faq - TenGear.com

Ten Gear shows advertisements on your Domain which are relevant to the Keywords and page content. The content drives the Keywords, and the search engines look at the page as a whole and like to a see a content to Keyword ratio of around 10%. The links that are shown depends on an internal ranking system which is automatically analyzed and adjusted. All of the advertisements, links, content and feeds on your parked page are not static and are updated on a weekly to daily schedule so that visitors and search engines don't always see the same page, but are offered a wide range of options. This make your page fresh and will allow you to get ranked higher in the search engines and you will have more of a chance for repeat end users to your site.

2) CPC (Click price / click revenue)

If a user is looking for "any type of information" and lands on your parked Domain, they will find a variety of ads relevant to the information they are looking for. The CPC that is paid out by an advertiser is established much like in an auction � the more advertisers there are that want to place ads for a certain Keyword, the higher the click price and, as a result, the higher the Domain parker's revenue. Every time one of the links is clicked, the Domain owner earns money. With Ten Gear, we search for the hot Keywords and topics and add that type of information to your site on a daily / weekly basis. With our new version 2 software this will happen on an hourly basis. So your site will target the higher paid click Keywords.

This now raises the next question: which Keyword has the highest CPC? This is entirely dependant on the advertiser. It is generally the case that advertisements in areas such as "insurance" and "data recovery" have higher CPCs than other sectors. There is, according to some other parking companies, no point in just selecting the Keyword "insurance" or "data recovery" if the Domain name is "snorkeling.com" as people who are really looking for a snorkeling named site are not going to have any incentive to click on insurance ads and will leave the site immediately without clicking which means $0.00 revenue for the Domain owner. We totally disagree with the position. Why? When you search the internet and do a search, do you look at the domain the page is on or the Keyword based top link for the site. If you click on the link, and it has relative information based on what you are looking for, are you going to care about the Domain name of the site? I don't think so. With our software you will have subpages under your Domain name that is relevant to what the end user is looking for. The highest CPC is also dependant on the market and the advertisers who pay for the links. Our software evaluates the market and adjusts your site accordingly.

3) Parking program vs. Partnership program

Some customers may think "Why should I park my Domains if I can simply set up a partnership program on my page?" One of the features of the partnership program is that you only earns money if a end user which you has referred to the partner makes an order. We have had test sites using this method and we can't get higher ranking in the search engines because the pages are pointing to the partner site, which raises their backlinking rank but does nothing for you unless you advertise your site which kinda defeats the purpose. Because now you are competing against the other sites like you who are bidding for those Keywords. Plus the route from a end user viewing a page to ordering a service or product is significantly longer than the route from viewing a page and clicking on an ad. Plus they can also bypass your affiliate id unless you use a service like our sister company WUZClub.com's Affiliate ID Protection As 99% of the viewers on parked pages are people who stumble upon the page randomly, they are much more likely to click on a relevant advertisement than to back up and re-look for what they are looking for.

When should I use Partnership programs?

We recommend it would be best for them to first park your Domain(s) and to possibly consider using the partner program once your Domain has high traffic (more than 3000 visitors per month). Then you should be able to select a program that will allow for you to fully private label their site so all your pages look like your pages:
http://Your_Domain_Name.com
not
http://Their_Domain_Name.com/index.php?id=Your_Affiliate_ID
That will ruin any hopes of decent page rankings or getting very high in to the search engines.

Do I ever have to pay for parking?

No, parking is absolutely free of charge. The revenue generated from parking is paid by advertisers shown on your landing page. The revenue is divided between Ten Gear and you.

When do I get my parking revenue?

You get it everyday because you use your advertiser ID's. We don't run all the advertising on the site. We could probably make more money off the interest of holding your money for 15 days or longer like other companies probably do, but we don't want to deal with the accounting. We would rather our spend the time and money developing new products and updates rather to spend it on accountants and customer service / billing people.

What advertisers should I run on my sites?

We recommend Google, Linkshare and Amazon for advertising. Google is easy to setup and we have a script that will link to Amazon and change on the fly based on the page content. With Linkshare you will need to get an account and then run an ad server program like PHPAdsNew to be able to run ad off our dynamic pages. If you don't want to deal with setting it up and running and ad server our sister company FunToNetwork.com has an advertising program where they can set it up, run and maintain it for you, for a reasonable setup fee.

What about Commission Junction?

