In case you hadn’t noticed — and don’t worry if you didn’t [given the fact that today's search engine algorithms have effectively killed off domain parking] — your Parked.com account is gone. Actually, so is their website. It’s nothing more than a blank white screen with a line of text that says “For questions regarding Parked.com, please contact PartnerSupport@Parked.com” — gee, thanks guys…don’t let the screen door hit your ass on the way out.

I suppose the most angering part about it is that there was NO notification whatsoever about Parked.com closing down. Not a 30 day notice, let alone a last minute one. I had an account manager at Parked.com, of whom never mentioned a word about this.

Let’s not forget the other two issues: 1) the earnings I still had queued up from domain parking revenue which Parked.com STOLE, and 2) about 4 years of invaluable domain parking data I had for almost 500 domain names, which is all gone.

I spent a couple hours going through my domains and forwarding them over to Voodoo.com (it’s a new parking service), which is pretty much all that any of us ex-Parked.com users can do at this point.

I’m so out of the domain parking realm that I can’t even list off any other services, to be honest. Well, except SEDO, but I was tired of getting $0.02/month for running a couple hundred domains with them. If you know of any good domain hosts, please list them below!

As I’ve mentioned in a recent article, “My Google Panda Damage Report,” one of the things that have completely tanked with Google Panda are my parked domain earnings. 430+ domain names earning about $0.00 – $0.01 per day. And no, they’re not all garbage domains – some of them are premiums, some are exact match two-keyword domains and some are three-keyword domains. Domain parking in itself is not lucrative, unless you own “diamond.com” or something to that effect, but I’m starting to wonder if even domains of that caliber are making anything, anymore.

Dismal Domain Parking Results in 2011

Here’s some math…in doing a 1st half 2010 vs 1st half 2011 analysis of my top 5 most visited parked domains, this is what I’ve noticed in 2010:

Domain A = 568 visitors, $55.03 revenue
Domain B = 97 visitors, $31.89 revenue
Domain C = 50,126 visitors (no joke, this one has many backlinks), $23.19 revenue
Domain D = 711 visitors, $15.01 revenue
Domain E = 68 visitors, $12.10 revenue

Here are those same domains for 1st half 2011:

Domain A = 109 visitors (down 80.8%), $11.06 revenue
Domain B = 11 visitors (down 88.7%), $0.00 revenue
Domain C = 17,732 visitors (down 64%), $0.54 revenue
Domain D = 431 visitors (down 39.4%), $2.16 revenue
Domain E = 21 visitors (down 69%), $0.01 revenue

Wow…that’s what I call devastation. I realize Panda didn’t officially happen until May and June, but still…these results are alarming enough in themselves.

I never made significant money from domain parking and I’m certainly not a professional domainer — I’ll admit that any day. I always have a lot to learn in the domaining realm, and I read articles from real pros like Rick Schwartz and Rick Latona. As for parking services, I’ve tried them all: Sedo, Namedrive, Parked, GoDaddy…you name it, I’ve tried it.

Domains were nothing more than “digital stock” to me – you never knew which ones would become high value in the future, although that tends to be a highly unlikely thing to bargain on. However, it sure was nice to at least have your domains paying for their own renewal fee every year. I’m lucky if any of them even come close at this point. Now, my domains are a liability. In fact, I’ve just contacted BuyDomains and will be listing a couple hundred of them for sale – it’s simply not practical to keep holding on to anything that isn’t generating an income anymore. Also, I don’t have time to build mini-sites, nor do I even see THAT being practical in 2011 A.P. (that’s After Panda).

After all, why on earth is Google going to rank a parked domain right now, when even content-rich sites themselves have come under scrutiny under the new algorithm?

Buying Premium Domains: Statistics Don’t Matter Anymore? Orly…

Last year, I bought two premium .com domains, and this year, I just purchased one for $1,800 after a negotiation. They were all bought privately though a certified domain broker. One trend I seem to notice is that you have to twist someone’s arm to get any analytical information about these domain names for sale. Most simply say “there isn’t any,” as in, there simply is no activity or it was never being tracked to begin with. What happened? Type-in traffic doesn’t exist anymore? It could be. There have been lots of reports about how Google has changed our brains. Perhaps the majority of internet users stopped typing in a keyword and putting a .com after it, and just instinctively go to Google.com and type in a query.

