WhyPark Update: 2 Year Anniversary of Parked Acquisition

It’s hard to believe it’s already been two years since WhyPark was acquired by Parked in 2009. WhyPark sent out a news release this morning with some updates that highlight the company’s growth in the last couple of years.

Here are a few things I found interesting:

  • There are now over 800,000 domain names on its platform, which is up from approximately 150,000 domain names before the  acquisition.
  • The company has added 11 apps that have been installed over 153,000 times by its customers. I covered the launch of the apps back in July of 2010.
  • There were a  few hundred templates images offered two years ago, and now there are over 12,000 from which you may choose.

One thing I’ve also noticed is that the Parked.com and WhyPark executives also get along very well, likely playing a big role in the smooth transition. Congrats to Parked and WhyPark.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

29 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks Elliot! Donny and I put on a good show in public, but then sling non-stop insults at each other behind the scenes. We do it simply for the greater good of domains.

  2. Elliot and Craig,

    On a serious note, there was no reference made to any monetary rewards to domain parkers in the update.

    I tried Whypark for a few months, I earned roughly $11, I decided to move on, but they will NOT pay my earned CPC because it was less than $20. I think that is a bad business thing, it’s almost like doing business with underground forces. How can you refuse to pay my earned CPC unless I earn $20 minimum, and you are in charge of determining how much I earned, with no transparency, heck it may take you 5 years to decide.

  3. @ Uzoma

    I took a look at your account and see that you talked to Kelly a few times about the $8.50 in your account last year. As she discussed, we do have a minimum payout, just like all other companies. There are expenses involved with paying customers, so we set our minimum to $20 accumulated and operate based on our posted terms.

    We’ve always felt that $20 was a fair minimum payout and seems to be fairly standard across the industry, with some having higher minimums and others lower. We really haven’t had push back from customers on this low minimum, so we haven’t had to evaluate if it’s something that needs to be changed. You’re welcome to email me at craig@whypark.com if you’d like to discuss the specifics of your account.

    Craig

  4. To: Craig

    I appreciate your candor, and for taking time to look at it.
    I will send you an email regarding this, so as to resolve it privately.

    However, on the general issue, as a matter of policy, may I suggest that, as far as someone maintains their account with WhyPark it is probably fair to have a minimum payout, but if someone decides to close their account, it is not OK to hold on to their money. Thanks

  5. Yes, maybe they have 800,000 names listed in their accounts, but 500,000 of them are parked elsewhere.

    Parked sucks straight up, they take away some many clicks against generic domains, really unfair.

    Sedopro, Afternic, to many other players, these people are not transparent move on people, the masses have spoken.

  6. I use Parked and find it pretty good considering the options. If you can’t get to twenty bucks you need better domains or more domains. I have tried Sedo and they pay terrible. I use Google and their domain service is weak, I only keep some domains there to add on with my search and content revenue, their minimum payment is $100.00 so $20.00 from Parked seems very reasonable

  7. To: Anonymous

    I normally don’t respond to anonymous comments, I’ll make this exception.

    The domain parkers, and the industry in general treat nickel and dime as nothing when it comes time to pay up parkers; but, that is exactly what parkers pay to domainers. So which is it? If they treat everything under $19.99 as bullshit, then why pay nickel and dimes?

    If I earned 99cents, pay me 99cents, don’t play big-man all of a sudden, as if 99cents is beneath you. The only way to prove that you are above 99cents, is to round it off to $20. As an example, when you file your income tax with IRS, you are allowed to round off anything under 49cents as zero, and anything 50cents and above as $1. If the parkers wants to treat $8 or such amounts as nothing, they should round it off to be $20

    Finally, parkers never do anything to retain domainers parking business; they could care less if you remove your domains from their service. They don’t even know when you remove your domains. Parkers don’t have to be clones of each other. If one parking company is requiring a minimum, the next should compete by doing away with that requirement. You may think it’s easy for these parkers to pay someone $20, it is not. They keep most of the money and pay the parker peanuts. Well, I’m not going to stand for it.

    I parked a hand full of domains at the same time as Whypark with a company called Bodis, I earned .33cents, and when I removed my domains, they paid me my .33cents. That was good experience. I don’t care how much I’m owed, pay me.

