Domain parking alternative releases major upgrade today.

I’ve been excited about WhyPark‘s Domain Apps since WhyPark founder Craig Rowe first started talking with me about them at Domainer Mardi Gras. He then gave me a sneak peak at TRAFFIC in Vancouver. Today they are available to install on your WhyPark domains.

Domain Apps let you instantly ad relevant content modules/pages to your domain names, and some of them help you earn money, too. Want to pull in a comparison shopping feed? Just click a few buttons. Need a hotel directory? Ditto.

Craig is obviously is familiar with his product, but it literally only took him about 30 seconds to add each module.

Among the more interesting Domain Apps:

-Web directory – create categories of businesses relevant to your domain, then charge a monthly fee for listings

-Local listings – show local businesses based on a keyword, and display them on a map

-Comparison shopping – add a comparison shopping engine for products relevant to your domain name

Information about WhyPark’s Domain Apps is available here.

© DomainNameWire.com 2010.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

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2. 5 Alternatives to Traditional Domain Name Parking
3. WhyPark Launches Overhauled Service

The air seems to be leaking out of the domain development balloon as domain owners discover just how much work domain development is.  It's not enough to develop a domain, you then have to maintain it.  That means, at a minimum, keeping WordPress up to date and continuing to add new content.  Multiply that times a large domain portfolio and you are asking the impossible.  For that reason domain parking continues to offer the most bang for the buck for most domain portfolio owners.

In the next few weeks I will be updating the ParkQuick.com website with new reviews and up-to-date information on the state of parking in 2010.  It's gotten a little stale.  In the mean time, here's who continues do to well:

• Parked is arguably the best of the traditional parking companies.  They run a tight ship and keep fraud at a minimum, which rewards honest domain owners.  Income had held up there over the past few months.
• Sedo does a little of everything, and their one click pages still do great on a number of my domains.
• NameDrive is a close competitor and now offers many of the same services.
• DomainSponsor does a good job of automatically building a page based on what users are looking for. Sometimes it's not what you think.
• WhyPark is the best of the quasi-development platforms right now.  You can set-it-and-forget-it or you can tweak your domains and add custom content.
• I had high hopes for SmartName, but earnings have disappointed lately.  Your mileage may vary.

Parking revenue got you down? Here are 5 alternatives to try.

Here are five alternatives to traditional pay-per-click domain parking.

RootOrange – RootOrange will lease your domain name on a local basis to multiple parties. In theory, this leasing will provide you with a steady income stream that should top what you can achieve by using the domain at an international-only level. Check out DivorceLawyer.com for an example.

Shopping Feeds – if you have a product domain, you should consider “developing” your domain by including products on the page. This will make it look like an e-commerce site. SmartName offers SmartName Shops, which uses a PPC feed from Shopping.com. You can also try Epik Product, which uses various affiliate feeds. Epik charges a set up fee, but offers a guarantee.

Octane360 – Octane360 creates directory sites on your geo domain names (e.g. WashingtonAllergists.com) and then sells directory listings to local businesses via a call center. Sites can also be monetized using PPC and pay-per-lead.

DevHub – DevHub offers a simple, WYSIWYG editor to create web sites quickly. You can drag-and-drop shopping product feeds, news, video widgets, and more. Monetization is primarily through PPC, but also includes affiliate and CPA options.

WhyPark – now owned by domain parking company Parked.com, WhyPark quickly develops domain names using articles and other syndicated content. You can also add your own custom content for better results. Although this is traditionally recommended for domains that don’t get much traffic, WhyPark has been able to take good type-in domains and make more money than with traditional parking.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Related posts:

1. WhyPark Domain Parking Alternative Now Free
2. SmartName Shops Provide Parking Alternative
3. Octane360 Monetizes Long Tail Geo Domain Names

You’ve seen their banner on a lot of popular blogs (including DomainingTips.com), you found out that they’ve purchased DomainState.com and are probably asking yourself: who are these guys, what are they putting on the table? Well, let’s find out:

Above.com – NOT a Parking Company

Above.com is basically a domain name parking manager, here’s what makes them special: there are countless threads and blog posts related to the “which parking company pays more?” topic and the thing is, there’s no definite answer to that question.

In some cases, you’ll make more money via Parked.com, in other cases Sedo pays more and the list could go on and on. Should you start finding the best solution the old-fashioned way, should you start analyzing each domain one by one? Sure, you could do that but:

1) You’d have to invest a LOT of time
2) You’d lose some money initially

Above.com to the Rescue

Fortunately for you, Above.com represents a great solution to your parking optimization problems. The major parking companies are supported, signing up is 100% free and making things happen is not exactly rocket science. Over a million domains are being optimized via Above.com and, as some of you already know, these guys won the “Best New Monetizing Solution” T.R.A.F.F.I.C. award last year.

Check their website out yourself, click here and sign up for an account. If you’re serious about domaining, tracking everything is extremely important. And especially given the fact that things are tricky when it comes to PPC parking these days, you need to up your game if you want to stay on top

Company provides scalable solution to monetize long tail geo domains.

Connecting local businesses to customers is a huge business. But it has always presented a challenge to owners of long tail geo domain names, such as (City)DaySpa.com. A couple scalable platforms exist to let you build out these domain names, but monetizing them with anything other than PPC has proven elusive.

That’s where Octane360 comes in. The Los Angeles-based company provides a platform for developing these domain names and monetizing them directly with local advertisers. I just started a test with Octane360 this past week on 200 domains and will report back frequently with my progress.

Here’s how it works. You add your domain names to Octane360’s platform and “build them out” based on a template. For example, I own a number of CityDermatologist.com domain names. Working with Octane360, we created a “dermatology” template that is applied across all of these domains. (Templates are already available for most major categories). You can see an example at SunnyvaleDermatologist.com.

Each web site’s focus is on local directory listings and lead generation, but also includes content such as an interactive Q&A section and shopping when applicable. Web sites can also include Adsense or other display and PPC advertising, but the focus is on driving leads to local businesses.

And that’s where the magic happens. It would be challenging, if not a waste of time, for the typical domainer to contact small business owners for each domain to sell them a directory listing. But Octane360 has partnerships with call centers that sell listings for you. They’re already calling on customers and prospects to buy certain advertising products, and the local directory listings on your domains are one more product to peddle.

Octane360 gave me a glimpse of its back-end advertising sales system and it’s impressive. When talking to a prospective customer, a sales rep can pull up an entire list of relevant directories within a certain radius of the business to cross sell. The company splits directory earnings with publishers, and publishers can keep 100% of Adsense earnings.

Octane360 has more development and directory capabilities, but for now I’m only working with them on these local directory sites. Will it perform better than PPC? The bar is set pretty low, and Octane360 shows promise. Stay tuned.

© DomainNameWire.com 2009.

Review and rate domain name parking companies at Parking Judge.

Related posts:

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