WhyPark Insider

Parked.com Buys WhyPark.com

2009-05-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

This will be my last post on the WhyPark Insider. Wow what a year!

I started this blog on May 15, 2008 shortly after I made an investment in WhyPark. Exactly one year later Parked.com bought Whypark. Incredibly ironic is I made this statement in my first post

"This blog will have a short life; once I’ve told my story, I’d rather get back to running my other businesses."

What a telling statement. 17 posts, 11 board meetings and 366 days later, I'm thrilled to see WhyPark enter it's next phase of growth and have no doubts that Craig and the team at WhyPark will prosper with the help of Parked.

The combined Parked and WhyPark will be a powerhouse in the monetization of domain names. Both are best in class companies. The most recent Domain Name Wire survey voted WhyPark the best domain parking alternative. The vote was a landslide with WhyPark receiving 49% of the vote, more votes than the top four competitors combined, with the closest holding 15% of the vote. In the same industry survey, 58% of the people who have used Parked rated it as the best domain parking company. Six percentage points higher than it's closest competitor.

I predict that Parked + WhyPark will dominate this industry. Both companies are led by superior, ethical and well respected leaders, Donny and Craig. Having worked closely with Craig for the past year I can say he is a brilliant down to earth businessman whom will be an incredible asset for Parked.

A year ago, I was a happy customer who saw an enormous amount of potential in WhyPark. A year later, I'm back to being a happy customer who still sees an enormous amount of potential in WhyPark. Thanks a million to Craig for all the hard work you put in this last year and I wish you all the success in the world. Donny you've created one heck of a company and I wish you all the best.

I guess I should get going and submit an application for a Parked account since they're not the competition any longer. Over and out, Alan aka the WhyPark Insider.

WhyPark in the News

2008-11-25T17:33:00.000-08:00

WhyPark has been in the press a bit this week and I thought I'd pass on a couple of links. Thanks to the bloggers who reported about WhyPark. You may get a chuckle from the perp walk at the end of this post!

Namecake.com Interview About the New Platform

Domain Name Wire Announces ContentPromote.com

Domainer Income Talks About TRAFFIC Down Under

Can You Pick the Guilty Party Out
They all Look Guilty of Something - at least Mark Cuban is Missing.
This isn't a perp walk. It's just the TRAFFIC Down Under speaker list.

WhyPark's President Speaks At Traffic Down Under

2008-11-25T16:22:00.000-08:00

Last week Craig Rowe, WhyPark's president, attended the T.R.A.F.F.I.C Down Under conference to deliver a speech titled, Web Development, Content is King. Presented below are the slides from his presentation.

The intent was to provide an unbiased view of different types of domain development projects and contrast the pros and cons of each. Without further commentary, here is the presentation.

Make Sure to Describe Your Website with Good Anchor Text Links

2008-11-24T17:02:00.000-08:00

At WhyPark we provide content to populate your sites. However, by writing your own article and syndicating it among your sites or via article directories you can help tell search engines what your site is about. The effective use of anchor text that links back to your site, is a statement of what your site is about.

Here is an example of an article I wrote to promote my retail site kidscoats.com, but it could have been just as easily used to promote another of my sites at WhyPark like kidsdresses.com.

Girls Coats to Match Your Family Lifestyle

Fashion and function are two words that go great together when choosing girls coats. Gone are the days when your kids coat looks more like a cartoon billboard than a fashion forward piece of outerwear.

When we're asked what is a good choice for little girls coats we ask that you think about your daily lifestyle. During a typical day my girls go to school, are shuttled to dance, gymnastics and kids play dates, go back and forth from the car to our house as well as friends and relatives houses, occasionally walk or go ice skating with us outside, play with their friends in the school yard, come with us to events like hay rides, holiday parties and movie outings and occasion play in the snow. Yes, we do get our share of snow storms here in Massachusetts.

If your lifestyle is something like this a Corky coat is a perfect choice for your girls outerwear. Each year our girls pick a beautiful Corky hat and coat set that brings tons of compliments and a very inexpensive nylon winter coat (we get no compliments on these coats!) for those rare days when they want to play in snow or go sledding. The great thing about a Corky coat is that they are lined in super warm fleece, can be worn everyday and are dressy enough for a special occasion. Kids winter coats are probably most expensive piece of apparel that you will buy all year, but it's also the single piece of apparel that will get the most use.

Matching your outerwear choice to your lifestyle is very important. If on the other hand, your kids are skiers and not girly girls like mine you should probably choose to invest in a high tech ski parka. The ski parka can also serve as your girls everyday coat, but you'll probably need to buy another coat for those dress up occasions. Be careful when choosing a wool girls coat because they are not machine washable. We are obviously biased towards, Corky coats, but they are less expensive than a nice girls wool coat, are machine washable and look great on any special occasion.

KidsCoats.com has a large selection of toddler coats. If you're looking for unique baby coats we have great selection of brand names.

Note the Anchor Text Links - These are Important

girls coats, kids winter coats, toddler coats, baby coats

Here is the HTML code you I used to create the anchor text link for "Kids winter coats"

< href="http://www.kidscoats.com/">Kids winter coats< /a>
(Just remove the space after "<" and "<"to make this an active link)

You can place an article like this on a WhyPark site, syndicate to article directories or use a soon to be unveiled WhyPark content promotion service.

Note how I linked to contentpromote.com via the anchor text "content promotion." By using anchor text like this I'm making a statement that the website is about "content promotion."

I hope you don't find this post too remedial, but I wanted to show the importance of linking to your websites with anchor text as opposed to just using the domain name.

WhyPark Sitemaps for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo

2008-10-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

Submitting a sitemap through your Google webmaster tools account and WhyPark is an easy way to increase the probability of having your domain crawled and indexed. But, did you know with WhyPark you can also easily submit your sitemap to Yahoo and Microsoft! Here's how.

Here is view of the WhyPark control panel for my domain ChildrensCoats.org. Notice that I have three Meta Name tags in the sitemap verification block. These are the verification codes provided by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Google Webmaster Tools

Microsoft Webmaster Center

Yahoo Site Explorer

You'll need to create a free webmaster account with each search company and that is about the hardest part of submitting your sitemaps to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. The benefits of using the tools of all three are pretty substantial.

Widget Wonk Increases Your Sites Interactivity with Creative Use of Widgets

2008-09-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

There are some awesome ideas for enhancing WhyPark built sites using widgets at the blog Widget Wonk. Suonim, a customer of WhyPark, started the blog to share some of the neat widgets he's used to spiff up his WhyPark sites. I've used some of his suggestions like the Google translate widget and they add an impressive level of interactivity to my sites with very little effort.

Here are some samples of his sites using some of the widgets highlighted in his blog.

Google translate widget on the Nijo Castle site (I also like the embed You Tube video!)

With One Click it's Now Translated to French

`
Then if you click on a link to another site, that site is also translated to French. So cool!

Here's another interesting widget used at Memory Island, Making Memories with Photography. Suonim selected an appropriate popular public room from Google Lively and embed it in the WhyPark layout. As Lively users move around, chat, and change the objects in the room, they are making the site more interesting.

There are many more widgets he's shown how to use on Widget Wonk. It is well worth the time to browse through his blog because implementing the widgets on WhyPark sites add a lot of aesthetic appeal for very little effort.

WhyParker's are Site Builders, Not Domain Parkers

2008-07-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

A few days ago we highlighted a customer's domain Go Telepresence as one example of how you could use WhyPark to quickly build sites. Since then he has made a few tweaks and put the site on a Name Pros Wed Site Design Review thread. The feedback consensus is "this isn't a parked domain."

WhyPark is not domain parking company, it's a content provider, web host and SEO service that gives you the tools to quickly build attractive and engaging sites for visitors. It's a way for you to monetize sites that get little type in navigation traffic while you wait to either sell the domain or develop a more robust site.

Yes, the parking companies are free and WhyPark costs a one time fee of $100 for 100 sites. Before you sign-up do your homework, but I feel you will not find a better service to build a site and monetize your domains.

This is a really great looking site. I've come across many other nice creative WhyPark sites and I'll share them with you after I get the photoshop work done!

I'll finish with a quote from a recent unpaid KillerStartups.com review of WhyPark:

WhyPark Hacks: Customize Sites with Google Gadgets

2008-07-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

Google Gadgets are an easy way to customize WhyPark sites. With over 46,000 gadgets to choose from there is a gadget for every site. The screen shots in this post are links to the corresponding site, so click away to see the gadgets in your own browser.

