Earlier I wrote about how the domain parking with Sedo worked. However, you may Park Domains with GoDaddy or Park Domains with Sedo.

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:

• 1 month: Just $3.99/mo
• 12 months: Just $3.59/mo Save 10%!
• 24 months: Just $3.19/mo Save 20%!

The GoDaddy Premium Plan allows you to earn 80% of the advertising revenue on your parked domains and includes other services. The cost is:

• 1 month: Just $9.99/mo
• 12 months: Just $8.99/mo Save 10%!
• 24 months: Just $7.99/mo Save 20%!

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 site was yielding a $.04 eCPM which is not worth having the ads. I recommend other sources of revenue such as Text-Link-Ads, you can sign up here for free, and if you wish to advertise you can receive free $ to use. Text-Link-Ads allows you to sell a set number of links on your site and that has yielded much more revenue than the In-Text Advertising.

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.

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.

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.

• Top of Page, 728×90
• Right of Page (in Navigation), 300×250
• Bottom of Each Post, 468×60

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.

• $.22 eCPM : Top of Page, 728×90
• $.02 eCPM : Right of Page (in Navigation), 300×250
• $.15 eCPM : Bottom of Each Post, 468×60

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.