You know the old expression about how you never have a second chance to make a first impression? This is especially true when it comes to your web site banner advertising. Your banner advertising is often the first “HELLO!” to an unsuspecting web surfer that knows nothing about your web site, your company or your product. Your potential customers and clients will most likely be introduced to you through your banner advertising. Your web site traffic is dependent on the impact made with this first impression. A quality banner ad design will not only increase your web site traffic but the revenue generated from your web site.

These days most of us know basic graphic design skills and there are many banner creation programs, with easy to use templates, available online for download. Everyone wants to be all DIY (Do-It-Yourself) these days but it’s highly recommended to have the job completed by a graphic design artist with banner advertising samples in his or her portfolio. Even if you are restricted by a tight budget there is always the possibility of finding a skilled designer, working on the cheap, looking to build their portfolio. Being able to take credit for a creating a successful banner advertising campaign that dramatically boosted web site traffic looks good in any design portfolio and chances are someone will work within your budget for the opportunity alone! Just relay your vision and the general message you want your banner advertising to convey. Allow the designer an opportunity to work their magic and see if anything can spark high web site traffic. Promise to credit their work on your site and direct web site traffic to their design portfolio or homepage.

One important thing to remember when designing your banner advertising is to keep things clean and simple! You want the banner advertising to encourage web site traffic – not annoy people and take away from their enjoyment of the web site they came to see, which just happened to display your banner advertising. Don’t be overly flashy with advanced animation, annoying sound effects or cluttered text. The wording in your banner advertising should be minimal and brief. Just like a newspaper headline your banner ad needs to grab attention, enticing people to click it and add to your web site traffic. Be imaginative and creative, with a strong headline, making the hard sell and using an power adjective or verb to pull in eyeballs. Banner advertising is not about flash like so many designers may think. Granted, you do want something colorful that stands out from other ads but keep it sensible and don’t get too ridiculous or you may turn away some potential web site traffic. Be bold with the font size and style. Remember banner advertising is all about the IMPACT and getting results with higher web site traffic.

Said Issilam is the founder of http://www.topwebhit.com a directory with a collection of web site traffic sources. We help webmasters and infopreneurs to boost web site traffic

There are a number of strategies for successful advertising to increase web site traffic. There isn’t any web site in existence that doesn’t want more web site traffic. Whether your site promotes a particular company and product or it’s just a hobby site with opinion, commentary, pictures or news items, there is no sense in putting money and time into a web site that nobody visits! No web site traffic is the mark of a mediocre Internet presence!

Running banner advertising through some of the most popular sites on the web can be a costly endeavor. The places on the web that generate the most web site traffic are well aware that other sites will be looking to advertise with them. Many high traffic sites will then feel justified in charging high rates for ad spots.

So how do you know if the money that you are putting out towards banner advertising is worth it? Are you really gaining significant web site traffic for your dollar?

You probably have some kind of tool to measure statistics for your site. A web site traffic monitor that logs your site hits, page views, referring links, click through links, etc. Use one of these monitoring tools and analyze where the people viewing your site are coming from.

If you know anything about Internet advertising and marketing you’ve probably heard of networks like Google Adsense. This is a cost-per click Internet advertising technique. The advertiser will only pay for their ad placement when a visitor actually clicks it and is directed to the advertised web site. Banner advertising spots aren’t usually sold in this manner but this method has revitalized online advertising, increasing web site traffic for many sites. It is also a good measuring tool in determining exactly how beneficial banner advertising on a particular site is.

Let’s say that you have purchased banner advertising on two popular sports web sites. Your ad is clicked ten times on the first web site. Banner advertising on this particular web site was $40.00 monthly. This would make your cost per click $4.00. If you paid $20.00 to advertise on the other site but received twenty hits - your cost per click would be $1.00. The second web site would be the most economical choice for banner advertising. Not only does your web site traffic increase but you’re also getting more bang for your buck!

