No Parking on the Dance Floor
As a regular domaining administrative chore, I have to go into my Godaddy domain manager to release domains for transfer or forward them to an url, or regulate their DNS records. I am not picking on Godaddy, I just happen to have a a large amount of domains there and I was reminded this morning about a topic in domain name management I feel strongly about.
One of the unhappy reminders that a domain is making no return on investment is that the dollar sign in the GoDaddy domain manager does not have an impression. The Godaddy parking product is a service that cost money to make money. While that makes sense from a certain point of view, those who know that Google Adsense also offers a similar service for free little understand the added value their premium buys at Godaddy.
Like many domainers, I view the value-add from a Godaddy service as a convenience when snapping between accounts, juggling hosting logins, and tickling domain name administration responsibilities. Of course, the service to enhance a domain’s profit from either GoDaddy or Google Adsense means little if no net profit comes to each domain’s money making channel.
Domain placement inside the ad serving revenue systems is critical to the dollars and sense monetary return of any domain investment. I find the Godaddy cash parking solution an interesting test of Adsense feasibility. If it (the site content, keywords, and links) will pass the Godaddy CashParking qualification standards, it’s probable that Google also will accept the content construction on the domain, and vice versa.
Each revolution of the domain development cycle remains more concretely value -adding than any other domain marketing service or promotion item. Four keywords and some links and a graphic or banner thrown in and the domainer is the proud owner of a (yawn) template formatted parked page. Yippy skippy, sound the call to hounds. Alert the media. (Let the yawns be heard from Peoria to the Three Gorges Dam).
The profit over time to recoup the domain acquisition includes the registration fee, hosting fees, and any subfees like auction premiums and premium auction purchase prices. Add in the sliver of a monthly hosting cost divided by number of total of domain sites hosted at that hosting company and you’ll have your derivative monetary goal and revenue target.
For the domainer who has thousands of domain names languishing, the parked page is simply time management. But the parked page was never meant to be a permanent solution. It was only supposed to be a short and temporary detour on the information superhighway. A lay-by, a soft shoulder in heavy domaining weather when the webmaster’s plate was full. Parking was supposed to be what webmasters did when their site was a flat tire and needed to go into the shop.
I am always disappointed to see parked page because it seems to me a domain name worth buying has a site worth making lurking behind the domain name transfer. Parked pages are models of domain development which hinge on the barest modicum of content, for my money almost a haphazard shrug of a site. To me the challenge of domain development and site potential for site use, for sites of all types, is to expansive to default out of.
There are so many things people go to the Internet for. They want education, they want advice, they want entertainment and employment. They want to be entertained while being educated, and they want to be advised about how to shop.They want to know more about things to buy, how to buy them, and who to buy the from. And they want to know the best information they can get, on every topic under the sun moon and stars.
Every name has a page waiting to be developed to spring forth. People want to do what they always liked to do, with broader scope and greater choice. Online users of the internet want to be educated about how to shop and want to know how to be employed shopping online. They don’t want to read the books, they want to read excerpts and snippets and online reviews and comments about the books. They want to read about the writers of the books and Google them incessantly.
Every subject imaginable has a market, a website, a links directory, an article repository, a shopping portal or a video hosting destination model that can adapt to it. Dare I say it, even a blog! After reviewing all that potential, do four keywords and some links really do the project justice? Does a competent webmaster want to display some lookalike template that tells visitors “Continue snoring, go away”?
And why on God’s (for the moment) green earth would you pay for it?