  8. The masses who removed their names from parked during the past 6 months, if you check the % in name server changes from ns1/2.parked.com you will see the #’s, many people have parked accounts, with their domains listed in the accounts, but the domains are not pointing there.

    Myself, I got sick of domains showing activity, and clicks, next day reversed, sent an email to sedopro, they reviewed my names 4000 deep, and approved me, now I am doing $1200-1500 per month revenue, compared to smaller percentage before. I cover about 70% of my renewal fees via parking, so I consider myself lucky. Parked ticked me off by taking back clicks, and non conversion on solid generic domains, that were registered during 95-98.

    Sorry parked, sure your layout looks nice, but that is about it.

    • @ Smoke

      I seem to get an adjustment every day at Parked. Fortunately, I don’t make much money from parking, so it’s not really an impact, but I can see why it would be frustrating.

  9. Thanks Elliot!! These past 2 years have flown by! It has been great working with Parked and meeting so many funny/interesting/welcoming/nice/ and open-minded people in the domain industry, cheers!

  10. Elliot,

    As one of the vanguards of this domain industry, I have waited patiently for you to chime in, and admonish the practice of withholding parkers funds. Of course the issue should be looked at from the perspective of the entire domain parkers as a group; if a company such as Sedo, or Whypark retains $7 or so, of the total of domains in their portfolio, say One Million, that is 7 Million dollars that is not paid to the domainers. That is unacceptable. It’s easy to say “Hey get better domains, or more domains to make the $20”, but that is missing the issue. It’s an issue of principle, not magnitude.

    So, Elliot, please don’t treat this issue as a “He said, He said” issue, take a stand.

  11. @ Uzoma

    I am not a vanguard of this industry – I am a private business owner who has a blog.

    I don’t know enough about the practice of it, and it would be hard to opine in an educated manner when Google/Yahoo/Microsoft keep their rev shares private as do the domain companies.

    Yes, it sucks when Company X pays $10 per click for traffic from a parked page and the Parking Company only pays the Domain Owner $.10 for that click, but I have no idea what goes on in between.

  12. @Elliot,

    Very well. However, I’m sure you’ve read both sides of this issue, from Craig and myself, whereas he claims that a certain minimum should be reached before payment is made to the domainers, and BTW this is industry wide, many domainers, due to lack of revenue or income, give up and quit while not attaining the $20 minimum, and that money is forever denied them. If you add it up, it comes out in the millions of dollars. I was suggesting that domain parkers should cough up that money, because it doesn’t belong to them; after a while, or after a domainer removes his domains/quits domaining, they should still pay that money to the account of the domainer.

    While you may question the rationale for tiny domain Parkers paying a tiny fraction of the gross receipt “when company X pays $10; the truism is that the policy of using an arbitrary minimum to commandeer these domainer’s CPC is far more sinister.

  13. @ Uzoma

    I have accounts at various affiliate sites (not domain parking companies), and some of them have even higher payout minimums. One I Know even charges something like $2.00/month to carry over your balance until they pay you out, so if you have a $75 balance and the minumum withdrawal is $100, I would be down to $50 in 10 months.

    It sucks, but it’s probably because if they didn’t have a limit people would want payouts for everything, and managing payouts is time consuming. If they had a $5.00 limit, I am sure people who have lower balances would complain about that.

    I have a balance of something like $15 at Fabulous and make about $1.00 a month there (I think I have one name there).

  14. Hey I put $500 into a free checking account. Since Jan 1 (when the new financial regulations Obama put in to supposedly help people), they have debited a $25 a month maintenance fee. After losing $100, I closed the account. Maybe you want to buy domains that can earn more than $20 a month?

  15. Saul,

    You are missing the point.

    You closed your checking account, and I am assuming was able to withdraw the balance from your account, correct?

    The situation will only be analogous if when you went to withdraw your balance, or transfer it out, your bank says “hey not so fast, your balance is too small to withdraw”. I’m sure you will yell if that happens. The earned CPC is the domainer’s money, no matter how small, pay it, especially when they no longer want to deal with you. The unilateral company policy not withstanding, there are state laws that could make this at the minimum tortious, and perhaps worse.

