There has been quite a bit of buzz about Frank Schilling’s new InternetTraffic.com endeavor over the last few days. I’ve heard from people in public and private, and apparently the platform is providing a revenue boost for qualified domain names that have been switched to Schilling’s feeds. It’s apparently a significant boost for many domain owners.
According to DomainTools’ Daily Changes website, it appears that over 21,000 domain names have been added to the InternetTraffic.com domain servers (over 6,000 yesterday). Domain names have been removed from big parking companies like Domain Sponsor, Sedo, Fabulous, Parked, and other PPC and lead generation providers. The bad news for them is that these are likely some of their highest performing direct navigation domain names.
As you can see by visiting any of the domain names listed, the look and feel of the landing pages is similar to that of Schilling’s landers, although the DomainNameSales.com sales message is notably missing. The greater the traffic volume, the more powerful the network, and likely the more revenue for domain owners.
Here’s what Frank had to say about this new endeavor:
“What I am trying to do is help an industry that has been under a great deal of pressure due to extremely negative changes in the paid search landscape.
For the longest time you’ve had quality domain traffic intermixed into the same channel with error search and keyword arbitrage players. Higher quality traffic has effectively been subsidizing lower quality. Traditional parking companies use the profits from good actors to offset the administrative headaches from bad actors.
I’m trying to build a channel with higher quality type-in traffic and then pay out nearly all the revenue to those partners so they can prosper. I am less interested in building a profit machine from my fellow domainers traffic than I am in rewarding our upstream partners like Google for taking care of us.”
Clearly, not everyone is invited/welcomed to participate, and I don’t blame Schilling. I am sure the last thing he wants to do is become a service company, where he will have to deal with annoying clients. My assumption is only the people who have significant direct navigation domain names and don’t need any hand holding will be welcome to participate. If you don’t know if you would qualify, you probably don’t.
In addition, some private companies/providers have been given a pass through feed, and they are administering the feed to some clients, allowing additional people to participate.
Update/Correction:
There was a small error in my post, and Frank sent me this correction: “we don’t have a passthrough for 4th parties to use. The term passthrough refers to revshares.“
Good news for Frank. Sounds like he is doing it right.
Bad news for all the other parking companies that will now loose their best customers and domain names.
With one bulk nameserver change… POOF, there goes hundreds and thousands of great domains to a competitor and there is probably nothing they can do to get that customer back.
What is the #1 service from any parking company?
Payout.
Customer don’t care about the landers, the customer service, the user interface. They only care about getting the most money from the domains they have parked.
Frank’s new business has to be the nail in the coffin for several domain parking companies.
Now if he can come up with competition for Adsense, that would be fantastic.
Is there an example of the landing page anywhere?
@ BFitz
You can have a look at the DailyChanges.com site to see what names have moved and check one of those. I am not comfortable linking to a parked domain name.
Am I the only one who doesn’t understand what to look for on the dailychanges site? I just want an example of one of these names that just switched to Frank’s new project. Elliot, you don’t have to link to it, you can do something like www(.)xxx(.)com. No link, but we still get the example. Thanks.
Enough with the air of exclusivity. If you download the list of 20,000 names moved to his service and do a quick scan, 98% of them are reg fee. And many trademark typos. If this crap can get in, anyone should get in. Just more domainer pomp and circumstance that really amounts to nothing.
abercrmobie.com
accessholllywood.com
accessshollywood.com
addiatinggames.com
addicktinggams.com
baybsrus.com
birdfarts.com
boattrder.com
bosstmoblie.com
cartonnetwark.com
cartoonetworkhq.com
cartoonknetwork.com
cartoonneork.com
channellok.com
cheeleader.com
cheeteos.com
chocelate.com
cinamontoastcrunch.com
cortoonework.com
cregslists.com
@ mike
I am sure that is something the company will monitor. There are quite a few great generic names on the list$
@mike
BirdFarts.com?
Is that suppose to be a legit direct nav name or a typo of another name?…
That’s hilarious 🙂
John
@John
Not a typo, I thought that was to funny to leave off the list. birdfart.com is on the list as well in case you want the singular.
@Elliot
I scanned about 25% of the list and saw maybe 3 good not great names. This is just one days sampling, but the point is that the names being parked there are not the best of the best names and are actually really bad. Many of these names are names that some parking companies will not even show ads for due to TM issues.
So typos, trademarks, good generics, and birdfarts? Sounds like every other parking service.
In those exclusive clubs you normally check people at the door, you don’t let them all in and then check on the back end.
Very surprising at the amount of trademark typos in the list from Mike above.
I also scanned the list and I agree with Mike, that’s not the kind of domains that I’d define great, apart from a limited number. So many reg fee names in there.
