaning they tell you exactly why your account was closed and make this a fair process.

How would you like it if all of a sudden they walked you out the door at your job with NO explanation. Oh and they kept your last check....what??

We wouldnt stand for this in the workplace...and sure wouldnt stand for this blacklist you mentioned. Does this even exist? First ive heard about it.

Sounds like the FTC should get involved (auditing providers?) at some point with making domain monetization a fair and established process...not a slight of hand trick...as it seems to be.

 

[ShaunP]

"Sounds like the FTC should get involved (auditing providers?) at some point with making domain monetization a fair and established process...not a slight of hand trick...as it seems to be."

Ya, that will happen about the same time the hundreds of people ripping off the PPC companies start going to jail... right?

Shaun

 

[typist]

3. Their super duper "found it in a box of Cracker Jacks" fraud detection system is a bunch of crap.

this is unfortunately not far from the truth in some cases.

 

[mjreine]

People intentionally ripping off PPC companies is one thing... unintentionally and for no reason getting shut down is another... I dont fully well expect most people to understand this until it happens to them someday. Especially when your portfolio is income you rely on.

But with their flaky fraud processes they claim to have in place... it could happen to you...

I think what should happen is for some group i.e. Dnoa.org or another similar domain owner special interest group should head up an effort to once and for all rate the parking places.

At LEAST, have it so people can post example rates they are getting paid from a provider and how they have been treated. A score card of sorts for parking providers.

This is needed badly... It is kind of funny though how all parking places claim to be the leading / top / best provider out there... Lets find out how good they really are...how honest they are... and how well they pay.

This system would have some flaws too... but at least you could see trends good and bad about a particular PPC provider.

 

[DNjet]

In this era of domain parking you really have to monitor your traffic, the providers are on a major crackdown mission, not only for fraudulent traffic but for incentive traffic , paid traffic and non-converting traffic as well. You have to monitor your referers on your own server or park at a company that has your referers transparent , as fabulous does with the host button next to each domain you can see the referers, I go through mine once and sometimes twice a week there to make sure everything is cool, if I spot something I get in touch with support and report it, they usually then ask me to change nameservers to somewhere else, the domains I don't park at fab I have on my server.

 

[mjreine]

Call me crazy but I think this responsibility should be put on the parking providers.. They should just make it so that if a particular website is referring junk traffic to one of your good domains... they ban that particular referrer and dont pay you for their junk traffic... Then notify the domain owner by showing the owner a list of banned referrers.

For example.. lets say I own tickets.com and all of my traffic comes from type ins or old links on google or other engines... great name, great traffic right? Now someone who owns jimspornpalace.com comes along and puts a link on his popular website to tickets.com and no one buys tickets from this link... a bad referrer...who I didnt ask for...but for some unknown reason linked to me.

The ppc should just ban the traffic from jimspornpalace instead of closing my account and putting tickets.com on to some secret banned domains list... oh wait.. this isnt a good example... im sure fab would overlook any traffic and kiss my butt if I owned a premium domain like that...

Funny how my domains which gave the same good traffic (albeit in smaller amounts) I get the shaft and they keep the gold.

Anyone else have a solution to this problem?

 

[NZPoint]

In this era of domain parking you really have to monitor your traffic, the providers are on a major crackdown mission, not only for fraudulent traffic but for incentive traffic , paid traffic and non-converting traffic as well. You have to monitor your referers on your own server or park at a company that has your referers transparent , as fabulous does with the host button next to each domain you can see the referers, I go through mine once and sometimes twice a week there to make sure everything is cool, if I spot something I get in touch with support and report it, they usually then ask me to change nameservers to somewhere else, the domains I don't park at fab I have on my server.

If you have one or two domains, yes, this is possible, how can you possibly monitor anything above 100 domains??

 

[David G]

If you have one or two domains, yes, this is possible, how can you possibly monitor anything above 100 domains??

It's not easy but can be done with hard work and time spent on it. I successfully moniter 30 times that number using a combination of parking and sites running on my server.

P.S. As far as wide CP capabilities, diverse reports, detailed stats (which I may not always fully agree with) and superb cust supt goes Fabulous is actually doing a fabulous job, IMO.

 

[fatter]

In this era of domain parking you really have to monitor your traffic, the providers are on a major crackdown mission, not only for fraudulent traffic but for incentive traffic , paid traffic and non-converting traffic as well. You have to monitor your referers on your own server or park at a company that has your referers transparent , as fabulous does with the host button next to each domain you can see the referers, I go through mine once and sometimes twice a week there to make sure everything is cool, if I spot something I get in touch with support and report it, they usually then ask me to change nameservers to somewhere else, the domains I don't park at fab I have on my server.

I have to agree dnjet, it is pretty easy for me to monitor my names because I only have a couple hundred, none are high traffic, so when I noticed a couple with large traffic increases I notified parking companies immediately, one was from a pay to click company, I also notified the sender of traffic,
in both instances they set up the links to my dotcom when they owned the dotnets, I dont no what would have happened if I didnt notify them and get it corrected, Both parking companies appreciated the heads up. But i do see how a domainer could be blacklisted by others mistakes