Well, that kind of sucks for a buyer. I feel entitled to receiving a PDF showing me a 1 year (or more) spread of activity for the parked domain I’m about to buy. I start playing hardball when I check to see that the domain has only a couple backlinks, even though it has been around since 2002. However, it doesn’t seem like much of these old protocols matter in today’s domain market, anymore. Especially since many premium domains available exclusively through BuyDomains, NameSnap and others are positioned at a non-negotiable “take it or leave it” or “buy it now” price.

One thing that appears to be the biggest pricing point for domains is “perceived value” or “brandability,” and honestly, I agree with it…and THAT is what you’re paying for these days. At this point in time, we know a good domain and a crap domain. It’s pretty much as simple as looking at it and having an initial reaction, if you’ve been in the domaining world for awhile and have a good sense of consumer behavior.

What To Do With Domain Names After Google Panda

I don’t really have an answer for this, beyond the fact that I see no value in keeping 3-word exact-match keywords anymore. Over the past several years, I bought them as if they were baseball cards. Now, they’re a burden and nothing more than an annual expense; albeit, having been an old glimmer of a potential affiliate or mini site that I simply don’t have time to build.

It’s like I always say, I’m only one person, and one person can only do so much. Now that Panda is here, I’d rather focus all of my attention on some sites, rather than some of my attention on many sites.

Dropping domains has been my most recent habit, but there are some that I think can turn a couple hundred bucks. Unfortunately, some of the more prominent, higher-visibility domain brokers are going to take a huge chunk of commission out of your sold domains (like 15%), but getting 85% of something is better than getting nothing at all these days.

From what I’ve seen in the past few years, the only domains worth going for are either: 1) premium domains that you’ll have to buy through a private sale, or 2) short, brandable “made-up” domains that you’ll have to spend a lot of time and effort building on, in order to raise brand awareness [psst, you'll probably have to buy these through a private sale, too]. Everything else is a liability and most certainly will not earn anything in domain parking. I’d go as far as saying that domain parking is dying, and that industry is probably suffering pretty badly right about now, and I’d love to hear from anyone either in the industry or who has also had their parked portfolios suffer from Google Panda!

I’m getting these emails more than ever. Like a surprise pile of dog crap on your front lawn, these emails appear out of nowhere, entitled with a domain name that you’ll recognize…most likely because it’s the singular or plural form of a domain name you already own.

Open the email, and you’ll see a message that appears to be written specifically for you (although it isn’t, it’s just a clever mail merge) by some guy named “Alex” or “Alexander” who has no last name, but a mailing address pointing to the following address:

Alexander
27 West Anapamu Street,
Suite 262, Santa Barbara, CA 93101

The dishonest nature of these emails lay in the fact that they are attempting to get you to register a domain name that is already freely available through any domain registrar, but the email itself makes it sound as if this guy is some kind of legitimate domain broker who is holding on to it for your opportunity:

Every instance of the domain he’s pushing is hyperlinked to his own affiliate link. He topped it all off with an inspirational quote, to make it look like it’s a legitimate email. Wait, it gets funnier. Compare that one to an older email from several days before:

Suddenly, it became obvious that “Alex” moved from “1187 Coast Village Road Suite 1-163, Montecito, CA” to “27 West Anapamu Street, Suite 262, Santa Barbara, CA”  within the course of one week. Busy guy. I wouldn’t even trust that “unsubscribe” link, it’s probably a malicious link as well. Click “spam” on these emails. Hopefully if enough people do this in Gmail, Yahoo Mail and others, it will blacklist this idiot.

These scammers really piss me off, because I’m sure they’re getting a healthy amount of affiliate commissions for what they’re doing — which is deceiving unsuspecting domain owners by sending out thousands of these messages. I don’t even know if the reply-to address even goes to a human, so I’m not sure if it’s worth a minute of my life to reply and give them a piece of my mind.

Be on the look out for Alex the domain scammer – this scheme is on the same level of scumbaggedness as the Domain Registry of America.

Back on July 20, 2010, the .co domain extension was released to the masses (of people who weren’t multi-millionares who participated in landrush auctions). Long before that, it was jumped on by domain mogul Kevin Ham, who saw it to be a valid mis-type of the “.com” extension, as he sniped all of the high-value one word .co domains in anticipation. Whatever was left over was gone by landrush, of course.

