Millions of domains are parked at such places as Fabulous, Sedo, or Parked.  These domains are undeveloped with many waiting for high-end buyers willing to pay top dollar.  Parking pages can generate a great deal of income for the domain owner.  How it works and what the effects on the internet are todays topic.

I have not found the exact origins of parking or what the very first company was but parking was born from the need of early domainers that were grabbing up hundreds and thousands of dropped domains.  Dropped domains are ones that have expired and while being released into the registry they are picked up very quickly.  The drop market is very lucritive and I will save some of that discussion for another post.

Domainers started to gather hundreds and thousands of domains.  Finding ways to monetize them was a real challenge.  The possibility of maintaining them all as website wasn’t viable.  The idea of letting them sit and not making any money was near sickening.  It was easy to see all the traffic on some domains as people were typing in generic keywords and terms directly into the navigation bar.  So the trick was to minimize effort and maximize profits.  PPC was a growing segment with Google Adsense leading the way. Parking was born.

In it’s essence parking domains is similar to parking your car. You drive it up to the valet and go to the movies while your car just sits around waiting for your return.   A domain owner only needs to create an account at any number of parking companies and then redirect their DNS to them. The rest is normally handled by them.  You do nothing but collect a percentage of revenue.  How much revenue is split from parking company and domain holder varies greatly but some payout as much as 100% (Bodis) and some as low as single digits.

Most professional domainers deep into parking will expend some time into research and finding great keywords or landing pages.  Keywords are the special words they will associate with the advertising.  An example would be superhost.com and using the keyword “hosting“.  This will pull information from a feed.  A feed is provided by the parking companies advertisers based on a number of factors but the set keyword is the main factor.  Now when you view superhost.com you will get ads based on hosting.  They will be relevent results that will attract a click-thru and both parking company and domain owner will get paid.  Somewhere an advertiser has just helped destroy a good domain.

If you have a negative vibe about my attitude with parking you’re right.   I do have serious reservations about the viability and the need for parking pages.  I have concluded that the negative effects of parking are greater than the positives.

First let’s peek at why parking is good.  Domain owners without an ability to develop quickly have a simple and direct method to advertise.   It’s simple and easy.  Parking pages can benefit surfers by redirecting via the ads to relevent results.  Advertisers have an effective method to reach end-users.

But what’s wrong with all that?  The problem is the same as any undeveloped item.  It will never prosper. Domains and the URL system were not created to be monetized in this way.  Surfers are often given a very generic unappealing web page that in-short are just ads.  It’s trickery.  Surfers are unaware they are giving money to the domain owner by clicking what appears to be a link to a relevent page.  Lastly parked domains are often very good domains that if developed would serve the greater good.

This is why parked pages are like billboards on the highway.  They are nothing but ads as you drive on by.  Inherently there is nothing wrong with that but imagine if you will any prime location being used this way.   It is stagnant. It’s ugly.  There is never an opportunity for development to the average joe.  Any highway property is usually worth a great deal.  The most minimal usage for any property is parking or advertising.  Domainers have found a way to do both on the internet. The experience of the internet is greatly diminished by not allowing great keyword domains that obtain amazing traffic to be developed.  Even domainers that park realize development unlocks the greater potential but for the most part but they can’t realize that potential themselves and expect a bounty of sorts to pass on the domain.

We live in a society of capitalists.  There is greed all around us everyday.  The internet for some years felt different. It was a place where the average joe could make a living and start something creative. Now all the good domains are taken and a great portion of them by domainers with no intention of ever developing.  That is a shame.

Parking companies have experienced a decline in recent years as the economy has slipped.  Some are already fearful that parking is near an end as they have minimal leverage with their feed providers to increase revenue for them.  In fact it’s worse than that.  Google is wise enough to know that the lazy parking crowd isn’t going anywhere and they are in a position to have no choice but take cuts in revenue.  Unlike developers that can choose different methods of income the parking domainer has no choices.  Even if moving to different parking companies most use the same feeds.  The only major differences are the landing pages.

There is a sense of a shakedown in the domainer community.  The top echelon of domainers have become rather quiet lately.  Some have stopped blogging completely stating they are short of time and need to focus.  Is there an underlying message that they are losing revenue?  That’s for you to decide.  Next time you visit a parked page.  Don’t click anything except the close browser window button.  Otherwise you’re helping to feed this machine that is threatening to destroy the potential of the internet.

Recently over at Namepros there was this discussion about the dot coms vs other TLDs.  Much of the discussion was based on the effects of the new policy by ICANN to lower it’s standards for accepting new TLDs.  Previously it was a rigorous process often resulting in years of paperwork and ultimately many were turned down including the controversial dot xxx.

Here was one persons comment:

Think of the web as a big country. Around the country various cities & towns have sprung up. One of the first was the city of COM. Lovely place, one of the oldest cities & people & businesses starting moving in years ago.

As time went on the city started to get pretty crowded especially around the city centre where the first and best houses & commercial premises were leased out. This demand put pressure on supply so that the cost of living and doing business in this dress circle area became higher & higher so people looked for more affordable areas within COM.

Now let’s take one of the most sought after pieces of real estate in the world. MANHATTAN. Anyone from NYC will now agree with me that he is 100% wrong with his analogy.  People can live 30 minutes away and pay a lot less and have more space. Instead they pay the premium to live in the city. The prices in Manhattan have skyrocketed.  Even in today’s market the real estate there fetches a very high premium.

Let’s take another real world example by using historical data on exactly what has happened with the introduction of new TLD’s.

Since the release of every TLD how has CNO actually done? Suprisingly well. I am sure 8 years ago people thought info would take a chunk away. Then came even more extensions. What has changed? Now they want unlimited extensions! So what. There is nothing to indicate COM will falter because of new extensions no matter what the extension is. The only way CNO’s will get hurt if a new method is used instead of URLs.

Here are the only stats I could find at the time of this writing.  If anyone can find better ones please let me know.

http://www.hosterstats.com/

COM Jan 2004 = 25,999,725
NET Jan 2004 = 4,315,306
ORG Jan 2004 = 2,760,196
INFO Jan 2004 = 1,083,688
BIZ Jan 2004 = 912,827

COM Jan 2008 = 71,533,589
NET Jan 2008 = 10,634,627
ORG Jan 2008 = 6,373,060
INFO Jan 2008 = 4,945,475
BIZ Jan 2008 = 1,901,814

Growth Percentages
====================
COM = 275%
NET = 246%
ORG = 230%
INFO = 456%
BIZ = 208%

INFO stats look good except for one thing. The INFO entry cost is extremely low. Also for 4 out of the last 6 months the amount of deletions are greater than the amount of registrations. As you can see on the chart I created that as you extend further away from COM the less percentage of registrations. It’s a nice pyramid imho. We don’t have enough information about MOBI to include it. At these continued rate of increases you should easily see the pattern that COM is going to continue being dominant as it has in the past.

Most of you are reading this tutorial because you are hosting a site or doing something else which involves access onto a web disk and you have no idea of what to do. But don’t fret! I will guide you through the process of uploading files onto that web disk.

Requirements:
FTP program (more about this later on)
Web Host
Some files you want to upload

This is fairly simple and there are not many necessary components to uploading via FTP. Let’s first begin with your options.

FTP Programs connects your computer to a network disk or drive in which you may upload files there. There are also a variety of FTP programs that you may use as well. If you have Dreamweaver they have a separate guide as to how to use their FTP.
The most commonly used and among the most popular is File Zilla. You can find it here: http://filezilla-project.org/ its open sourced and free as well. You can get it for all platforms and operating systems too. Download the File Zilla Client for all platforms. Run that and install it as you would for any other program. There is NO viruses at all if you download from http://filezilla-project.org/ and this statement can be authenticated by a few ten to hundred thousand people who use this tool.