  16. “As she discussed, we do have a minimum payout, just like all other companies. There are expenses involved with paying customers, so we set our minimum to $20 accumulated and operate based on our posted terms. ”

    Craig,

    It’s one thing to have this policy for an ongoing relationship. But if a member decides to quit any monies earned should be paid out in
    a final payment.

    Just IMHO.

  17. Uzoma –

    I understand your frustration about closing an account completely and cashing that revenue out when it’s under $20. However, when you signed up, we both agreed to a set of terms that tell you everything we do and how we do it. The minimum payout is listed in our terms (http://www.whypark.com/terms.htm) and our FAQ (http://www.whypark.com/faq-revenue.htm). The choice to do business with us under our terms is yours. When you’re ready to start with any company out there, you should check payment terms and see if the minimum payouts are something you’re willing to accept. It doesn’t mean we can’t look at changing these terms, but we do have reasons we have to stick by these terms, some of which I’ll explain in detail below…

    1. We need to operate on a consistent basis for all customers. I’m sure you can imagine what a mess it would be if we start changing every set of terms for each customer’s needs based on their situation. What if someone prefers to get paid on the 1st of the month instead of the 7th and 22nd like we do now?

    2. We need to operate in a way that’s profitable, because we’re a for-profit business. We constantly do everything we can to communicate with customers (blog and monthly newsletter), keep open and direct lines of communication (our forum, live chat and email) and do everything we can to help our customers and increase their revenue on their behalf. Our business relies on our customers doing well and better with us than other platforms. Otherwise, everyone has the right to move at any time and we don’t want that. We make money by keeping our customers happy. At the same time, we need to be profitable and have terms in place to ensure that we’re not spending our time inefficiently. WhyPark is a small division of Parked and we utilize a lot of automation and consistent business practices to keep everyone happy and the machine running smoothly. Look at the time everyone has spent on these comments discussing this one piece of our terms. Multiply this by thousands of customers and you’ll see why there’s a need to operate consistently and by our terms.

    3. Fraud. I know there’s talk about fraud in the industry, but I don’t think most people in the industry outside of service providers understand the scale of fraud. Every day, we’re working to block click fraud, better identify poor quality traffic and maintain high standards for opening accounts and keeping customer accounts open. Every day, we block more and more fraud and close fraudulent accounts. It’s a constant cat and mouse game at a very large scale. While closing an account and cashing out sounds simple at the surface, I can think of so many ways dishonest people will immediately try to game that for fraudulent gain. We pay on the 7th and 22nd of every month already and pay our customers up to 30 days before we even see payment from our partners. If we get burned or get chargebacks of any kind, we eat that. We have terms and processes in place to limit our risk.

    4. I think we’re incredibly transparent and very open to answering any questions at any time and proactively getting more information out there. I would say that Parked and WhyPark are probably one of the most accessible groups in the industry. In my first response, I left my email address (craig@whypark.com) and asked you to contact me so we can discuss your account privately. I haven’t seen an email from you yet. I’d be happy to post any information about your account publicly if you’d prefer that venue and give that permission. I’m sure you’d prefer to keep your chat logs and account information private though, so I again extend that option to discuss your account and concerns in a rational, professional manner.

    With all of this said, it doesn’t mean we won’t change our terms to allow anyone to cash out when they no longer want to keep their WhyPark account open and have not reached our $20 minimum. We do have to think through a lot more than you probably realize though before making a knee-jerk change of terms for everyone. There would also unfortunately need to be some stipulations to protect from fraud and placing limits.

    Anyone can feel free to email me at any time to discuss how we do business, specifics of your account or voice any concerns. The industry and our business are constantly evolving and we’re always open to making any changes to deal with that evolution if it makes sense to our business and the customers who we continue to do business with.

    Thanks,
    Craig

  18. Uzoma,
    The TOS on WhyPark’s site says it pretty clearly.

    “For PayPal and direct deposit the minimum payout is $20. Checks the minimum payout is $100. For US and foreign wires the minimum payout is $1,000.”

    You agreed to the TOS when you signed up. My wife is an attorney and she says it’s a binding contract based on what I told her.

    Almost every company has minimums payments.

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