Do you test your domains? On the surface a simple question, but I’ve been amazed over my years in the domain industry at some of the reactions and answers I receive to it. Often people get a look of disgust on their face as if I’d just said something vulgar and tell me that parking company X is the best and they have no need to test their domains elsewhere, or maybe they tested in the past with poor results and have no desire to test again.
In an industry that is so number and analytics driven, I find this difficult to understand. Perhaps it’s because I came into the industry with a marketing background and from early on, testing was just a part of the way we did things. Small or large something was picked to be tested no matter how good what we already had was working.
When I came into the industry more than seven years ago, parking payouts were high and it seemed even the worst portfolio could still make money hand over fist so of course testing was an afterthought for many people because they were happy. But then things changed and revenues dropped dramatically. Still, many domain investors are resistant to change and refuse to test.
On the one hand, this is understandable. Testing involves risk. You can lose money testing domains at different parking companies. Testing can also be time consuming. Typically you have to point all your domains to one parking company for a period of time, download the stats, test them elsewhere, download the stats, merge them and compare. Meanwhile you’re hoping the stats you’ve pulled are all pulled in the same way on the same factors so that you’re comparing apples to apples, most often though it’s apples to oranges.
But on the other hand, regardless of what they say, not a single parking company monetizes 100% of the domains they manage the best. While a domain may do similarly at multiple companies, when you find the one it does best at, the difference can be huge. I saw it happen again and again with the portfolios I managed. A domain might make pennies every day at companies A, B and C, but suddenly at company D it would earn $5 a day. In particular we had a domain that earned back what we had purchased it for as part of a portfolio in one day and went on to earn as high as $300 a month whereas it previously earned less than ten cents a month. This might seem like a drastic example, but I see instances like this all the time.
Of course some domains may already be performing the best where they currently are, but what about those that aren’t? This is where substantial gains can be made to your parking revenues. And the best part is that with the Above.com platform, the risks inherent in testing are minimized as only a small percent of any domains traffic is sent to other parking services to compare results. If it performs better then more traffic is sent and tested again and again. So with the Above Parking manager, testing is easier to achieve, less time consuming and less risky.
When the parking revenues first dropped dramatically, I heard of portfolio owners who lost as much as 95% of their revenue. In the case of the portfolio I managed at the time, I can say with full confidence that without testing, our portfolio also would have suffered more than it did. While we were impacted as well, testing and utilizing multiple parking companies minimized it and we lost much less than we would have if we would have only been with one company.
Each of the parking companies has their strengths and weaknesses. Hunches and relationships are good and an important part of the process, but if numbers aren’t driving you, you’re leaving money on the table.
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