On the top of the File Zilla manager there is a text box for Host, Username, Password, and Port number. The host should be your site url. It does not include the http://www. part. Just the site and the .com part.
Sometimes webhosts specify a IP address, if that is the case then enter that set of number along with the dots into that area. The Username and Password should be provided by your webhost. The port number is usually 21 but in the case that you do not know, simply don’t enter it, because File Zilla will detect it automatically. Finally press quick connects and you are in.
In order to upload to a server, navigate to the correct folder in which you want the file to appear in and then navigate to where the file exists on your computer. The left navigation is by default your computer and the navigation on the right is your ftp server files. Right click on the file and press upload.
In some cases if you want to upload more than one file you may left click and drag a blue box across the files you want to upload and then right click them to upload.
Also remember that your webhost may specify a log out time after you have been idle for several minutes or so. This is a security measure and very important to protect against people who want to harm their servers. There are many other security measures such as only allowing you to upload around lets say 10 megabytes of data onto their server for around 5 minutes for one IP address at a time. Or in other cases they may specify that you can only upload a file that is less than the size of X megabytes. These are all security measures taken against hackers and users who want to abuse and crash their servers. You may ask your Web Master to change these settings so that you may upload a larger file. Otherwise there is no way to disable this, even using FTP programs. Any other methods would be deemed illegal.

As for other FTP programs the procedure may vary but they will always ask for the same details of Host, Username, and Password.

Filezilla Left to Right Support

If your webhost has Cpanel installed onto it then that opens up many more alternatives as to uploading files. Cpanel comes with its own file manager and a nifty video tutorial of that. They also give you the option of accessing your web disk via your computer as if it was simply any folder on your computer. I have used this in the past and found it very fast and reliable. First click start, and then navigate to My Computer or Computer. (I am currently on a Vista Computer and it’s on the left hand side) On the top of network you should see a bar which says: “Map Network Drive” or something similar to that. Click it. There should be a popup. On the bottom it should say: “Connect to a website that you can use to store your documents and pictures”. Click that. Then choose a custom network location. This would be the FTP part. Hit next and then it should ask you for the location of that network. It gives you a few examples. Its usually, ftp://ftp.yoursite.com and that ought to work fine. Then it asks you if you want to log on with a username or anonymously. You MUST uncheck anonymous and type in your ftp username that was provided to you by your webhost. Finally when you open your new network folder it should prompt you for your password. Type in your password. You can save your password if you are going to access it frequently or it’s a private computer in which no one else has access to.

That is basically how to work a FTP program and upload files. You may tweak and set your ftp to your settings to make it connect automatically or so. However you must be warned that once a file is deleted, it cannot be recovered. This is not your ordinary desktop with the trash bin on it. Once deleted it’s gone. So usually first thing I do is create a back up of everything before I upload and delete.

As a stay at home dad it’s at times very boring.  I have done so many things in life and I realize I have never been a drunk.  I have at times been close.  It’s an achievement that has seemed elusive.  There was always more pressing matters like responsibilities of a job or my previous business in New York City.

So how do I start?  Do I just get drunk as frequently as I can?  Do I start drinking for breakfast?  Lately I been into bloody mary’s and boy those are good. Nice and spicy with that nice vegetabe tomato taste.  I really love them.  I am also a fan of Gin and Tonic which I have been steadily drinking for over a decade. It’s what I consider my fallback drink.  Pretty hard to screw it up at just about any establishment.  My preference is Bombay Sapphire gin.

Doesn't that gin look tasty?