The Google Gadget home page is where you can search for a gadget appropriate to your site. Just enter a search term like bible, stock quote, forex quote or RSS feed and customize the gadget for your site.

Google Gadget Search Page

I like what a WhyPark customer did with the site Go Telepresence. He added an RSS news feed gadget in the upper left corner of the site which displays continuous live news on Telepresence conferencing. He's done other modifications to enhance the site, like adding an "advertise here banner" which takes a visitor to a site that lists all his telepresence domains, ad pricing and a tool to create a banner ad. He's also added a banner ad for his Telepresence Forum site. When you look at this site, it's pretty amazing to think for $1 per domain he's able to build a site that is engaging to a visitor, useful for advertisers and promotes his forum.

The idea to use Google Gadgets to customize WhyPark sites wasn't mine. It came from Wayne who notified me of his RSS feed gadget on his telepresence site. I took three sites to show how gadgets can be used on almost any domain.

BibleBees.com, a gadget with a Bible verse that changes daily

StudyStocks.com, an interactive real time stock quote gadget

BookForex.com, a gadget that displays major foreign currency quotes

By editing the HTML layout section of any domain you can easily paste the java script gadget code. I simply replaced the [[image]] place holder with the gadget code. You could have just as easily put the gadget above the site articles or in the side bar next to the related articles. Over 46,000 gadgets and access to each sites HTML code, you only limited by your imagination and HTML skills. And, my HTML skills are below basic!

From Comments below: Here's a little link love

Anwar said...: Check out some of my websites customized on whypark

http://www.proxydrom.com

http://www.pfcstation.com

http://www.elaab.net

http://www.24img.com; January 4, 2009 1:52 PM

WhyPark Hacks: Affiliate Widgets to Replace Stock Photos

2008-06-29T12:48:00.000-07:00

A WhyPark customer brought to my attention a really slick modification where he replaced the stock images with an Amazon affiliate widget. This is a great way to add CPA to your sites along with the CPC income currently being generated. Here are some of his sites; I encourage you to visit by clicking the screen shot because the widget fades to a new book about every three seconds.

InnovationEducation.com

CastlesofJapan.com

This is an extremely creative way to use WhyPark and best of all it's pretty easy to implement. In the "Layout" section of a specific domain, find the [[image]] placeholder in the Page Layout HTML. Replace the [[image]] placeholder with the HTML or JavaScript that is provided by your affiliate program.

Screen Shot of Page Layout HTML with [[image]] Placeholder

With a little extra work you can now get some Pay Per Action revenue in addition to the Pay Per Click revenue you're now earning.

WhyPark: Organic Search Traffic

2008-06-21T06:33:00.000-07:00

Organic search traffic is a huge benefit provided by WhyPark. I'll use the example of GasJam.com in this post to show how WhyPark can monetize a domain with "no type" in traffic. I anticipate that this domain will sell in the next year due to the current state of gas prices, but when I choose the theme for this site I got a little creative. I figured I'd use GasJam.com to present information on gastric bypass surgery.

Selecting the theme, I simply entered the keyword "gastric bypass" in the control panel shown below. I also selected the WhyPark Ad Network and the site category of Diet, Nutrition and Weight Loss.

So how did the domain do in attracting organic search traffic? I'd say pretty darn good. 83% of the traffic was from organic search and 11% was from returning visitors accounting for most of the 14% of direct traffic.

I specifically choose this site to highlight because it is not monetized with Google Adsense, nor is it being given any organic search traffic from Google. Basically it can't get any worse than that!

How did the site monetize? It could have been better, but for the latest two month period GasJam.com earned $.73 or $4.38 annually. Nothing to write home about, but it sure helps offset the annual renewal fee at Godaddy of $7.15 while I wait to sell the domain for $450 to $950.

Yes, you may think $4.38 per year stinks. But no type in traffic, no Google Adsense and no Google organic search traffic; that's your worst case situation. If you had to guess, how much do you think GasJam.com would have earned at a traditional parking company. If you answered $0 that's exactly what it made parked at a major parking company for 18 months.

Obviously, I took a very mediocre domain with no love from Google and showed that WhyPark was able to monetize the domain. I could have showed you a mediocre domain like AutismContacts.com that earns $3.00 per week at WhyPark, but that would defeat the purpose of this post.