We have used Commission Junction for six years and just recently dropped them. Due to our accounts getting shut for no apparent reason other than not logging in every week and we losing all our commissions with no warning or notification and the ads still running on our pages. This is a real pain. Once I setup accounts and the ads I want to use, I don't need to go in there unless I need to add or remove an ad. I'd rather spend time marketing my site than to have to login at CJ just to login. Plus we rarely get an answer from them, and when we do, they can't tell us when they are going to fix the problem. For example, they came up with a section called "Smart Links", however they weren't so smart. In theory is is a great idea, it will maintain and rotate through the ads you pick, saving you from running an ad server. But... as soon as you add a new ad to the group the smart link it deleted the others. It did work for about a week. So when pressed when it was going to be fixed they had no real answer. 5 months later it was still not working. And I'm still waiting for an answer to my last email sent over 6 months ago. Their back end is clunky and takes forever to load even on a fast connection. So we don't recommend them at all. We have been with Linkshare before Commission Junction and we still have the same accounts we started with over six years ago.

Why is there no point in using a Keyword which is completely different to the name of my parked Domain even though it pays better?

This is what most sites believe:

"The more relation the Keyword has to the Domain, the more chance there is that you will have a high CTR (click through rate) for the Domain and thus the higher your revenue will be."

We believe this thinking is crap... search engines look at content not the domain name. Case in point... look at any domain name... it is the content on the page that will make it rank higher on the Keywords. What does Vonage have to do with internet calling? Adobe with imaging software? Nothing... it is what is on the page not the name of site. That is what we leverage at Ten Gear, it allows you to be at the cutting edge of the hot markets because our software creates content based on the content out there. So your site is fresh and up to date... Always. This ensures that the traffic (visitor) quality which gets directed to the advertisers remains high. This is important... as the lower the quality of the traffic, the less money they are inclined to invest in the Keyword. This means that the price per click will be reduced, as will your earnings.

Is parking binding? Can I opt out at any time?

Our Domain Name parking program is not binding and there are absolutely no contractual obligations involved. Furthermore, although we sincerely hope you'll be satisfied with our service, you can stop parking your Domains and remove them from Ten Gear at any time without justifying your actions. All you have to do is cancel your account so we can remove the basic files from our server it and you need to point your name else where.

I have a lot of Domains (more than 100). What's the best way to forward them for parking so that I don't have to do all of them manually?

Most Domain registrars, such as Enom and Godaddy, now offer a "Bulk Update" or "Bulk Edit" option which allows you to change the DNS of all Domains registered with them. If you cannot find this option, try contacting your registrar to see if they can carry this out for you. And contact us before you do this as we will need to make builds for each of your domains.

Can I park as many Domains as I want?

Yes, you can park as many Domains as you like. There is no limit.

Can I change the header and footers?

Yes, you can. However you will be responsible for creating the graphics and will need to pay a $75.00 setup fee to modify the coding and to create your build. If you have multiple Domains, we can give you bulk pricing based on the amount of changes between the sites. If all sites use the same layout, other than the name, we can drop the price a lot because there will be less work involved on our end. However our copyrights, powered by credits and the back linking program must remain in the footer to help us and all our other parked domains.

Why license your program and why don't you offer a source code version?

Here's why:

1) We have spent a lot of time writing these programs and we aren't charging a lot of money for them so that everyone can afford them. This keeps the honest people honest. And we figure if everyone can afford the software, there is less of a chance of someone pirating our code. If they can only sell it for a dollar, why steal it? However, if you have a couple of million dollars you would like to spend, we can talk about the source code.

2) With licensing you will receive notification of any updates to your software.

3) The updates are free for life... We make money off your success, so if we make the software better, it benefits us to give you the updates for free.

4) Why do you charge different levels of subscription? The levels allow you to make more money while we make less. So in order to make sure we stay in business to write more cool software and updates, we need to make money. We aren't greedy... so we always try to keep the prices low. Selling a million programs for a dollar is better than selling a hundred for a hundred dollars.

5) Also with our licensing the software, we can inform you of, when new software is available, new updates and beta programs where you can test our software for free and if you become a beta tester for us, you can get special licensing, like a partial or full version where you make all the money off the site to show our appreciation for helping us. Plus your software needs to "talk" to our servers so if you don't use it or update it any more, it shuts off the connection to our servers so we save money on bandwidth.

6) What about my email address and information? We don't sell your information we only use it to contact you. All financial information is held on PayPal's servers. We don't keep any on our servers. So there is no need to worry.

Your company sounds pretty cool, what are you planning next and is there any openings?

We have a lot of ideas we haven't implemented yet. We are currently working on our Super Search Program. Our next project will be an module for PHPAudit since we like the software so much and want to be able to add functions that aren't currently available. Eventually we will hire more people, so if you want to send a resume to us, feel free. Make sure you include what you have personally written. We will be looking for programmers that know PHP and Apache inside and out. And you must be a self starter. And the beauty part is... you can work remotely. Or if you have a cool script, and you are interested in us selling it for you, let us know and we can sit down and talk after signing a non disclosure.

Recommended Reading

Frequently asked questions

How does Domain Name parking work and what makes Ten Gear different from others?

1. Keyword allocation