TM typos got privacy on them. Funny how they think Moniker privacy can protect them from legal action.
birdfart
/fɑrt/ Show Spelled [burdfahrt]
Vulgar .
–noun
1.
a flatus expelled through avian anus.
—Verb phrase
2.
a domain name even worse than pigeon shit
– plural
birdfarts
Show Spelled [burdfahrts]
– A portfolio of domain names lower than pigeon shit
Still, examples of birdfarts aside, if his parking service is paying a lot more, he’s going to draw away a lot of top names.
Now the question is why all of a sudden does Frank want to have a parking company? Could he be in some type of tiered contract and he’s not going to meet the maximums unless he let’s other people in?
So maybe he could be paying 95% or whatever he’s paying, but he’s getting an extra 5-10% on the backside with his own domains.
Google loves TM traffic and converts well
@ All
Just FYI, I can buy a bunch of trademark domain names and set nameservers to Apple…. doesn’t mean they will resolve, be monetized, and/or make money.
For instance, I checked one of the names that was on the list, http://cartoonneork.com, and there aren’t any ads showing.
Congratulations Frank! I’m hearing chatter you need 1k income a month to be considered
Now let’s see what Parked.com does stay with bing or go with google
If I am understanding the information from Daily Changes correctly, then it seems 95% of the “inbound” domains (6,124 of 6,437 domains) were from the “original name server” ; followed by 4.5% (296 of 6,437 domains) from the nameserver. That leaves 17 other domains; none of which I recognize as being from established parking companies.
So, looks like it has not affected other parking companies … (yet)!?
@ Steve
I don’t believe you are. Just on the first page of inbound names (http://www.dailychanges.com/internettraffic.com/2011-05-19/#tab=in) , it looks like many were previously on dsredirection.com (Domain Sponsor) nameservers. I looked through from the past few days and there are names from many different parking companies’ DNS.
@ Steve
That was from only one batch yesterday. Have a look at previous days, too, and you’ll see plenty of other parking company DNS listed as the previous DNS. Also, keep in mind that many of the names that are moved are likely big earners (like Porno.com)
http://www.dailychanges.com/internettraffic.com/2011-05-18/#tab=in
http://www.dailychanges.com/internettraffic.com/2011-05-17/#tab=in
http://www.dailychanges.com/internettraffic.com/2011-05-16/#tab=in
http://www.dailychanges.com/internettraffic.com/2011-05-15/#tab=in
http://www.dailychanges.com/internettraffic.com/2011-05-14/#tab=in
(re-submitting – to fill in missing info from 1st attempt)
If I am understanding the information from Daily Changes correctly, then it seems 95% of the “inbound” domains (6,124 of 6,437 domains) were from the “original name server” dsredirection.com; followed by 4.5% (296 of 6,437 domains) from the nameserver carpathiahost.net. That leaves 17 other domains; none of which I recognize as being from established parking companies.
So, looks like it has not affected other parking companies … (yet)!?
Domains like http://cartoonneork.com/ are probably blocked not because of TM, but because some owner was a naughty person at some point.
So now is it the responsibility of the owner to check every domain and see if their domain is showing ads or not? But as long as birdfarts is working, I know I’ll get paid this month.
@ Jim
LOL 🙂
Thanks Elliott
So I am reading/interpreting the data correctly; BUT would need to increase my sampling size (i.e. look at past 4-5 days) to find evidence of “inbound” domains from recognizable parking-company servers?
@ Steve
I would say so. Also keep in mind some of the people who are moving to this may have used their own DNS.
I turned my domains on with Franky a few days ago and I can confirm he wasn’t messing around when he said we’ll be making more money.
@ Chad
Do you plan to move all your names? Can you share the % lift?
Movin em all…not sure if he wants me to give out the % increase but it is pretty drastic.
Can anyone share what the RPM is?
It looks like parking companies didn’t like Frank’s idea…
http://www.ricksblog.com/my_weblog/2011/05/note-to-parking-companiesback-off-hounding-yahoo-and-google-.html
Looks like 21,000+ more domain names were moved to InternetTraffic.com DNS. There are now over 42,000 domain names resolving to InternetTraffic.com:
http://www.dailychanges.com/internettraffic.com/#tab=in
I am planning to move about 15000 names.
I am just wondering what will happen to Sedos and DSs of the parking world?
Thanks.
@ rk
Have you been approved by Frank?
There will be plenty of domain owners and domain names that aren’t moved. I don’t know what will ultimately happen to any parking companies, but I am sure some will lose quite a bit of revenue.
@ Elliot
I have not contacted Frank, that’s why I said “planning”.
I should have said thinking of 🙂
I am kind of still debating because starting from the day Frank’s parking company news came my revenue has magically increased at on eof the parking companies substantially.