$100 When the Other Guys Are Free

2008-06-17T14:30:00.001-07:00

How can WhyPark charge $100 for each 100 domains, when all its competitors are free services? Well are the other services really free? We'll come back to that later. For a ONE TIME FEE of $100 at WhyPark you get 100 full contextualized websites hosted where you can add your own third party ad feeds or you can choose to use the WhyPark ad feed. Is this what the other services offer? You pay $7-15 each year to renew a domain, isn't it worth a $1 one time investment to monetize?

A TANK OF GAS OR AN INVESTMENT IN WHYPARK?

You can create links in forums, social networks, by article syndication, in emails and on other sites to drive traffic to your domains. It's pretty amazing how much you can promote your domains. This WhyPark customer couldn't have said it better on the WhyPark NamePro's thread post #68.

Copy of the NamePros Post Above

"OK, I'm starting to realize some SUPER benefits here at WhyPark....

I just figured out how to add a banner on my front page directing visitors to my Forum - best yet, with one single click - I just added it to 221 sites, all on the front page! Do you know how long it takes me to build 221 one-way links normally? I don't even want to think about it....

It get's even better - those one-way links are all "alt-text" anchored (for mouse-over and SEO), and the banner sits just below my Adsense - PERFECT!

AND even better than that...

I also figured out tonight how to create a direct link from a "User Article" on the front page of this site GO Telepresence - to another page listing all my domains for sale or lease. Which means that's another 242 one way links to my "Telepresence Related" sites! All with alt-text, anchored keywords, h1, h2 and h3 tags....

I'm so friggin' stoked, I can't stand it!

AND even better than what was even better than that.... LOL

I can actually write about it because hyperlinks are allowed at WhyPark!

If you read my first post that started this thread, you'll see that I went the long way around to get here. Sedo, NameDrive, Parked, etc. Nobody allowed links, which to me is like the most important item you can have for a domain. How can you have any traffic, if you can't have links driving people to your domain?

Nuff said.... Going to count links tonight instead of sheep

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

L2"

Try driving traffic to your domains at other services and see what happens to your account! Here's what the same WhyPark customer had to say about the links policy of another service 0n the Namepros forum post #14. It's actually a very funny thread and I suggest you visit and read!

Copy of the NamePros Post Above

"Then the e-mail came....

I'm grabbing the e-mail now - "Dear Sedo Customer,

This email is in regards to the domain names you have parked with Sedos parking program. While our quality management team was performing a routine check of parked domains, they detected some abnormal behavior with your domains. The traffic for your parked domains does not conform to typical rates, and we would like to know where this volume of traffic is originating from.

Our quality management team would like to make sure that the traffic that is coming to your domain(s) does not violate the Terms and Conditions of our parking program. Such contraventions would include, but are not exclusive to:

* clicking yourself
* using scripts or other automatic means to generate clicks
* using pop-ups
* incentivized clicks
* anything that does not result from natural traffic

For more information on our parking Terms of Use, and what is considered natural traffic, please visit the following link: http://www.sedo.com/about/policy.ph...id=&language=us

We would be very grateful if you could provide any explanation with regards to why your domains are receiving such high traffic levels. Please note: This email is not implying that you are violating Sedos Terms of Use, or accusing you of doing so. We would just like to have a better knowledge of where the traffic for your domains is originating from.

We look forward to your response. If you have any further questions please let us know.

I then answered this e-mail with exact language spelling out where, when and how they where linked....

And this was their reply... "Hello Wayne,

Thank you for your email and for explaining where the traffic for your parked domain names is originating from. Please note that placing links to your parked pages on a website violates our Parking Terms of Use. Also, hyperlinking your domain names on forums to direct people to your parked pages is not allowed. Instead of directing people to your parked pages to make offers, you will need to direct people to the actual offer pages for your domains, such as this:

http://www.sedo.com/search/details....id=&language=us

You will therefore need to stop using such practices as soon as possible in order to avoid being penalized. For more information on our parking Terms of Use, please visit the following link:

http://www.sedo.com/about/policy.ph...id=&language=us

Please let me know when you have removed all links to your parked pages. If you have any further questions please let me know.

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Quality Management Team

I then "removed" every hyperlink I could and wrote them back...

Here's was the reply I received...

Hello Wayne,

Thank you for your email and for taking care of this so quickly: I greatly appreciate it.

Please note that all hyperlinks to your parked domains must be removed in order for you to have a natural flow of traffic to your parked domain names. If you are unable to remove these links, I would recommend removing them from Sedo parking as an alternative.