Some Webmasters may put more of an emphasis on page impressions rather than clicks. For instance, if you are a launching a new product and trying to establish brand recognition, it may be more important to know that your banner advertising is met with a lot of eyes, whether people are actually clicking the ads or not. Do business with sites that aren’t shy about promising a specific number of page impressions and measure that information against your web site traffic stats.

A conversion rate is popular with online stores. Particularly sites like Amazon.com with affiliate programs that reward a web site if people purchase goods after clicking through from your site. The site owner for a music website may run banner advertising on his or her site for music that is available for purchase through Amazon.com. They will be paid commission whenever someone comes directly from the site and makes an Amazon.com purchase.

Said Issilam is the founder of http://www.topwebhit.com - a directory with a collection of web site traffic sources. We help webmasters and infopreneurs to boost web site traffic

Banner advertising is not only a tremendous way to raise awareness of your site and increase your web site traffic but it is also an important part of producing revenue for your web site. The more web site traffic you are able to produce the more you can benefit from pay per click programs and the
higher your ad rates can be for selling your own banner advertising on your site. The importance of developing a quality banner advertising campaign cannot be underestimated. The very first thing that you need to do is define the goals of your banner advertising campaign.

For instance, your initial goal from banner advertising may be to increase your web site traffic. To accomplish this you will want to find similar niche sites to your own, preferably sites that are not a direct competitor, with the hope of bringing
visitors from that particular site to your web site or product. Take a moment to research sites that are similar to your own. Review your competition and try to get a feel for how they market themselves. Chances are much of their web site traffic is directly related to them implementing a successful banner advertising campaign. What sites have you noticed their banner ads? What are their adverts like?

Also, take a moment to study Internet banner advertising in general and study what methods are proven to
boost web site traffic. What are the types of banner ads most likely to catch your attention? Try to identify several banner ads that command your attention and pick out specifics about their design style, font and wording and consider these factors when designing your own banner advertising. Graphic design is important for banner advertising. You will probably not generate much web site traffic with a generic looking banner ad. You want to create a call to action to the person that views your ad. Banner advertising has to visually capture interest while sending a clear, strong and precise message.

A banner ad can’t be too wordy. In fact, it’s suggested that you limit the wording in a banner ad and focus more on the visual by using six words or less. Instead of being wordy the ad should command attention with a
bigger font size that will stand out in a sea of banner ads. Power words make an undeniable impact on enticing people to click your ad. Your banner advertising needs to encourage web site traffic. Since you are limited with wording something resembling an attention grabbing headline is necessary and power words like FREE, BUY, AFFORDABLE, INCREDIBLE, OUTSTANDING, BEST and SECRET work brilliantly when it comes to increasing web site traffic! Another common mistake that should be avoided in your banner advertising campaign is heavy animation.

It is best to be subtle rather than use some lightning fast animation speed where the viewer has to deeply concentrate to take in each frame. You don’t want too much flash or clutter in the ad. Just an attractive means to persuade people to click your ad and increase your web site traffic.

Said Issilam is the founder of http://www.topwebhit.com an Internet directory with a collection of web site traffic sources. We help webmasters and infopreneurs to boost web site traffic

Everyone has a website – from multi-billion dollar corporations to that local pizza joint on the corner. But to make your business stand out from the rest of the competition on the Internet, you need more than a couple of pictures. What do you do to keep customers coming back for more?

There are several easy ways to improve your site and market it so that in engages customers. Following are some helpful tips that can take your website from 0 to great in just a few moments!

1. Find websites that you like. The key here is to find sites that have elements that you can actually incorporate into your own website. For example, if you like cnn.com, you may not be able to emulate everything about their site, but you may like the overall look or ease of navigation. If these are things you feel would help your clients when they visit your website, by all means do them!

2. Less is more. Sure, pictures may be worth a thousand words, but they’re not very useful if your entire homepage is covered with them. When a user goes to your website, their eyes should be drawn to the most important feature. “White” or blank space is a good thing; you don’t want potential clients to feel overwhelmed by too much content!