Whether you’re part of the “.co is the next .com” crowd, or their adversary “I don’t fall for that bullshit, it’s just a Colombia ccTLD” counterpart, this big push from GoDaddy should be really interesting for the future of the domain extension itself.

I’ve yet to see any of these new domain extensions get anywhere. Well, maybe besides .tv, which still lives on as a good choice for obvious reasons. I still hate .me and plan to attempt to sell off my entire collection, and I have already dropped my .tel’s for obvious reasons.

While I do own several one-word .co domains, I still conclude that they absolutely suck for type-in traffic. As in, they don’t get ANY. I honestly don’t think anyone is mistakenly leaving out the “m” at the end of “.com;” and I still think that mis-typed traffic is coming from the actual misspelling of a word, not its extension. But I digress: perhaps the owner of “hotels.co” is making some decent parking cash.

As for the .co debacle…we shall see on February 6th!

Once in a blue moon, it arrives in your mailbox. It’s a letter from the “Domain Registry of America,” some kind of official sounding organization located in Buffalo New York, that notifies you of your soon-to-expire domain names. Open the letter, and they state your domain name right on the front fold, along with its date of expiry (or renewal). I suppose domain expiry lists are compiled and sold for profit so that two-bit operations like these can mass mail unsuspecting domain holders.

Above: Another DROA letter destined for the circular file.

Anyway, the letter starts out as follows:

As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification of the domain name registration that is due to expire in the next few months. When you switch today to the Domain Registry of America, you can take advantage of our best savings.

The letter goes on to explain that in order to “retain exclusive rights” to your domain name, you have to renew it, and now is the time to transfer over to Domain Registry of America. It continues to explain how some privatization enactment allows customers the choice of registrars when renewing a domain name, further stating that you’re not bound to your current domain registrar.

Here comes the laughable part: Domain Registry of America has three suggested renewal terms…1 year for $30.00, 2 years for $50 and 5 years for $95. Let me give you some background info: I’ve been a GoDaddy customer since 1997. Renewals for .com domains cost me $7.87 already including the ICANN fee. So, these clowns at Domain Registry of America are attempting to win me over to pay an extra $22.13 (that’s an extra 281% increase in expenditures) per domain name to switch over to them, and are attempting to do so through an ‘official looking’ letter? To add insult to injury, let’s revisit that first comment… “As a courtesy to domain name holders” – gee, thanks. For nothing.

By law, they had to state “This notice is not a bill,” which is found within the final paragraph. The letter as a whole makes me think of those “you’ve won $100,000!” scams that are sent to target the elderly.

Domain Registry of America further notifies you that your .net and .org are available for a whopping $50 for two years (once again, that’s about triple the cost of what GoDaddy charges). I truly pity anyone who falls for this crap.

These letters arrive CONSTANTLY. I own over 450 domains, and I’ll get one of these DROA letters on a regular basis for one of my domains that are up for renewal. They appear to be sent for random domains that you own.

So, there’s a big “shame on you” to Domain Registry of America for risking some major bad karma by attempting to sway unsuspecting newbies to their horribly overpriced service, with their obnoxious spammy letters and overall terrible business practice.

For starters, one thing that immediately caught my attention was Despicable.me – whoa! This just might be the first .me that I’ve ever seen advertised on national television. It was one of those 3D animated movies I don’t care about, but the point of the matter is that I felt it was a Neil Armstrong moment for “.me” domain name enthusiasts. It kind of makes me not hate my 15 one-word .me domains that cost an exorbitant amount of money to renew, and don’t generate a cent in domain parking.