If you have any further questions please let me know. I will be happy to assist you.

Quality Management Team

My reply? I have removed them from Sedo Parking

Good Luck

L2"

So, are the other services really free? Yes to park your domain, but not to leave it parked! At WhyPark if you are able to use your own ad feed, you keep 100% of the earnings. If you use the WhyPark ad feed, you keep 60% of the earnings. What percent of earnings do you keep with the other services? I never knew, do you?

At WhyPark our primary goal is for our customers to be successful and then that will insure our long term success. The flexibility given to our customers between using their third party ad feeds or our feed is unique to WhyPark and is what will ultimately disrupt the entire domain parking industry.

WhyPark™ Reviews: Who Likes WhyPark?

2008-06-06T19:13:00.000-07:00

KillerStartups.com did a review on WhyPark this week and commented on why it might be a killer.....
"WhyPark has been online for close to 2 years and is breathing new life into a stale domain parking industry. The stats from their sites are untouched by traditional domain parking, with over 33% of visitors originating from organic search, a 20% return visitor rate and average visit length of over 1 minute. Traditional domain parking focuses on a one-time click event, whereas WhyPark focuses on long-term growth and domain development." KillerStartUp Review June 4, 2008

Back in January 2008, Joel Comm did a review of WhyPark titled WhyPark? Because it makes sense. The neatest part of the review is Joel took the time to make a video demonstration of WhyPark that is well worth watching.

Thanks Joel, your video demonstration of WhyPark is awesome. I hope many people take the time to watch.

DebtMom.com explores ways of getting out of debt by making money online, quickly. She tries out online income opportunities and passes along the information to you. In her own words "I won't sell you anything, but I will make recommendations when I think an opportunity is truly worthwhile. Thanks for checking out Debt Mom! Carrie."

Debt Mom WhyPark Review

I’m officially in love with WhyPark! I now have about 60 domain names listed on WhyPark. Each name has its own adsense channel so I can track its earnings, and I’ve submitted most of the names to search engines (free) using Search Engine Submit.

I haven’t done any marketing. Listing them on WhyPark and submitting to search has been the only time investment so far. I’m not supposed to give specific Adsense earnings, but like I said, on WhyPark it’s more than 4 times what Sedo was making. Whypark is a far better domain monetization system and it was more user friendly than Sedo.

In my experience, the CTR (click through rate) has been phenomenal. I have high-paying ads on my sites so it adds up fast. All in all WhyPark has exceeded my expectations. IMO, WhyPark kicks Sedo’s ass!

Thanks Carrie, you've said it better than I ever would! We appreciate you're endorsement.

Definition: WhyPark; noun, 1) A service to build websites visitors find engaging and useful. verb, 1) To monetize domains that do not monetize well with domain parking companies.

WhyPark and WhyPark.com are trademarks of WhyPark, LLC

Best Bulk Domain Name Suggestion Tool

2008-06-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

The NameTumbler by WhyPark is the best free bulk domain name suggestion tool that I have ever used. The really neat part is once a list of suggestions are made, you simply cut and paste up to 500 domains into the GoDaddy bulk look up and register the ones that are available.

The NameTumbler Tutorial shows just how easy the NameTumbler is to use. Watch how easily generic domains for the 50 different US State Brewers.com are looked up and registered through the GoDaddy Discount Domain Club.

By joining the GoDaddy Discount Domain Club you'll save 30% on your purchases with this tool and be able to buy .coms for only $6.85!. Don't worried about the top level domain extension because the tool works with .com, .net, .org, .info, .mobi, .biz, .us, .ws, .name and .asia.

I strongly recommend you view the 60 second tutorial before you start using the NameTumbler.

Definition: WhyPark; noun, 1) A service to build websites visitors find engaging and useful. verb, 1) To monetize domains that do not monetize well with domain parking companies.

WhyPark and WhyPark.com are trademarks of WhyPark, LLC

Gold Mine Link “This Site is For Sale”

2008-06-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

The gold mine link on my WhyPark sites has been the "This Site is For Sale" link in the navigation bar. Here is an example of one of my WhyPark sites, AgingList.com. "Aging List" is a term used in business that refers to a list that ages accounts receivable for a company.

