Help me start my 5 day test. I am comparing this website response rate to my AWeber Newsletter response rate. A request to bookmark a URL is below, regardless of whether you are viewing this on the website or via newsletter please bookmark the URL below via delicious. I will then compare test stats.
My twins fundraiser is over and they raised enough to win a limousine ride. They are very excited and I am obviously very proud of them.
There are many lessons learned, I originally posted on September 28th, 2008 the article that I wanted to teach my boys blogging, e-commerce and twitter. That was one of the goals, to introduce them to online commerce, communications tools such as twitter and blogging tools such as WordPress.
We had a fundraiser update on October 7th, 2008, and the fundraiser ended on October 8th, 2008.
Thanks to everyone that sent them messages of encouragement and purchased online to assist their fundraising. The totals of their fundraiser are finally in. The twins each sold enough that they both get to participate in a special prize – a Hummer Limousine ride to a local pizza place with the principal at lunch time.
They are obviously very excited and it reinforces the lesson that hard work pays off. I say “reinforces” because they already understood that their hard work (going door to door and selling online), and working hard allowed them to obtain a large number of sales.
Another great lesson was the fact that they do not keep the profit – it is for a good cause, to raise money for their school system. Not only do they benefit, but everyone presently at the school and those to follow will benefit as well. Helping their community is a great lesson.
Now they have their own twitter, @longestbrothers, and their own blog LongestBrothers.com.
I am happy to say this experience has more than peaked their interest and jump started their curiousity.
Also, this was a great experiment of those who want are thinking about creating their own blog, twitter account, following etc. We were able to obtain a domain name, create a new WordPress site, create a twitter account and following, then create the proper messaging to drive supporters to the fundraising website to purchase items, all within a week. If my 6 year old twins and I can do it, so can you 
When looking at sites that are well done, visually and from the perspective of obtaining new customers I came across DirectTV. Their site is an excellent example of a site focused on customer acquisition. Obviously a good service at a great price is important, however being able to convert a visitor into a customer with the proper messaging to get your offer across is an art form and Direct TV did it right.
Recently I came across the Direct TV site when I moved, purchased Direct TV and am very happy. I got two DVRs and hooked up the system to five TVs in the house.
Their Direct Satellite TV offer includes free DVR or HD upgrade, local channels are free and installation free. They have also decreased their monthly fees by $18 a month for 12 months and for three months you get HBO, Showtime and Starz. All of these offer points are front and center grabbing the attention of the visitor and I am guessing (as they convinced me) that their customer acquisition and conversion is very high.
This is a great site to use as an example when creating niche sites of your own to promote affiliate programs. Of course if you are in the market as I was for Directv Satellite take a look at their offers.
Earlier I wrote about how the domain parking with Sedo worked. However, you may Park Domains with GoDaddy or Park Domains with Sedo. In case you do use GoDaddy here is a coupon to use.
I chose to test with Sedo and have parked 47 domains with them, as they are free. When setting up the service you choose keywords, related to your domain, and categories. After half of a month I have domains earning only pennies and others close to $1. The basic analysis would say that if you can receive greater than $1 a month or $12 a year, then it makes sense to renew at any amount smaller than $12. Others that are not profitable you may want to let lapse or put up for sale.
However, another benefit of parking domains is to determine which of your parked domains receive the most traffic and click throughs. You are able to see not only the number of unique visits to your domain but also the click through rate of the advertisements placed on the domain. This information could be used when determining whether to develop the domain into a property. I clearly have some domains with much greater trafic than others and higher click through rates.
Domain parking may be more profitable if you have obtained domains that were once properties and have links to them already developed, or as some have done – create misspellings of other popular terms (it is not suggested you do this as it may be problematic).
To conclude the first follow up to this test, I have determined some domains I will let lapse, others I will continue to park with Sedo and a couple I will attempt to develop into properties as they have decent traffic and click through rates on content and advertisements related to the domain and the category I assigned to it.
I did not choose GoDaddy simply because GoDaddy charges you to join their program while Sedo is free. The GoDaddy basic plan allows you to earn 60% of the advertising revenue on your parked domains. The cost is:
The GoDaddy Premium Plan allows you to earn 80% of the advertising revenue on your parked domains and includes other services. The cost is:
I tried in-text advertising on this site for months and just turned it off today. I have two sites running the ads and the more highly targeted (content) site of mine received a better eCPM however both were very low.
Therefore I have removed the In-Text advertising tags as they did not yield as much revenue as I had hoped and the bright color highlighting ad underlining was distracting to site visitors. An example is below.
The images below show the before and after of the ad placement on the right hand navigation. The image on the left shows the right hand navigation as it has been since this site was started. The image on the right shows the right hand navigation as of the posting of this article.
Advertising Placement
The current placement of the advertising is shown higher on the right hand navigation. I will watch the revenue received to determine if that makes a difference. To raise the CPC advertising I have lowered the 125×125 advertising. Therefore, looking at the images below you will see the difference is the block that reads “Ads” and shows a Toyota car has been moved.
After I collect some data I will post the results of whether the higher placement made a difference. Note that this change still does not place the advertising over the fold, or on the first screen that a visitor sees.
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Results of Advertising Placement
This article was an old test but still worthwhile for you to do on your own site in an effort to optimize placement of ads.
First, I have to say that PubMatic is a great tool to rotate multiple advertising networks on your site. Take a look at a previous post discussing how they work here.
Determine where to place the AdSense code
The test, and I am only 2 weeks into this test, is to determine where best to place advertisements on your page. I had originally identified two places to put the AdSense code, on the right navigation as a 300×250 rectangle (although more common are the skyscrappers) and at the bottom of each post. Recently I added the code to the top of the page.
Three common places to place AdSense
I wanted to compare the following placements.
Results of Placements
Results below are shown as a eCPM which is an “effective” CPM or Cost Per Thousand. In other words, for every 1,000 advertisements shown what is the total revenue (on average) of the Google AdSense ads.
Therefore the top of the page is 10 times more profitable than the right of the page. Obviously part of the reason is that the Top of the Page ads are the first a visitor sees. Influencing these tests are where on the page is the 300×250 placed, in the top fold or not. Top fold is the first area of the screen that a visitor can view without scrolling down. The reasoning for the bottom of the post is that a visitor will hopefully read the full article and when coming to the end will see relevant offers presented by AdSense.
Conclusion
Test multiple placements, for me the top of the page is by far the most profitable. However, some may view ads at the top of the page distracting so you will need to balance your desire for ads there.