3. Keep it updated. Too often, owners neglect to place new content on their site, resulting in a loss of interest by potential clients. But putting up content doesn’t have to be difficult. If you own a bar, for instance, a calendar listing upcoming band dates and contests could be of interest to site visitors. Automotive shops could benefit from placing a coupon on the page – your target audience could bookmark and check back frequently for new deals!

These are just a few ideas that could make a drastic change in your amount of business.

Canesha Golston is the Marketing Director for AdByNet, an online advertising agency specializing in promoting the websites of small businesses. For more information on how a small business can get maximum online exposure at a minimum price, visit http://www.adbynet.com

Have you ever seen a commercial or advertisement that had a bunch of tiny images compiled up to make one big picture? This big picture is made up of hundreds and thousands of little pictures normally in the size of a small square. This is what a photo mosaic is. They are not just used for commercials and banners, but they can be made for your personal use.

You know all those family pictures that you have dating back 12 years ago? You can take those and have them made into a photo mosaic. Even better, there are tons of software that is available to the general public so that they can make their own photo mosaics so you don’t have to pay someone to make a photo mosaic for you if you think that you can do it and are into art. Photo Mosaics can make great pictures to hang up around your house of if you decide to get a photo mosaic made for you or you make it yourself they can be wonderful gifts for your friends and family members. Not too long ago photo mosaics were so expensive that the normal everyday person could not afford it, but luckily this has been changed due to the fact that technology has gotten better.

If you do decide to send your photos to someone to make your photo mosaic online and have them make you a photo mosaics you should be aware of doing this online because you don’t know who is on the other side of the computer. If you just searched and chose someone it could be a scam so be sure to research everything because you don’t want to spend money on something that is not going to look right or maybe not even get it at all. They could just take your credit card number and run so look closely at the refunds and agreement terms on their websites, if you don’t like the terms then you don’t have to stick with that company.

Written by Douglas Stillson. Find the latest information on a
photo collage as well as a
photo mosaic online.

With banner ads’ click-through-rates (CTR) quickly dwindling, advertisers have been experimenting with new methods and techniques to make their ads more appealing, resulting in the ad being clicked by the visitor.

The most effective method today is including mini-games in your banner ad. By making the ad interactive, visitors are more likely to engage just for the sake of doing so. The games are usually extremely simple and don’t pose any challenge to the visitor, but it is made very clear that if they “win” they’ll get a free reward. This is usually something small such as a ringtone, but any product can be used.

These ads are most effective on large websites that are frequented by young visitors, so webmasters must extensively research a particular website before deciding to advertise on it. This is one of the most difficult processes in a campaign — if the wrong website is chosen, CTR will be low and thousands of dollars could be lost.

For banner ads to convert well, the landing page must be well designed. As the target audience is young, it must be very straight-forward and simple, with minimum required reading and user input. A popular technique is to continue the banner ad’s mini-game on the landing page, prompting the user to input their information (such as their phone number) while they’re playing the game.

Whatever your technique, it’s important to remember that static and choppy .GIF animated banner ads no longer work. They suffer from extremely low CTR and are generally ignored by the average internet user.

Want a brand new method of advertising that guarantees a high number of clicks and conversions? Check out Peel Away Ads.

Banner ads pioneered internet marketing, with the internet’s first ever banner ad making it’s appearance in 1994. Today, the general user of the internet is becoming increasingly “net-savvy” and aware of advertisements. They are viewed as an annoyance by many and are almost always ignored by the general user. This is reflected with banner ads having an extremely low click-through-rate (CTR), with the average being less than 0.5% of the total number of hits the website receives.

But while CTR of banner ads continue to fall, as does the cost of having a banner ad on a website. Previously, only large companies with huge advertising budgets were able to afford banner advertising. Today, almost anyone can advertise with the majority of websites selling in bundles of 1,000 views, better known as “impressions”. But with 1,000 impressions costing an average $4 and a CTR of 0.5%, this translates into only 5 clicks — hardly worth what is being paid.