By simply clicking "This Site is For Sale" a site visitor is presented with an attractive purchase inquiry form that forwards directly to my email so that I can establish contact and negotiate a sales price. Each month I get between six and ten purchase inquires resulting in two to three domain sales.

Two to three sales a month on average certainly helps make my domaining profitable. I've never paid more than $12 for any of my domains which are all two word brandable names and they're all offered for sale at $950. My sales always seem to be end users who find the domain name by typing a domain they would like into their browser to see if its available. By the very nature of how they found the site, each inquiry is a highly qualified lead. The closing selling price range for my domains are between $450 and $950, a price that end users find very reasonable.

Here are a few examples of domains that I have sold using leads WhyPark generated.

SpaceSlide.com
Sold to Space Slide a UK company that sells sliding doors

CivilTools.com
Sold to the architectural firm of Harper Houf Peterson and Righellis

ChinaQuake.com
Sold to Suicide.org to develop a website to aid victims of the recent earthquake in China

ListVine.com
Sold to a company which is developing a new site.

ParkingHub.com
Sold to a company which is developing a new site (hopefully not a competitor to WhyPark!)

I'll finish this post with a quote reprinted with permission from the buyer of ChinaQuake.com.

"Alan Macomber from WhyPark.com was extremely professional and helpful to Suicide.org during the aftermath of the China earthquake. He sold us an important domain associated with the quake at a reasonable price and got the domain to us quickly. The domain will allow us to reach more people, help more people, and honor more people who were affected by this horrible tragedy.

We strongly support WhyPark.com because their focus is not solely on making money, but running an ethical company that CARES about people and their clients. They are fantastic and we love them!"

Kevin Caruso

Suicide.org

Founder, Executive Director, Editor-in-Chief

Thanks Kevin, you were a pleasure to work with and I admire your passion to social good!

Definition: WhyPark; noun, 1) A service to build websites visitors find engaging and useful. verb, 1) To monetize domains that do not monetize well with domain parking companies.

Never Sell a Domain on April Fools Day

2008-06-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

My one word of advise is don't take the bait of an April fools day domain sales inquiry! On April 1st my wife duped me big time. I'm sitting in my office and in pops this email:

My Wife Masquerading as a Domain Buyer

Name: E.Michael Olmstead
Email: onlymysite(@)gmail(.)com
Phone:
Comments: Hi,
I was interested in this domain. I am willing to pay upto 20K, what's your bottom line(please be honest). I would need transfer ASAP. Please advise. Best regards Michael Olmstead

Dumb Husband Has Struck Gold

Hi Michael:

I will sell the domain for your quote of $20,000. I will pay the fees at escrow.com to do the transfer and we can start the transfer today.

My Wife Masquerading as a Domain Buyer

Alan,
thanks for the prompt reply. I know why I'm interested, and I can only suspect that with the popularity of personal type sites that others are also trying to get a piece of the "pie". I think this market is ripe and has so many possibilities.

I looked at escrow.com, and it looks legit. I've never used it and I don't have an account but is it like PAYPAL? what form of payments do you accept?

Best regards,
Michael

Dumb Husband Has Struck Gold

Hi Michael:

You should receive an email from escrow.com, I just started the escrow process. They accept many forms of payment. Please let me know if you have any problems.

I have the domain registered at godaddy.com. If you open up a free account at GoDaddy, I can move the domain instantly into your account after payment and then you can lock the domain. If you want to use another registrar I will give you the authorization codes to move the domain, but this could take a few days depending on how quickly your registrar works.

Kind Regards,
Alan

My Wife Masquerading as a Domain Buyer

Do you know what today is? GOTCHA....Kim!

Me, the dumb husband: Son of a F#%?k*$g B#$t@h, I can't believe how stupid I am! How would you feel when $20,000 goes up in smoke. Yeah I was got good!

Well I sadly go to escrow.com to cancel the transaction. The humiliating part of canceling the transaction was when I was prompted for a reason; My wife played an April Fools Day Joke on Me.

Well you think the family pranksters would stop there. Oh No! I have a laptop at home that I use to keep up with business in the evening.

Kim, my wife, and Courtney, my oldest daughter, put a cracked glass screen on my laptop and disabled the screen saver. After diner I went to use my laptop and went ballistic. Courtney had stayed home from school that day so I incorrectly figured she dropped my laptop. Then when my blood pressure was hitting 200 over 150 they both started laughing hysterically.

