Making Money with Articles: Banner Advertisements
When you develop a content-rich, article based website it’s important to promote your website well so that you get targeted, qualified customers to experience your website. One often overlooked way of marketing your website is to use banner advertisements among your other promotional methods.
Banner Ads and What they Can do
Most internet marketers use banner ads to get highly qualified and targeted traffic from a complementary website. For instance, a webmaster forum might have a banner ad for a hosting company. Monthly fees can range from tens of thousands of dollars a month for a high traffic site to $50 for a permanent banner on a smaller niche website. The results can be comparable and oftentimes much cheaper and faster than SEO or PPC. There are also numerous free banner exchanges that you can look at as well. There are numerous possible ways to implement banner ads, and we’ll look at each.
Banner Exchange Programs
Increasingly popular are the free banner exchanges, where you and another website owner agree to exchange banners. Your banner will be placed on their website, and their banner will end up on your own website. While attractive, especially considering the price, there are some problems with these free exchanges. First you really have to be careful who you link with. Oftentimes there are some very low quality websites with not much traffic, and a ton of banners already on their website. It’s pointless to exchange banners with a website that isn’t going to provide you any value back. Which leads to the second problem with free banner exchanges. You’re really limited to a small amount of banner exchanges, 1-4. Pass that point and your website starts to look entirely too crowded.
Buying Banner Ads
While banner ads can cost money, if placed strategically in a well thought out promotional plan, your banner ads can be a very wise investment. The most important factor towards placing your banner ad is making sure that the website gets good traffic, that is very relevant to your own offer. It does no good to have a banner ad about a digital camera on a website about bicycles. Second, make sure that you place your banner ad in the top third of the web page in an inviting location for visitors to click on your advertisement. Last, make sure that the website doesn’t have tons of other banners or links out to your competitors, as this will dilute the effectiveness of your ad.
Banner ads can be very profitable for your site, if you use a well thought out strategy towards placing them. Quality ads on quality sites, trumps tons of ads on questionable sites. Keep the above tips in mind if you choose to place banner ads for your websites.