Another one that caught my eye was at the end of one of those housewares commercials that I barely pay attention to during prime time. Glade, that S.C. Johnson company that makes candles, home fragrances and other such things, had a corporate website at Glade.us, which was briefly advertised at the end of their commercials. Note the word “had,” as the site isn’t around anymore, but is now a parked page. Hmm…

Months ago when driving through New York City’s east side, I saw a billboard advertising the MTA’s website at mta.info – by far, the first .info site I had ever seen advertised anywhere.  I wondered why such a huge and important organization such as the MTA would stoop to using a sorry ass extension like .info. In doing some type-ins, I noticed that every extension is already taken by some other cities’ transit authority, or some other businesses. Why didn’t they just run it off of something like ny.gov/mta? Why am I looking into this too much? :(

Not too long ago, I saw a series of commercials for Canadian tourism, and couldn’t believe my eyes. A “.travel”? Wow, I didn’t even know anyone on earth ever bothered with that extension, but apparently they do at Canada.travel! It’s an official site run by the Canadian Tourism Association. The biggest part of me admires the fact that they found someone who knew of this domain extension’s existence AND decided to make it official, but the other part of me snaps back and says “what were they thinking?!” Nobody except a domainer is going to remember “.travel”. Just tell your mom to visit “Canada.travel.” She’ll probably put a “.com” after it.

I’ve been seeing more .tv sites show up, but one of the more prominent ones is for that famous book that so many people got addicted to back in 2006: The Secret. Their official site can be found at TheSecret.tv – and I could never understand the reasoning behind using this extension (probably, umm, because it’s a BOOK?) but I personally would have hired a domain consultant to go after the guy who owns TheSecret.com and offer some chump change for it. Considering that it probably wouldn’t fetch more than $1k in an auction (before the book was known by the public), it would have been in their best interest. The guy parking that .com is probably making some healthy clicks, though. I’m going to guess that they just bought whatever extension was still available at the time, which was the .tv one. Other notable .tv domains would be Justin.tv (a web streaming service) and Blip.tv – a site for independent online films.

The absolute coolest domain hack I’ve ever seen – and flat out, most brilliant, brand-able domain name for a personal site ever – is Ma.tt…owned by Matt Mullenweg of WordPress and Akismet fame. The “.tt” extension is that of Trinidad and Tobago. It’s one of the few country codes that doesn’t require you to have some kind of residence within the country, so, you can go off right now and register your own .tt, if you can figure out how (hint: you can just do it through the official .tt registry site). Before you bother, I’ll have to let you know that registration of a .tt is $500 for the first two years, and $1,000 USD  every 5 years afterward. Looks like some countries are on their high horse.

Finally, there’s Last.fm. HUGE site, obscure domain extension. “FM,” after all, is the geo-targeted extension for Micronesia. There’s no way to strip the geo-targeting off of a .fm in Google Webmaster as you can with .me, .tv and .co, so, it’s pretty much likened to that region. That didn’t stop Last.fm though – they’re a major music site across the world, specifically in the United States, and they appear to have a top of Google page 3 rank for the single word “music.” The only other .fm I’ve ever seen was Ping.fm, which was a horribly odd combination of a word, extension and niche (a website pinging service). The .fm extension quickly became associated with music, because it apparently reminds people of “FM radio.”

Have I missed anything worth mentioning? What big-name commercial websites have you seen with unusual domain extensions?

I’m not sure about you, but this is a day that directly reminds me of the infamous July 2008 public registration of the .ME domain extension. GoDaddy literally died that day from the amount of activity it got. Let’s see how they handle .CO in about an hour from now.

Why .CO Is Getting (Over)Hyped

One of the biggest buzzes around is that .CO is a legitimate mis-typing of .COM; therefore, domains with a .CO will capitalize on the mis-typed traffic of their .COM counterparts.

Do I believe this? Not really. Why? Simply because I have never mis-typed the extension “.COM” in my life, ever…and I highly doubt that it happens to such a high extent* that these .CO’s will be receiving type-ins to the extent of any other domain extension. (* unless we’re talking about super premium .CO’s)

I could be proven wrong, though. Maybe a lot of people out there type quickly and miss the “m” on their keyboard. Regardless, that’s what domainers are praying for. Imagine owning Cars.co and capitalizing on all of those beautiful Cars.com mistypes. The bottom line is that nobody really knows what extent of mis-types will come in to .COs until their owners publicly release those results.

Also, if you haven’t heard about domaining legend Kevin Ham, read this article and be amazed. In short, he struck a deal years ago with the .CO extension after coming up with the hypothesis on how it might capitalize on the type-in traffic therein. He’s also the same guy who jumped on “.CM” extensions, since they’re also a mis-type of .COM.