Boy, was I got good this April 1st. Payback will be soooooooooooo sweet!

Definition: WhyPark; noun, 1) A service to build websites visitors find engaging and useful. verb, 1) To monetize domains that do not monetize well with domain parking companies.

WhyPark™ Review: Show Me the Money

2008-05-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

How much money you can make with WhyPark can be positively affected by many variables. Small things like writing an article for distribution with a link to a site or adding custom content can increase traffic tremendously. But, I never took the time to do any of these steps.

From July 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007, a six month period, I had 94 domains active at WhyPark. I've sorted my top five domains by earnings, clicks and page impressions. This is a six month period, so annualized the data is multiplied by two.

When looking at these numbers please note, I've never spent much money buying my domains; just $7-$12 per domain by registering virgin domains, using the expired auction after market at TDName or bidding on eBay. I've built up a portfolio of brandable domains that I sell to end users. I just wanted WhyPark to off-set or pay for the annual domain renewal fees. Mission achieved.

Here is a summary of the top 5 domains where I've annualized the earnings.

Top Earning Domains 7/1 to 12/31/07 Annualized

Top 5 Total Earnings $305.36, $61.08/Domain

Domain	Page Impressions	Earnings
CivilTools.com	5,032	$146.00
DietSlide.com	4,788	$70.68
PoloCult.com	1,716	$33.66
DeliMaster.com	582	$29.38
WeeArt.com	1,618	$25.44

Top Clicks 7/1 to 12/31/07 Annualized

Top 5 "Clicks" Earnings $294.64, $58.92/Domain

Domain	Clicks	Earnings
CivilTools.com	736	$146.00
DietSlide.com	412	$70.68
WeeArt.com	232	$25.44
PoloCult.com	231	$33.66
BibleBees.com	121	$18.64

Top Impressions 7/1 to 12/31/07 Annualized

Top 5 Total Earnings $275.38, $55.16/Domain

Domain	Page Impressions	Earnings
CivilTools.com	5,032	$146.00
DietSlide.com	4,788	$70.68
BibleBees.com	2,306	$18.64
SinFamily.com	1876	$6.70
PoloCult.com	1,716	$33.66

So now what about the bottom 5 domains. Well let's just say domain earnings look better when you use averages! The 94 domains received 42,108 page impressions, 3,350 clicks and earnings of $1,228.24; not bad for a bunch of domains with virtually no type in traffic. These are domains that earned between next to nothing and nothing at Sedo.

I approached Craig, WhyPark's President, to make an investment in WhyPark solely based on my results. Let's see, I spent $100 and I earned $1200. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that WhyPark's approach to monetizing domains is going to be disruptive to the domain parking industry. I'd suggest at $100 per 100 domains that you snap-up whatever blocks you need before any annual subscription is put in place. It would be hard not to grandfather the early adopters who have helped make WhyPark a great service!

Before I made my angel investment in WhyPark I asked a bunch of friends, unaware of the domain industry, to review my WhyPark sites and offer their criticism. The feedback was all positive, each felt the sites offered useful information and they never would consider the sites as a page of links. Basically they were saying the sites offered a good user experience, one of the tests Google uses to judge a website.

Here is an example of one of my WhyPark sites, AgingList.com. "Aging List" is a term used in business that refers to a list that ages accounts receivable for a company. I themed the site as a way for businesses to raise money fast by using factors or financial service companies who will buy these business debts.

Definition: WhyPark; noun, 1) A service to build websites visitors find engaging and useful. verb, 2) To monetize domains that do not monetize well with domain parking companies.

WhyPark and WhyPark.com are trademarks of WhyPark, LLC

WhyPark™ Information: Ask at the Forum

2008-05-22T21:15:00.000-07:00

I stepped into two domain name forum discussions this past weekend and figured I'd see if I could address questions about WhyPark directly. I'm off schedule from the twelve posts that I originally planned, but I wanted to point out these two forum threads which I will monitor and add input about WhyPark.

NamePros.com WhyPark review thread I made my virgin post on NamePros and was pleasantly surprised with the welcome I received. I had been there before when I did research on WhyPark before I spent my first $100, but at the time there was very little information. Now there is quite a bit of information about WhyPark. Most of the commentary about WhyPark on this forum is pretty much on target and makes for a good read if your considering a WhyPark subscription.

