Domain Monetization 101 – Lesson #1: Ad Placement

I am starting a new series on my blog – Domain Monetization 101. In this series I will go-over many of the concepts I’ve learned over the last few years of testing different domain monetization strategies. Since my focus has never been on selling, I’ve been completely absorbed in monetizing my domains and have learned some valuable lessons along the way – I hope these lessons are useful to some if not all of you!

Ad placement is one of the most important pieces in the Domain Monetization Puzzle. Many people think that just putting ads on your site will provide guaranteed revenue as long as you have traffic coming to your site.

I learned very quickly that the placement of ads on my sites was crucial to how well they would monetize over time. It wasn’t enough to find an ad that would appeal to my target customer – I also had to put it in a place that would encourage clicks.

So what is the perfect ad placement setup? There is none! This varies on a site-by-site basis with a few guiding principles that can put you on the path to success. Below are three tips you can use to optimize the ad placement on your site.

1) Your most important ads should be above the fold. Assume that your user doesn’t scroll – your best ads should be at the top of the page.

2) Place ads within content blocks not just in the sidebar. I have found that ads placed within content blocks receive strong click-through rates and can make a big difference in the revenue of your site.

3) Change the order of your ads frequently and measure the results.Try switching the ads around and let them run for a week – if you see a big spike in revenue you know that you’ve created a successful optimization.

While these may seem like little things they can make a BIG difference. I can oftentimes make some small targeted changes to the ad placement on my site and see revenue grow over 50% in as little as one week. In fact – this year two of my domains have seen over 100% growth and the only change I made is where the ads were located on the page!

So next time you build a site – don’t just let it sit month after month. Figure-out what your average monthly revenue is – make some targeted changes – and increase your revenue. Do this across all your sites and you might just give yourself a nice pay raise!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton