After getting nowhere with Google Adsense for Domains, I canned my setup process and decided to give Sedo a shot. Talk about easy. It takes a matter of minutes to set up. In a nutshell, here is the process.

Setting Up Cash Parking With Sedo

First of all you need an account with Sedo. Once your account is set up and you are signed in, you need to follow these steps:

1. Go to the My Sedo section (there should be a tab at the top on the right hand side).
2. Add your domain. The domain doesn't need to be registered with Sedo for you to add it to your account. For example, my domain is registered with Godaddy. If you have a large number of domains to park, you can upload an Excel spreadsheet that contains them. Being a small fish, I typed in my solitary domain manually.
3. Adding your domain to your account serves a dual purpose in Sedo World. As well as parking the domain, you can also advertise your site as being for sale. If you aren't interested in this option, you can select "Not for sale", but there is nothing stopping you assigning a stupidly high minimum price (like everyone else). Sedo actually recommends that you advertise the site as being for sale, as you are not obliged to accept any bids you don't like - i.e. you have nothing to lose.
4. Either change your domain's nameservers or forward the URL to Sedo. I changed my nameservers as that's pretty easy to do.
5. Change the look and feel of your parked page. This is the good bit, and we go into more details below.

Sedo's Domain Parking Optimizer

Using the Domain Optimizer you can change the following:

• the keywords that control the type of adverts that are displayed on your domain. Obviously, the keyword you select should be aligned to what the visitor expects to see, otherwise click through rates will suffer. If I land on a parked domain in the video gaming niche, I'm not going to click on an advert for knitting patterns.
• the colour scheme and layout. If you have a domain in the myspace layout niche, maybe you would try something glitzy or sparkly.
• assign a picture to the design. The pictures are categorised so you can easily find something that seems to relate to the domain.

The above settings may affect the CTR of your visitors so they are worth spending some time thinking about. No decision you make here is final, and you really should be experimenting with different settings for all of the above.

Examples Of Domains Parked With Sedo

Before I started this little experiment, I had no idea what control I would have over the look and feel of a parked domain. I'm quite impressed with the standard of page you can design very quickly. The examples I came up with look pretty good, if I say so myself. Here is a selection of designs for your viewing pleasure.

Simple

The Simple design doesn't feature a picture, but looks good anyway. This is the design I'm currently using on this domain.

And indeed, there is a little notice on the right hand side indicating that this domain may be for sale.

Adult Black

Ha ha - I chose the Adult Black design and selected a picture in the Games/Casino category but Sedo thinks some gay pics are more suitable! Click through rates are now soaring LOL. It just amuses me to see adverts for Programmer Courses etc adorned with gay photos. I'm sure Sedo are making no suggestions about programmers and their persuasions!

Adult Red

Well, it seems that whether it's Adult Black or Adult Red, it's gay photos all the way.

Classic

I've seen this one on loads of parked domains. The picture I assigned is still getting ignored though.

Direct Blue

I really like this one, and at last we can see the picture I assigned in the top left corner. You can change this picture and the selection available isn't too bad. It's  a nice clean design and it actually resembles a real site, so CTRs should be good.

Lite

I've seen this one far too many times on my expired domain seeking travels. Me no like.

Phoenix Blue

I'm seduced by this one.

Phoenix Pink

With a name like Phoenix Pink, I expected the worst. It's not bad though.

Retro Green

Retro Purple

I think this design may be effective if only for novelty value. If you happen on enough parked domains, I think you become blind to the more popular designs and are likely to click away pronto.

The best thing to do is test each design over a period of time to find the best performing one. You may find that the design doesn't seem to affect CTR rates, but then again you might - and then you'll be glad you tested.

The purpose of this article was to demonstrate how to park your domains using Sedo. The domain I chose gets very little traffic so it's not an experiment in generating revenue using cash parking. I have, however, recently bought some high traffic expired domains that I'm going to use for just that purpose. Stay tuned for those results.

Sedo Parking - Whose Adverts?

It seems to be Adsense that is displayed on domains parked at Sedo.