Genius! I was thinking of scraping the same data – Folks, the proof is in the pudding. This is what people can expect with epik. All you hear about is icecreammaker.com, however look at 99.9% of the results in the data sets. Wow, this speaks volumes! Thanks for the transparency epik!!

Wow it it looks like you did a huge amount of work to gather and digest all this hard data on the Epik stores. Epik has become controversial in the domaining industry because claims have exceeded the gut instincts of other experienced domainers who seem to have experience with other parking services and with domain development.

These claims have been made in marketing hype and some blogs where they may have advertised. It is interesting now after many months to start see hard data compilation and analysis.

Not very impressive numbers. But seeing that you’ve taken time to post 3-4 posts about the “Epik Fail” now, it would be fun to see a follow up post with some stats from SiteDepot-developed sites!

At first glance this would be disappointing. However, one must keep in mind that EPIK is less than a year old and most of those sites are probably only 3-6 months old. Many of my self-developed sites did little for six months or more. I have one site launched spring 2009 (Rutinas.tv) which over the last 30 days has more than three times the traffic it had just a few months ago. I have also seen rankiing progress on a number of other sites but again 90% of traffic goes to sites on page one. CTR for a PPC-dependent site is likely to be low single digits. You have to give EPIK credit for being transparent. Would you reveal the traffic and earnings stats of the sites you have developed for clients?

I want to better understand how the whole thing works.
So Epik resells PPC product feed from Wishpot and keeps 50%.
Does Wishpot get that same feed from Bizrate/Shopzilla? What % does Wishpot keep then?
So Epic and Wishpot do not any value other than fluff?
Does Bizrate sell ads and originate the feed? What % do they keep?

I just looked up Smartname Shops; they get their feed from Shopping.com. Smartname gets 50% also?

I used to use a feed from Shopping.com a while ago. My experience was that merchants will only pay per click if these clicks make them sales. So they have a quality control and if your clicks do not result in sales, your site feed will be shut down. So at the end you end up making less that you would if you just got straight commission on sales. Or, another words, products PPC feed is just a gimmicky way to pay commission on sales.

On a related note, does anyone know if there is a quality white label solutions for clothing ecommerce?

Epik is using a 3rd tier feed from bizrate.com. They are paying you 50% of the revenue from generated clicks. No transparency on the google revenue and none on any affiliate related sales generated from wishpot (where Rob is a shareholder)… Transparency is only present on the measly wishpot revenue. Combine this with your $250 development cost and fast forward one year. I think you will see you will be standing in line for a refund based on their guarantee.. People, go to smartname.com and save yourself money. Same thing, it’s free and many more options for your to build your domain.

Big thanks for the feedback. Great to see someone come forward and report this. Keep up the good work

@ DomainStryker, it’s nice you compiled a list like this, but it’s missing date-of-launch & Google rank columns, so it’s inconclusive. Also, it would be nice to see an earnings summary per MONTH as opposed to WEEK, since most site earnings – including pay-per-click – are reported per month.

Please save the exact list, and report a year from now! Or I’ll save you the trouble, I’ll download the list and review it in six months; and a year. Likely many of these sites will increase in earnings. Newly-developed sites do not tell the true story.

Either way, thanx for analysis! I am quite happy ThickFoam.com [mine] as a developed site ranks page 1 of Google, and not-yet-launched Cheese-Board.com [mine] is alreay generating revenue!

Well if your not happy with parking this is something else to try, i like the way i can add links to the stores on my non ecomerce blogs

hi greeting

first thanks to domainstryker
for mentionning HAIRY

>>> hairy.com 2726 visitors

HAIRY’s traffics have been rising
to over 10,000 per month

thanks,best,2w

I disagree with your conclusions. Epik’s product store operation is not about premium domains making $xxxx per week, it’s about earning some cash from otherwise low value hyphenated dot nets and so on. My analysis of a break even point for investing in a product store with Epik is about $1-2 per week income as a starting point. But it depends on how long term you want to be. 2 years? 5 years?
(I am factoring in an assumption for visible and consistent growth due to SEO etc and future functions such as adding unique content etc.)
Everyone here seems to have overlooked the increase in value of domain names that are Epik powered. Once your site is earning $2 a week, that’s $100 a year. Now since your site is worth three or four times annual revenue or more, let’s say it’s now worth $300 and it’s now become a liquid asset and theoretically much much easier to sell. And that increase in value has paid for the $249 development cost.
My Epik store SilkSuits.org was launched only a couple of months ago and Epik got it to page one of Google. Congrats to Epik and partner Pyramid SEO. I don’t even check the stats every week, it’s usually about $1, this week it’s $2.38. Surely that’s a good result for this domain and site only a few months old.
So after one year, I might earn $100 from the site, and the site might be a saleable liquid asset worth $300 on Flippa or in an Epik sale. Cost: $249 + reg fee. Return?: $400 (100+300)… Year One: better than break even. Year Two etc: go into profit, $100+ p.a and rising.
I feel optimistic that this modest revenue will rise slowly but surely, especially once Epik adds content and graphic capabilities from webmasters and other functions as they plan to do.
Dave T

Maybe it’s my business model of paying $250.00 that I don’t like because Epik will accept all comers with nothing really to loss but I’d have liked Epik to consider accepting only the domain names it thought it could make money on (like Fab does) and become their partner because of it. Spending $250.00 per name isn’t huge though for creating an online business if it’s a site you think you can promote or make money. I’d also like to see monthly reports rather then weekly reports and for sites that have been up for 2 months, it’s just too early to damn the entire process. Running totals for 2 years (just like a real business) give a must better overview. I bought Business.ht last month with the thought of making it a Epik site since “Business” gets over 2,000,000 searches a month. The first week, no traffic. This month I’m tracking 300 plus Uniques on Whypark.com. If I move over 2000 per month but the revenues aren’t there, I’ll either move it to Devhub (and I really like Whypark for development) to see how it goes and if Devhub works out, then might move it to Epik. One of the things I see happening for a business like Epik also should be a lower entry point since at some point Epik will want an exit time and the more sites under your company heading, the better chance of a strong cash out. Won’t matter if it’s $250.00 or $99.00 to enter, because all someone is going to look at it the value of the portfolio divided by 50%.

I find it very strange that Epic freely publishes the site metrics for the world to see. As an owner of one of these 6000 sites, I am bummed, especially since the stats are so poor. I would like the ability to opt for some privacy here.

Looks like it has begun, Epiks claim to fame IceCreamMaker.com is now removed from Google.. I assume the rest of their sites will follow suit. I think this deserves a fresh new post based on all the hype surrounding that domain..