There was a lot of discussion about Adsense not serving ads to some WhyPark sites, including mine. It seems like it was rather random and some WhyPark customers are still receiving Adsense ads. As an alternative a WhyPark ad feed has been developed and is almost ready to come out of beta testing. I've had 304 domains in the beta test; some clicks have been .01 and the highest has been 1.35. This is comparable to the click amounts from last year at this time with Adsense.

Here's a quote from the DNforum thread from FAB, who confirms what I'm experiencing from the beta test. "WhyPark recently set up there own ad network, which is still in Beta, and they are paying presently 100% income for all the testers. In any case, I am making a considerable bit more with them, then I am with Google and Adbrite."

There's been a lot of A - B testing going on with the WhyPark ad feed and that's why there's been a lot of variability on the PPC and the CTR. I definitely see more relevant ads some days than other days and it definitely shows up in the CTR. I can't disclose the ad sources, notice plural, but some are much better than others. At the end of the beta testing we should end up with highly optimized ad feed. WhyPark hosted domains are generating an increasing amount of traffic each week and as we meet certain thresholds, more ad feeds become available to us.

The agreement we signed with ClickForensics is a statement to the suppliers of the ad feeds that we don't want click fraud on WhyPark sites. It's a pretty neat service that identifies invalid and fraudulent clicks to make sure quality traffic is delivered to a paying advertiser.

I make kids clothes for a living so I modified this quote from the Godfather to fit this post, "when I get tired of my wife, Corky and Company, I spend time with my mistress, WhyPark." It's time for me to get back to my wife.

Definition: WhyPark; noun, 1) A service to build websites visitors find engaging and useful. verb, 1) To monetize domains that do not monetize well with domain parking companies.

WhyPark and WhyPark.com are trademarks of WhyPark, LLC

Why WhyPark™? It’s all About Results.

2008-05-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

I wrote this post a few weeks ago when I was at my apparel factory in the village of San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic coordinating back to school fashion programs. I go there about every six weeks, stay at a luxury $29 a night hotel with no hot water or internet connection and 24 hour security guards carrying shotguns.

I have a Google blog alert set for “WhyPark”, “WhyPark.com” and “Alan Macomber.” Between meetings I took a causal look at my Google Reader and saw the alert subscriptions were brimming with posts about my investment in WhyPark. That afternoon, I thought I should start a blog to explain why I made an investment and show you the results I’ve achieved with WhyPark.

This blog will have a short life; once I’ve told my story, I’d rather get back to running my other businesses and offering assistance to help Craig guide WhyPark to become a great tool for domain investors. Even though I’m an investor in WhyPark, I’ll try my hardest to provide an unbiased and balanced review.

I’ll be as forthcoming as legally allowed and give you an honest WhyPark review. I’ll show screen shots from my Google Adsense (Unfortunately I deleted all my channel data a few weeks back) and Analytics accounts, emails to document site sales if the other party gives me permission and screen shots of my earnings with the WhyPark ad feed. This is not an WhyPark affiliate blog, I personally will not bid on Google Adwords or pay for any links. It’s just me talking with anybody that wants to learn how you can benefit from WhyPark.

I’ll be working on the list of posts below.

1. WhyPark Review: Show Me the Money
2. The Gold Mine Link “This Site is For Sale”
3. Never Sell a Domain on April Fools Day
4. WhyPark: Organic Search Traffic
5. WhyPark Reviews: Who Likes WhyPark?
6. $100 When the Other Guys Are Free
7. Affiliate Widgets to Replace Stock Photos
8. Due diligence on Domain Black Monday
9. Why Information: Ask at the Forums
10. A Cold Winter. What Sealed the Deal?
11. Best Bulk Domain Suggestion Tool
12. Quest for a Great Internet User Experience
13. Post 13, Never! Let’s not Tempt Fate.

In some ways I feel like the guy in the old Remington shaver commercial. “I liked the product so much I bought the company.” If you’re under 35 you won’t get the joke, but for the salt and pepper, balding and slightly out of shape crowd you remember the days. That commercial was played relentlessly, and we had no Tivo to blow through it or a remote to change the channel.

Definition: WhyPark; noun, 1) A service to build websites visitors find engaging and useful. verb, 1) To monetize domains that do not monetize well with domain parking companies.

Want to know more about me. Visit my LinkedIn profile.

WhyPark and WhyPark.com are trademarks of WhyPark, LLC