I do drink plenty of beer as well.   I used to be a big fan of imported brews like Amstel Light.  However when I moved to Las Vegas somehow it tasted different.  I suspect all the travel the bottles do changes somehow the flavor.  Just a suspicion but I could totally be wrong.  When I arrived the selection was very domestic and there aren’t too many microbrewery’s like NYC.  So I have lowered the quality and was drinking Bud Light. Yes I realize how low-brow that might seem to you.  I tend to agree.  Oddly now that Budweiser has been sold to a European company does that make Budweiser an imported beer?  I do like the new Bud Light Lime.  It’s not bad at all.  But currently my favorite suds of choice is Coors Light.  I blame a local pub for having the coldest damn beer on tap I have ever had.  Makes the beer just so much better. It’s actually frozen a bit on the top when you get it.  It’s simply awesome.  So many bars just don’t have their kegs cold enough and well, I am not from England so warm beer tastes like piss to me.

So back to my original thought.  How do I become an alcoholic?  You have to be thinking “why would you want that?” and well it’s just a simple answer.  I am bored and I like to experience new things.

Today is the day Google has officially released the Chrome beta. If you haven’t heard Google has decided to enter the browser wars. It’s about time too. Internet Explorer still holds a vast majority of the market share with about 75% while Firefox has 20% and the rest share the remainder.

I personally use Opera and have for many years now. I would love to espouse the greatness of Opera to you but this post is about Chrome.

My first impression was that it’s fast. It’s actually VERY fast. The program does open quickly on my Windows XP SP2. It has tabs which some believe to be originated with Firefox but reality is that Opera has had tabs since version 4. The tabs are on the top and so is a basic set of controls. Overall the designs is simple and it’s actually appealing. There isn’t much to annoy you. One shortfall is extremely limited options. One can’t tell if that’s because this is beta or if Google intends to make this browser simple and effective.

As expected the browser works very well with Gmail and other Google applications. This is sometimes a shortfall for other browsers as many sites write javascript or other specific code to detect Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Another relatively nice feature is a speed dial similar to Opera’s except that the Chrome one detects your favorite pages automatically and adds them. I find that pretty dang convenient. There is also the memory password saver which no browser is complete without one nowadays. A downloads and history section also exist but at the time of this writing it’s not tested.

One thing I did test was memory usage of Chrome. Below is a screenshot of my results. You can do a similar test yourself by opening up all your browsers with the same sites then in Chrome address bar type “about:memory” which will bring up your computers memory usage. Rather handy feature. As you can see from my image. Opera is the least user of ram and keep in mind Opera has a full email client, torrent client, download manager, and irc client.

Overall I am pleased with Chrome especially as a first day release beta. It’s small, sleek, and fast. It will be a great compliment browser to anyone that surfs. I use multiple browsers quite often just to test and now I have a new one added to my arsenal. Congrats to Google on a fine showing.

You can download Chrome here:  http://www.google.com/chrome

Rumors are flying about that Google does plan to release a browser shortly. One that will directly compete against it’s long-term partner the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox).  The first news outlet was actually Google itself in their Google Blog.  There are now some screenshots available which display a rather simple browser.

Google Chrome Screenshot

I am looking forward to the release and I anticipate a long-term successful project by Google to enter the browser market.  It’s an evolution that makes perfectly good sense in todays marketplace.

http://www.dnjournal.com/newsletters/2008/august.htm

Go ahead and give that page a read then come back to read this article as my response.

I read the article by Duke and it’s fantastic as usual. It highlights perfectly the problems of “domaining” and that is development. Not one word about development from Schwartz. Here is a guy that’s top 10 in our industry. A leader and a showman. Yet in his big speech makes no mention of adding value to domains. As long as guys like that continue to simply park or sell I believe domaining will have a bad reputation.

He mentions a lot about PPC but in reality he is talking about parking. Google won’t kill PPC for sites….but they can easily strangle parking companies. The internet wasn’t built nor has perpetuated based on landing pages to actual legit content sites. Parking companies are just unnecessary middle men that provide a minimal service. They are the pizza delivery boys of the industry. They should not be paid well for their low positions on the ladder of the internet.

While I fully believe domains inherently intrinsic value I do not believe that value should be related to parking PPC. It should be directly related to development potential. Natural traffic is excellent and usable but it’s goal should be content.