Review: BenePark Parking and Monetization Platform

A couple months back the folks at BenePark.com asked me if I would test out a few domains on their monetization platform and write a review based on the results.  I was compensated to try out BenePark and write this review, what I am sharing today are 100% honest results.

I chose two domains from my portfolio for this experiment. One that had natural traffic, a few clicks and some annual revenue, nothing impressive though. The second domain had nearly no natural traffic, clicks or revenue before this experiment.  Here are the results:

Domain name: 
While I won’t be publishing exact figures I can divulge that from Jan 1, 2011 – May 28, 2011 while this domain was monetized with the Noomle.com parking system xxxxxxxxxxxx.com had approx 300 visitors, with a handful of clicks that made me enough to rent a movie from red box for one night.  During that time it was usually the second or third organic listing when searching Google for ‘Guatemala xxxxx’.   From May 28th – Today as I look at my adsense report, it looks like the this domain has had approx 1200 visitors, a very small increase in click thru’s and has earned 3x the revenue in the last two months than it did in the first six months this year.  Now I can go splurge at the Red Box!

These results are encouraging, I was surprised to see that my traffic increased so dramatically – perhaps BenePark sends traffic to sites within it’s platform?  One thing I did see change is that xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com is no longer on the first page of results for ‘Guatemala xxxxxx’ actually I couldn’t find it in the first five pages, ouch.  However, as I look at the same search phrase on Yahoo/Bing I now see that xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com is ranked on the first page in the organic listings, I don’t recall the former site ever being ranked in Y/B.  Ok, so the results show some improvement in traffic and revenue but the big kicker is that I’m no longer ranked in Google.  So what about the page design?  I actually really like the page design which was created by BenePark.  You have the option of adding your CJ/CB affiliate codes for products widgets that can be placed on your BenePark pages – I did upload my CJ.com affiliate info but have seen no revenue from affiliate conversion.  The actual page is very clean with decent content and really does not look like a typical parked page.  BenePark staff designs each page for you but will take custom directions if you have an idea on how you want your page to look.  I’m not going to link to a parked page but if you want to see how the page looks click here (should be the 5th or 6th organic result).

The second domain name I tested out with BenePark is Cashxxxxxxx.com.  A domain that had virtually no traffic/revenue.  Between Jan 1st of this year and May 28th while parked at Sedo, this domain saw less than 15 visitors earning one click which made me virtually nothing in revenue.  From May 28th – present, Cashxxxxxxx.com while monetized with BenePark saw an increase in traffic up to almost 150 visitors, a handful of clicks and banked me enough revenue to buy a cup of coffee :).  I chose to try out a domain name that I knew had very little natural traffic to see how it did with BenePark.  The affiliate ads did not convert any revenue on this page either but for some reason the BenePark designer thought that ‘diamond necklaces’ was the best keyword to try out with this domain.  I did not ask them to change the theme, I figured I would let it ride and see what happens.  Cashxxxxxxx.com was NOT in the organic listings on the first five pages in either Google or Yahoo/Bing and it remains that way.  Well, taking a domain that previously had no traffic and revenue and in two months turning it into a domain that will probably pay for it’s own renewal is nice -can’t complain about that.

To learn more about BenePark.com check out their FAQ.  My favorite part about this platform is that your earned revenue is paid directly to adsense or your affiliate accounts.  So how does BenePark profit from this model?  According to the FAQ they also run some of their own ads on each page.

My overall experience with BenePark.com has been a positive as both domains I tested have received substantially more traffic and revenue in two months on this platform than the previous six months at other parking providers.  I am however concerned that my xxxxxxxxxx.com page no longer shows up on the first page of Google (as it did when it was monetized with a Noomle.com minisite).  I am also a bit skeptical of how BenePark makes revenue running ads concurrently on my page (I was not aware of this until after I agreed to the review, etc).

* Paid Review