What Is Wrong with Sedo Domain Parking Program?

Or maybe it is better to ask "Is there something that is not wrong?".

Well, to start with I still have some domain names parked at Sedo but they are quite fewer in number than they've used to be. If you've noticed that there are many people like me recently and you've been wondering "Why does this happen?", below are a few reasons to consider.

Maybe, the most important reason is that the revenue has been going downward steadily during the last couple of years. No matter what I've tried with my domains the earnings has been going down and down in middle and long terms.

The most annoying reason probably is that apart from the overall trend of downwardness there are some unexplainable high revenue peaks per domain over the time lasting for several days and magically disappearing after that. Maybe, these peaks are only some kind of bait for domainers so they keep their domain names parked with Sedo...

The most "boring" reason should be that you have to experiment and change your keywords constantly in order to have at least the smallest chance to preserve you pay per click at a decent level. Sedo is trying to tell me that the PPC for "mortgage refinancing" is rather high for let's say ten days and after that nobody bids on that keyword... Well, I just don't believe it.

The "official robbery" reason is that Sedo pays you only for the first click if a user clicks more than once on the ads displayed on your parked page. The "motive" is that “Sedo pays more for that one click”. Do you really believe it? I do not. I even think that Sedo pays you for only one click per user across your whole domain portfolio parked with them and they keep the rest of the revenue for themselves.

The "amateurish" reason is that their support and PR people spread over domain forums react very unprofessional and they rarely answer to the real questions asked. Instead, they are just permanently trying to bullshit the domainers with pseudo explanations and cheap PR tricks.

The "foolish" reason is that they approve your keywords in a very stupid way. Not only that you should optimize the keywords over and over again (in order to get a better PPC, according to Sedo) but often you are waiting several days to get an approval for the changed keywords. The most ridiculous thing here is that instead of making a list of already approved keywords for each domain, they are going through the same approval process for same keywords and domain endlessly.

Other more "ordinary" reasons to leave Sedo are that their templates are worse than the ones of many other domain parking programs; there're also a lot of other parking providers that are paying more than Sedo. And even for the European and Asian domain names Sedo has been left behind NameDrive domain parking recently.

So, personally I've found a good list of reasons to move my names to other domain parking services. Just to give Sedo some pro's maybe one of the last fair reasons for someone to use them is that they do not require a domain portfolio in order to approve you for their regular parking program. They are good for starters but I would prefer Namedrive at least for their better support. And another advantage of Sedo is that their domain parking program is integrated with their really big domain aftermarket.

At the end, it's your decision where to park (or not park) your domain names. I just hope I've been helpful a little bit and if somebody has anything to add to this article you're welcome to post a comment on it.

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NameDrive.com Domain Parking - Park Domain Names at Namedrive for Free

What is domain parking?

In just a few words, domain parking is a service that provides you with the opportunity to make some money from your unused (undeveloped) domain names. If you have domains that you haven't developed and if it is possible that these names get some natural type-in traffic, it is almost mandatory to park these domain names "somewhere". A parking provider generates dynamic pages full of ads which are shown when somebody types in your domain name in a browser. If somebody clicks on any of the ads displayed on the generated page for your domain you get a small amount of money for that click. There are people out there that are making thousands of dollars daily using such kind of services. While you cannot expect to be amongst these people since the beginning you should start from somewhere and try to squeeze the most of your domain names. One of the popular domain parking programs is NameDrive.

Why NameDrive?

To start with, the registration at NameDrive.com is very simple and intuitive. There is no approval process and the sign-up is practically immediate (this is not valid for most of the other domain name parking providers). The service is free and there is no requirement for a minimum number of domain names or for their quality. There are almost not any restrictions on the names - you may park adult or gambling names but you cannot park some kind of typos (for example "google" ones). No tax information is required and you may specify your payment preferences at a later stage, long after the sign up process has been finished.

Another positive side of NameDrive is the customization of the pages and keywords. You can choose among lots of page templates, you can select a category and a subcategory with related links for your domain and you can choose a picture for the template. You may also provide your own keywords and they are approved quite faster compared to Sedo for example. You may even customize your dynamically generated pages with different parameters for the variety of world regions.

Even a bigger plus for NameDrive is that European and Asian domain names perform well at it. The main competitor of NameDrive in this field is Sedo but to be honest lately I have not been satisfied with Sedo.com at all and I've moved almost all of my European domain names to NameDrive.com. Having in mind that the rest of domain parking programs are targeted at American traffic mainly, NameDrive has a big advantage for non-American names.

NameDrive reports your real earnings with an up to 48 hours of delay. Initially some estimated values are displayed while waiting for NameDrive’s advertising partners (Google's Adsense feed, for example) to report the real earnings. Once they get that report the real earnings are shown – at the end, you might have earned more or less than the initial estimated values but at least you know what is you real revenue achievement instead of getting some random values as it is at Sedo.

Some further pros are that you have the possibility to see how your pages will look in different countries/languages and that you may also generate different kinds of reports in order to make tracking of the stats more convenient for you. You may also group domains in categories/folders.

NameDrive provides some other services useful for domainers as well (for example, to put your domains in an auction and try to sell them). These options are not discussed here but you can check them easily by yourself at NameDrive.com site. I hope this review has been helpful for you but if you have any further questions just put them as a comment below and I’ll try to answer them.

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Head above Water (1996): Is the Movie above Water Too?

While it is easy to understand why Cameron Diaz would participate in a movie like Head above Water at the dawn of her career, it is not so easy to explain what Harvey Keitel is doing there. Because Head above Water is not a good film. It's boring, alienated and even predictable despite its numerous twists. It's a decent movie to watch on the TV but it's hardly a deserving feature to see in a movie theater.

The 3rd effort of Jim Wilson as director sports a small cast: the complete credited cast consists only of 5 actors. And while there are great movies with even smaller number of people participating in them, it is not the case here. The movie is about Nathalie (Cameron Diaz), an ex-drug addict and his husband George (Harvey Keitel), a famous and respected judge. They are on vacation at her summer house on an island where also lives Nathalie's childhood friend Lance (Craig Sheffer) who is not indifferent to Nathalie either. Suddenly, Nathalie's ex-lover Kent (Billy Zane) arrives while George and Lance are on a fishing trip and after some obscure circumstances, Kent turns out to be naked and dead in Nathalie's bed on the next morning and at the same time her husband and friend return from their trip. A series of messy events begins and everything becomes just more complicated and confusing towards the end of the movie. Thankfully, the number of characters and thus also the relationships between them decrease progressively so at least this is a relief.

The movie is billed as comedy / thriller and while it is a thriller, it can hardly be called a comedy, even a dark one. There are only occasional funny moments and even the funniest parts are mainly in the vein of weaker dark comedies. Head above Water tries to set several records: for a number of times a woman sets her free from fastening in a single movie; for the greatest number of lame fastenings; and maybe it also aims at the record for most unconvincing twists. That the film is not amongst the most believable ones should have become already well visible.

The acting is not necessarily bad although there is not much room for showing incredible acting abilities in Head above Water. Harvey Keitel has had definitely better roles and Cameron Diaz is not as beautiful as in other movies. Billy Zane's short screen appearance is also not among his most memorable performances. The direction is decent although far from perfect and the screenplay could be much more interesting and feasible.

If you catch Head above Water accidentally on the television and you don't have anything better to do, you can watch it. But then again, think how to avoid situations like this. Watching a second grade movie should not be your best occupation at any time.

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