Above.com recently announced a milestone achievement. They are happy to share that they have now serviced over 1.2 million parked domain names. Beyond their milestone, Above.com was recently awarded Best New Monetizing Solution of 2009 during T.R.A.F.F.I.C. in Brooklyn, New York.

I congratulate them on both achievements, that’s great news.

Let’s face it here, many of us have seen a decline in our parking revenues, but there is still money to be made through parking our domains. It’s a matter of tweaking where we’re parking and Above.com gets that particular concept, which makes them a formidable player in the industry.

They gave a great explanation of how their strategy works. They are basically supported by 15 different parking companies, which allows for some diversity in your choices as to where to park your domain. Some parking companies do better with specific types of domains than others. Above.com understands this and helps you analyze your names to find the best fit, thus maximizing your chances at getting better parking revenue. There are other benefits to using their tools, such as:

• Traffic and revenue stats are conveniently centralized
• Detailed analytics
• Keep your existing parking accounts
• Best of all, it’s FREE!!

This is a tool worth checking out! To get a more in depth explanation of what they do and how it works visit them at Above.com.

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Part II comes ten months later but better late than never.

For those of you that have been reading my blog since inception, you may remember my Parked.com – Poor Working Conditions article. That was the very first article I wrote here. In fact Donny Simonton was the first person I have had the chance of meeting in the industry.

Time flies when you’re having fun

I visited the 14,000 square foot Parked.com office in Tampa, FL the other day for business and social reasons. It made me think about that first article. I wanted to follow up with some pictures and more information.

Did you know Parked…

• has offices in New Orleans, Tampa, Grand Cayman and Switzerland?
• has over 4,000,000 domain names parked with them?
• has many employees to deal with every possible parking need you may have?
• just acquired WhyPark to give their customers more options?

Now before I get ahead of myself with the pictures, I’m sharing this information because Parked works extremely hard for your business. The amenities they offer their employees are to make sure they are comfortable and happy and to keep you, the customer, happy.

Here are some pictures of the Tampa, FL office.

Fully stocked kitchen with soda machine and every thing you need to make a gourmet lunch. By the way, lunch is provided by the company every day. They even have a popcorn and hot dog machine for parties.

Movie screen, pool table, two separate flat screens hooked up with Nintendo Wii, Playstation and Xbox. Not pictured are the two message chairs for those long hours of working hard for their customers.

Gym for the employees to stay in shape.

I also had the chance to meet Craig Rowe, President of WhyPark.

(Left) Craig Rowe President of WhyPark – (Right) Donny Simonton President of Parked

For all your domain parking or quick development needs make sure to visit Parked.com and WhyPark.com.

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This is a no brainer deal for Parked and a win win for everyone involved. The combination of WhyPark’s develop technology and Parked’s ad feeds are a great marriage.

Some quick highlights:

• WhyPark and Parked will continue to run as two separate services
• Craig Rowe will continue as President of WhyPark
• Parked grows customer base by a little more than 3%
• Parked already has over 4,000,000 domain names with their services while WhyPark has about 150,000 on their nameservers
• Parked has one of if not the best ad feed in the parking industry

Here is the official release from WhyPark earlier this morning. Continue reading…

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What is Domain Parking?
Domain Parking is a simple way to earn money from your domains natural traffic. If you have registered domain names, but they are not currently being used, then domain parking is a great way to put those domains to work, earning you revenue. The domain is used to display relevant advertisements, every time a consumer clicks on one of the advertisements, you earn money.

No you are not going to get rich by doing this but you are going to earn extra money. If you do not take advantage of this you can believe your registrar companies will.

Here is an example of one of my domains with Parked.com, FloridaStateFairground.com, for the month of January I earned $6.37.

Let me go over what I believe to be the top three parking companies, each one is good for their own reasons.

Parked.com
My favorite of the three, I’m partial because this is who I use. In order to open an account I believe you need to have a minimum of 10 domains and that’s it. After opening an account you are assigned an account team which are helpful and friendly. On average I make about $30 per month parking my domain names here.

Sedo.com
I use them for a hundred or so of my domain names for one reason only, to save money on listing fees. If your domain is parked with Sedo and you sell through them the listing fees (normally $50) are waived. The downside to using Sedo for me has been the very low if any parking revenue.

WhyPark.com
I have not used WhyPark and can only write about what I’ve read and heard. There is an initial cost of $99 to open an account which covers 100 domain names. From what I’m seeing though WhyPark is worth the money, it’s almost like creating little mini-sites for what would equate to $0.99 each. There are a ton of site modification and options, the best part about WhyPark, you keep 100% of the revenue produced which is great.

For me parking is a big DUH, kind of like not backing up your websites. If your domain name is just sitting there then do yourself a favor and park them. You’d be surprised how much this helps, the extra cash will either pay for a few renewals or a few new registrations. As an added bonus, if the domain is making some money parked it will hold a higher value, there are niche buyers looking for parked names with revenue only.

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No, parking companies are not closing shop, YET.

As reported on many of the domainer sites Google is now allowing domain owners to directly park with them. Use this link to view the details directly from Google’s blog.

I will be the first to go on record and say that this time next year parking companies will be obsolete. Does this mean run and move all of your domain names to Google, absolutely not.  Just like anything new it has to be tested and tweaked several times before its right.  As of now you will still gain more traffic and money by parking companies.  With a parking company you have more control over the keywords used, optimization, visual appearance and content.

This will change, Google will have these things worked out and perfected, it will just take time.

In the mean time, while they are working out the details, get your domains parked. I know too many domainers that do nothing with their domains. Once they are acquired they sit, why not park them in the mean time and earn a couple dollars? I have accounts with Sedo and Parked, each have their own benefits.  If selling your domain name through Sedo or GreatDomains is your goal then park with Sedo.  By parking your domain with them you avoid the $50 minimum sales charge.  If your looking for greater flexibility and higher payouts, Parked is the way to go.

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