I just want to give it few more days and see what happen at my existing ppc cos.
I should have no problem meeting the rumored criteria plus we have virtually TM free portfolio and all traffic is pure type-ins.
The initial payouts for Bodis.com and Parked.com were awesome when it first started, too.
The revenue on InternetTraffic.com will also drop, that’s how these parking companies make money.
@ bob
That could be right, but I don’t think Frank is doing this as a profit center. I would bet the more traffic/revenue the network brings in, the better for his own portfolio, but I can’t imagine that he is doing it to make a lot of money from his friends and other domainers. Maybe I am naive, but the minimal added revenue doesn’t seem worth the hit on his rep.
I am trying to point my domains to Frank’s servers but the Registrar is rejecting them. The error message is “Unknown Domain”. I called the Registrar and they said the domains need to be registered within the server before I can point there. However I never had this issue before. Can anyone help?
@ Matheus
If your domain names haven’t been approved by Frank, why would you point them to his server? If they have been approved, you should be in touch with him about the issue.
@Elliot
They have been approved and I am in touch with Frank about it. Sorry for not clarifying. I am asking for external help as we were unable to find a solution until now.
@ Matheus
It’s likely a way to prevent people from forwarding domain names that aren’t approved. Maybe they hadn’t been added to the system yet.
@Elliot
Yesterday, you wrote: “Just FYI, I can buy a bunch of trademark domain names and set nameservers to Apple…. doesn’t mean they will resolve, be monetized, and/or make money.”
You wrote this when we were talking about all the low quality/reg fee domains contained in that list. But as Matheus Leite pointed out, since his domains were rejected, this proves that all those domains were already approved by Frank, not simply pointed to his nameservers without his consent.
@ Joe
I’ve never seen the error that Mattheus is reporting, so I can’t say… it’s speculation by me.
My domains have been explicitly accepted by Frank, but the Registrar doesn’t let me point there. I am not a DNS expert but it seems some Registrars (in this case, a ccTLD) do a more strict validation than others, which will let you point to Apple or anywhere else.
Nevertheless there *is* some server-side DNS configuration which will work, as I never had any issues to point to any other parking company (even before adding the domain there), with this same Registrar. This is what I need to discover right now: what makes Frank’s DNS different than Sedo’s.
Shane just wrote a nice article on the matter. Particularly, I’d like to point out this:
“Amongst all the nice names moving to InternetTraffic, there are thousands of normal to junk names. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to own these 6000 names, jogggs.com is not exactly a category killer. For some reason people have this misconception that all Frank Schilling’s names are fantastic name. Frank owns a lot of junk too. But he makes 7 million a year parking them so evidently there are a few good names in there as well.”
It’s true, he owns a lot of average quality domains, but it’s statistics: if you own hundreds of thousands of domains, they can’t be all category-definers.
RK, My revenue at Parked.com has been way up also, seems like their getting the massage.
Hi
Can anyone explain how could I redirect my names to InternetTraffic. Please help me.
Regards to all of you
@ R
I am sure Frank can tell you…..
I guess this type of thing is why parking companies need lots of staff 🙂
Based on the stats I see from Franky’s system I’d say this is going to shake the industry to its core.
This is interesting take on Franks new project, some are saying his adsense will be canceled due to googles low grade content policy, the same policy that has his sites not showing high in the index. hmmmm
http://blog.domainlords.net/?p=342
Matheus some ccTLD like .FR and .DE require pre name delegation check.
If Frank did not add those domain names into the DNS then Denic (German registry) will not allow you.
The error you get from your Registrar if setup correctly is the error message from the ccTLD registry.
You should check with the Registry in question what the error means.
For example if Frank has his nameservers in the same subnet then it is just not gonna work for .DE domain names. I didn’t check, it is just an example.
Rex, I give the web site you referenced about Frank zero credibility since it was registered less then 2 months ago.
ICANN Registrar:
GODADDY.COM, INC.
Created:
2011-04-09
Expires:
2012-04-09
Updated:
2011-04-09
I’ve sent an email to internettraffic.com yesterday night, will look forward to get into the program.
If it is true you need a portfolio making at least $1k/month, I’m in (or is it $1k/day???).
Will keep you updated with stats and comments, if I can hopefully get in.
Parking companies will have to think fast to overcome losing their 5 star domains parking with them, maybe such high quality parked names should be offered a higher percentage of the revenue. I am not a fan of parking coz my domains aren’t Frank qualified, I rather forward my domains to where they have a logo designed for and make an end user sale, I don’t need parking as much as they don’t need me as much as I make nothing in revenue per year from parking. But I’m happy with how Frank is trying to help out, very nice of him, thanx Frank!