These underwhelming results have forced advertisers to rethink their ways of advertising and find new methods. One of the more popular methods today is contextual advertising — a system originally developed by Google with their programme AdSense that displays ads on relevant websites throughout their search engine and partner websites throughout the internet. It ensures that advertisers are reaching their target audience and are only paying per click.

So has banner advertising lost it’s appeal? It certainly isn’t as popular as it once was, but it can be somewhat effective if you create a unique ad and are advertising on the right websites. With that being said, it isn’t long until banner advertising dies out completely.

Want a brand new method of advertising that guarantees a high number of clicks and conversions? Check out Peel Away Ads.

Auction Ads Case Study

Every day as affiliate marketers we look, check and note how much we are making. The one thing I’ve noticed as of late is that when I check my Adsense revenue its way down. Recently however a new website sprung up to help all of us in the business. Auction Ads; which allows you to place ads on your website in the vein of adsense, has arrived. Though similar in the size and shape of the ad banners the similarities end soon after. Auction Ads has also made me a lot more money than adsense and that excites me. I’m going to take you through a small easy to read case study experiment that I did for 2 months that will astound you even if you’ve been in affiliate marketing and internet site building for years. This study will show you the difference in not only income but how Auction Ads Differs from Adsense and why it makes more money. This study will also show that in under 3 months I’ve made nearly $5000 with Auction Ads.

Adsense used to perform well for me but since they’ve dropped the bomb on everyone and added content bidding its gone way down hill. Don’t get me wrong it’s still possible to make good money with adsense but if you combine it with auction ads it’s going to bring you more than you could imagine. First before I break into the study results let me say this, the main difference between auction ads and adsense is that auction ads pay per action or per sale and adsense pays per click. Are you nervous yet? Don’t be. In the 2 months with Auction Ads I made 10 times more money than I did with Adsense. Auction Ads connects people who click on you links with auctions on eBay. Auction Ads has a huge secret that I’ll get to later on in this case study that allows it to make much more than Adsense and you are going to love it. I will also note that to do this experiment I used a brand new site that featured both ads in relevantly similar positions or even simply rotated each ad in and out in some cases alternating.

How I began the experiment was by designing a website that featured content and that featured products. On each page I put auction ads banners and adsense banners near each other or as mentioned above rotated them alternately. I made sure that where ever I featured auction ads I featured adsense and so on. The idea was that at the end of my experiment I wanted to be sure of what is going to be more profitable for me. That’s what we are all in business for; to make the most money we can in the most efficient way. I wanted to keep the website small so I kept it under 2 pages for this and harvested links through PPC (pay per click) and through free classified ads as well as search engine marketing.

Now for the good stuff that you’re all waiting to read - the numbers. In the first month adsense made the following income $43.61 on 292 clicks. While auction ads pulled 2589 for a total of $324.96 for this case study. Now you may wonder why auction ads click count is so high compared to adsense. There are actually a couple reasons. First auction ads offer a 30 day cookie tracking so any actions taken by the affiliate on your site that continues to surf eBay gets tracked. Secondly when someone clicks on your adsense links and they go away from your site, they are gone and do not get tracked at all. So anything that person buys off of a click through adsense is gone and you are stuck with your 5-15 cents for the click. Let’s talk money now. As you can see auction ads in the first month made me $281.35 more than adsense. Not a lot until you keep in mind this is a brand new site with very little traffic. You can only begin to imagine what it will do in a year or what 10 similar websites will do in a year. So how was auction ads pulling that much more money?

