Yahoo announces change in parking rev programs-- "most click charges to drop"

[DomainsInc]

I am new to Parked.com and have no TQ score. I have over 100 domains parked there right now. I have almost finished optimizing them. 99% have been indexed.

So what now? What else can I do to get a TQ score?

I believe you have to have 100 clicks per day for a period of time before you get a score.

 

[Donny Simonton]

On average it takes about 100 clicks a day for about 2 weeks to get a TQ score today. In the future, it will take less when the new system goes live in September.

Donny

 

[namestrands]

Having had a consistantly top score for a long time (10).. I have noticed a 30% drop in revenue since the start of the year.

Flipside googe revenue is up 12% over the year.

Gone are the days it would seem that we would get crazy click prices, and counted multiple clicks..

I appreciate the market, however I cant fathom why Google Revenue still going strong.

I have been a long time advocate of parked, but I do feel that something has changed.. Once Don was my Account Manager.. now its just some no name, who never contacts me.

This coming from me, but I have much more checkins with SEDO than parked.. this was never how it was.

Back to Basics Don, I think..

Dont get me wrong I will continue to use parked, but I cant help the ideals an concepts of its origination are no longer visible.. seems to have been replaced by the pursuit of the almighty gold.. however the customers are not the ones getting that share.

I hope I am wrong.. and September does bring some welcome changes.

 

[Donny Simonton]

namestrands - I have portfolios at every parking company, including some that don't have a Yahoo or Google feed. And I even have some portfolios at companies like WhyPark and Devhub and even some at some CPA based companies. Everybody is down since 1/1 of the year. If you are seeing a 12% increase from somebody then I would be very excited.

As far as me checking in on you more than you current account manager, I could see that as somebody called him a spammer a few weeks ago. But every account manager is supposed to reach out to their customers on a normal basis.

I can tell you that we are looking for gold, we always have and always will, but for us to make gold you have to make gold. If you don't make anything than neither do we. This is one of the reasons we have been working on improving our system so much in the past month. I can tell you that in the past 30 days, overall revenue across all accounts is up 25%. But we still need to increase that even more.

The changes that Yahoo will be making will be good for the advertiser and good for people with good traffic. So in your case, you may make more money. But others may not be as lucky.

Donny

 

[namestrands]

We all know that domain traffic converts better than search traffic, yet these restrictions appear to only be detrimental to the domainer.

If Domain Parking is a dying platform then we need firms like yours to create new ones.. DomainSponsor says it best "The only way to predict the future is to invent it."

Domain Parking for me was once bread and butter, and it was a great ride.. I made more money than I ever invested.. and then some more.. I cant complain.. my sites make more than my entire portfolio combined.. so for me parking is no longer about parking.. its about earning reg fee until my new site idea comes along.

This is how I adapt to the market, many contributing factors can lead to increases in revenue, as they say one mans disaster is another mans lottery.. and as domainers we have to speculate the highs with the lows..

I do feel that Yahoo are missing the big picture here, but when has yahoo ever got things right.. especially recently.

I dont know if there is money in domain parking, but I know there is money in developed sites and the domains themselves.. so until some jobsworth takes that away from us I guess we survive for another year at least.

As for the Account manager issue, I got an email telling me he was my account manager last year... and well that is it.

Hey.. perhaps thats cool for some, but I am used to account managers noticing revenue spikes and drops and asking if they can help optimise my domains better.. as you say when we make money so do you.

Look.. just venting.. been out the picture for a while.. and I noticed others were blogging what I was thinking..

Parked is cool.. but Yahoo is gonna be your demise sooner or later... I hope that does not happen.. but to quote myself.. "...if it works, make it better, if it dont, then change"

Thats a namestrands-ism feel free to quote me.

 

[Theo]

I want to see Jerry Yang catch the swine flu

 

[namestrands]

Hey acro, long time no see.. hope you are well and business is doing good.

Yes Jerry really needs to lose the EGO TRIP

 

[Theo]

When Yang says "ying!"
Steve Ballmer says "bing!"
Microsoft gets the bling
Yahoo stock gonna sting

 

[Poker]

When Yang says "ying!"
Steve Ballmer says "bing!"
Microsoft gets the bling
Yahoo stock gonna sting

wow, haven't seen lyrics like those since, well, britney spears

 

[Theo]

Oops, I parked it again

 

[David G]

If you are a 7 to 10, I don't think you will see much a difference in the new system. 4 to 6, you will see a small difference. 1 to 3, you should probably look for a new business.

Well I guess it's time for me to look for a new business

I have been with you for a long time and always had regular income (though there had been a large overall decline this year but revenue for me was still important).

My top 10 or so domains with you earn most all of my rev and clicks. I have made no changes to them since my TQ score was a 10.

How could my Traffic Quality Score go from a 10 on 7-23 and stay at 10 or 9 until today when it plunges to a very low TQ 2 (meaning I need to look for a new business according to what you said) :?:

That is impossible. I have made no changes during that time to speak of and the top domain list has stayed the same. By the way, I feel the TQ 9 or TQ 10 has been deserving since I know for a fact my traffic is excellent quality and has always been real good and highly targeted with high percentage of typeins, which certainly must convert well for the advertisers. I am not too happy about this.

 

[Donny Simonton]

trader - This is what Yahoo has told me since day one, anybody with a 7 to a 10 on a TQ just leave alone. Anybody with a 4 to a 6 we need to work with to improve their score, anybody less than a 4 needs to go. The ranges have changed some over time, but on average they are pretty close to this.

From my understanding and I could be wrong is that the new system will be more in line with the real TQ scores. So let's say somebody has a 5 today and the advertiser wants to pay $1.00 on average the advertiser is charged say $0.80. From my understanding, the advertiser after September 9th will be charged $0.50. I've not received any documentation, this is just kind on the rumors that have been floating around.

Donny

 

[namestrands]

As a Yahoo advertiser myself.. can anyone tell me where it states this in the T&Cs or where I can choose prices on a publishers Traffic Quality.. Because being and advertiser I would only want to work with publisher who produce top scores, this way I would know that I am getting top value for money.

In the absense of such a thing actually existing I will have to assume that this TQ is down to risk assesment, and the Advertiser is none the wiser.

Yahoo looks at the quality and if it deems it to be low it reduces the price per click to the parking program and in turn the parker. The advertiser pays the same.

I really dislike the whole smoke and mirrors issue with parking domains.. at least with Affiliate advertising you get a set percentage of the sale amount.. nothing hidden.

Perhaps a fiduciary duty exists under common law of agency that commissions paid should be disclosed.

Parking Domains, I dont know.. is it worth it now?

I would say pull all the domains making less than reg fee, but those making more than reg fee would make 100 times more as affiliate sites..

Donny.. any chance of joining up with one of the large Affiliate programs and adding affiliate product links alongside Yahoo results? hell most domains would even benefit from ebay listings.

Multiple Revenue Streams.. possible here. Or would that be against the contractual terms you have with "Ya'Hoo, the hell is taking all my revenue"

 

[Donny Simonton]

namestrands - As an advertiser you get a discount today already, but as of September 9th, you should get an even bigger discount on traffic that is not of the best quality. I sat down while at Yahoo's headquarters a few weeks ago with one of their Chief Economist (one of the guys who came up with the new system) and one of the developers who was coding it and it sounded pretty solid. Yahoo's big kick right now is all about ROI for the advertiser, which they think will bring more advertisers back. It also sounded to me that Yahoo would rather have 2 clicks for 5 cents than 1 click for 10 cents.

One of the other issues that you have to look at is the new system will basically get TQ scores for more people than today. Today about 80% of all customers with us don't have a TQ score, I was told that would be about 20% in the coming weeks. This will allow us to better figure out who is good and who isn't.

But as a programmer, the new TQ system sounds very good for the advertiser, and very good for people with good traffic. To me it seems like Yahoo may have finally gotten it right. I think this was their vision 2 years ago when they launched the TQ system, but they didn't want to do too much damage to their revenue, but at this point it is the right time to implement the last part of the TQ system.

I can tell you that we were told that we should only see less than a 10% drop on our side across the board, but in the past 30 days, we have increase the overall numbers by more than 25%. So we should all still be in better shape than we were 30 days ago.

Donny

 

[David G]

Donny, I am totally confused on my sudden drop from a TQ 9/10 for the past 30 days and the one day steep decline all the way down to TQ 2, which has been said means I need to "look for another business"

That means Yahoo thinks my traffic sucks, right? Well that is just plain BS and a complete fabrication with the only other explanatiin being it was an error. There is nothing in between the two extremes.

My traffic is top quality and from highly targeted keyword domains in good categories and I find it extremely disturbing and insulting for Yahoo to pull off this nonsense and fabrication about my traffic quality, which I am 100% certain converts well for advertisers. How could it not since it's quality keyword traffic in good categories and with lots of typeins and organic traffic too, and my last 30-days of portfolio stats below are good:

******* visits 17,067 searches 21,073 CTR 39% *******

I must insist something be done to solve this absurd issue immediately or I may be forced to take my best domains away from parked.com - Thank you for your time and feedback.

p.s. It looks like you are saying that as of Sept 9th my revenue will take another plunge even worse than the new TQ2, right? What will I be then, maybe a MINUS-2?

 

[wolfis.com]

what i don't understand is why is yahoo not letting advertizers say which traffic is good and which not - yahoo is only the broker - but they think they are god and they insist on telling everyone ( publisher and advertizer ) which traffic they deem to be good and what is bad. let the advertizer decide what is good for them and what's not .

i am kind of worried too that my TQ will end up being a 2.
( i guess i will hire a dominatrix on sept 08 through sept 10 to keep me tied up and quiet )

 

[Donny Simonton]

TQ scores are not based on some arbitrary number they pull out of the air. TQ scores are based on conversions and this information is provided to Yahoo and Google via the conversion tracking javascript. The biggest difference between Yahoo and Google in this case is Yahoo provides a score that we can see and we show you, Google just does the discount and you have no idea why.

Trader - As far as your TQ goes, you have one domain that gets more than 100 clicks a day, talk to your account manager about splitting that domain out and then we can see what the TQ is just on that one domain. I'm assuming it is the reason you have a 2.

Wolfis - I'll send her a ball gag.

Donny

 

[PRED]

where does it show your tq score in your parked account? or is it per domain?

 

[tonyfloyd]

where does it show your tq score in your parked account? or is it per domain?

????.....ummmm....you blind?....need eyeglasses?.....new contacts??....all of the above???...lol...log in to your acct....and tell us what you see...

Hint....look to the right....

 

[PRED]

lol
yeah, i see the graph on the right
i got a 10 biatch
although dont really mean anything as im still getting 1 and 2 cent clicks all over the place :sigh2:
i log in to see how much corn im getting, or not getting as case seems to be

pointless parking tbh, apart from a few names that do well. lucky i have developed approx 100 sites past 3 years. i need to buckle down and mass develop some hundreds out myself too
parkings dead. think better off with for sale landers on half tbh