My Opinion on .CO

Honestly, I see .CO as yet another domain fad. I lost my faith in domain extensions after .ME and .TEL, and the real-deal domainers out there still care about .COM and .NET above anything else…others publicly denounce all other extensions, especially these new, over-hyped ones.

Perhaps some good domain hacks will come out of .CO, I can’t think of many words offhand that end in “-co,” but I’m sure many others have already done so.

In doing a quick search session this morning on GoDaddy, I noticed that all of the good generic one-word .COs were already taken during landrush. So much for the possibility of my owning 3DTV.CO – oh well, it would have been nice. See, those are the only domains that will experience any magic from accidental type-ins. Not “BestStructuredSettlements.co” or “UsedHorseTrailers.co”.

Considering that I most likely wouldn’t be interested in anything but a one-word .CO — I may just throw my towel in on this one, snatch up one or two domains in the spirit of collecting, and call it a day.

This isn’t going to be a big stupendous blog post, but I thought it would be of interest to anyone who aspires to have their own personal contact at GoDaddy. Most customer accounts have these kinds of programs, including Google AdWords, eBay Partner Network and Yahoo Search Marketing.

Basically, the biggest benefit is that you have a human being to talk to and throw all of your little questions at, without having to rely on 3rd party message boards or other colleagues in your industry.

These executive account upgrades never specify which planets need to be aligned in order for you to get accepted, but it typically involves either the amount you’ve spent, how often you’ve spent it, or a little of both.

Speaking of domain names – if you haven’t done so (here comes a huge self-promotion), swing by my Squidoo lenses about choosing a domain name, or marvel over my big list of the most expensive domain names ever! It will kill off those final few moments of your boring workday ;)

Back on March 21, 2010, a show called “Jerseylicious” sprang up on the Style Network amidst the hype of “The Jersey Shore.” I first heard about this new show through a casual conversation with a friend. When she uttered the word “Jerseylicious,” I freaked out. I’ve owned Jerseylicious.com since September 10, 2007. It was originally intended to be one of my never-implemented business ideas (one of about 200+ ideas, of course) for sports jerseys for women. The idea never came to fruition, but I hung on to the domain name. Then, a TV show with the exact name sprung up, and I got really excited.

Of course, most of us know that TV show websites are usually sub-pages off of a TV network domain name (Network.com/ShowName), but there are exceptions. There’s no doubt that a studio would want to own the .com for their new show’s name, though. With that being said, I was hoping for an email waiting for me one day with an attractive offer for this domain. It never happened.

As for the domain itself, it’s being parked on Parked.com and I’m monitoring it on a daily basis. It only gets from 30-80 type-ins per day, and hasn’t made a cumulative dollar yet. Surprising. Before you wonder why I’m releasing this information, I had already lost hope of getting an offer for the domain, so, it’s become more of an internet marketing case study.

I think the big lesson I’ve learned here is that domaining is a lot harder and less predictable than you think, and there are a lot of factors that have to come in to play for you to ‘expect’ a big payoff. All of the planets need to be aligned: the domain name must be high profile, but it must also be of utmost priority for actual use in the short-run with no alternatives. If both of those needs aren’t met, then you’ve got a dud on your hands.

If you’re wondering about SERPs, “Jerseylicious.com” doesn’t even appear in any of the search engines for the single keyword search “jerseylicious.” For years, it used to be #1, Google page 1, but was quickly wiped out once the show came into play.

In my case, this show was no “Jersey Shore.” It didn’t go viral, it didn’t get hype, and it’s only on the Style Network (sorry Style Network). Imagine the guy who wound up buying TheJerseyShore.com or JerseyShore.com many years ago. There’s no doubt that either would be a goldmine waiting to happen. That just wasn’t the case here for underlying reasons. However, it’s a great conversation piece for years to come.

The announcement came to me from a GoDaddy email blast. The extra .50 – .80 cents or so won’t make a difference to those who own a handful of domain names, but if you’re like me and own hundreds (or thousands), boy is this going to be painful.

The change was brought about by Verisign; so, expect all registrars to up their prices.

What can you do right now? If you haven’t already done so, renew all of your domains immediately to take advantage of renewals while they’re still at their current prices. For the domains you know you’ll be re-registering for the rest of your life, it might be cost effective to register them now at a multi-year rate.

Come July 1, 2010, you’ll be paying higher fees for your domain names…like it or not.