There’s a nice little secret that isn’t getting a lot of publicity yet about auction ads. Ok I’m going to tell you know the huge difference between Auction Ads and Adsense. See auction ads uses eBay’s affiliate structure and this is where you can pull some good cash. Anytime someone buys anything off eBay through you’re links you earn 6.5% of the commission on the final value fee or (FVF). The real beauty is what happens next. EBay’s affiliate program has a nice little feature called ACRU? So what is an ACRU you are probably asking? An ACRU is simply a user who signs up for an eBay account and makes a purchase through your affiliate link. Now that you’re wondering why this is even important it’s because for every ACRU that comes to eBay you not only make 6.5% commission on the (FVF) but you also make a $25 bonus for each one. Let me repeat that, $25 each! So if someone comes through your link anytime within 30 days and signs up with eBay and makes any (REPEAT ANY) purchase you are awarded a $25 bonus. Even if someone comes to eBay through your link and makes a $1 purchase you make the $25 bonus plus commission. Now do you see what adense is missing? Could you imagine what could happen if you had thousands of people buying through your Auction Ads links?

Now let’s move to month #2. Adsense would catch up right? Wrong it gets worse for adsense. Adsense pulled a nice $69.80 profit. Not bad for a second month with few visitors until we take a look at auction ads. Auction Ads pulled a sweet $1000.14 pay check. Adsense doesn’t even compete and again I simply took advantage of the $25 ACRU fees I got from auction ads. Now I’m not brilliant but if you showed me $1000 or $69 I’m taking the $1000 any day. Take advantage of Auction Ads on this fact and utilize it to gain more income for yourself.

Month #3 August. Adsense isn’t even worth mentioning as Auction Ads pulled a beautiful $3350! In my actually report you’ll be able to see screen shots as well as techniques that I used to generate this amount.

Listen, adsense has simply dropped down in stature and it’s time for something new, something that is going to make us some money. I’m not saying to dump adsense but what I am saying is use it in conjunction with auction ads and make even more money. If you are already enjoying a nice income from Adsense get Auction Ads and add extra income to your pockets. I have continued to test this method further and the results continue to be the same and Auction Ads is the king. The good news is the results for a content site have been the same as product sites.

By Michael Brown
http://web-site-traffic-promotion.com

Read Why Auction Ads Works Today and Start Making Money

The researchers have jump to the conclusion that by exposing yourself to a product, time and again via banner ads envelope positive feeling towards that product. The good news for consumers is that a critical revaluation of the product can make these positive feelings disappear. To test, they asked students to read a multi-page essay under the impression that they would be fielding the questions on the essay’s content. Instead, the students were ultimately quizzed about a fictitious brand of camera, Pretec, which had appeared in the banner ads on the pages that contained the essay. Different pools of students are exposed to Pretec ads zero, five, or 20 times.

When asked about their negative vibes towards the brand, the number of exposures made absolutely no difference. In contrast, those students asked about their positive feelings towards the brand see those feelings increased based on the number of exposures. There are apparently two models striving to explain this phenomenon. The first proposes that people will more willingly assign positive properties and can retain things in their memory more readily. The second suggests that the processing of even minimal exposures can create an actual positive evaluation. That positive affect then influences future evaluations.

To conclude which of these may be at play, the authors took another pool of students and asked them to make a similar evaluation but in attempt to do so without considering the familiarity of Pretec, the positive effect can be vanished, suggesting that the first model was correct.

Hence, psychologists have a better grip on their theories, and advertisers have barely few things to consider. Banner ads may provide a valuable function in fostering familiarity and the familiarity-based advertising may work best for impulse buys, where more detailed evaluations aren’t likely to occur.

Source:
http://www.itmatchonline.com/article/The_Psychology_of_Banner_Ads.php

ITMatchOnline, an outsourcing hub where provider and buyer exchange their needs. Looking to Offshoring projects or services? Visit ITMatchOnline.com.

Increasing web site traffic can be done effectively and somewhat inexpensively through online marketing methods like banner advertising. The key to successful banner advertising is to learn and understand the most effective methods and track what produces the best results and directs the most useful web site traffic to your web site. In this article we will discuss banner ad placement.

There are probably websites out there in cyberspace with a demographic that appeals greatly to you. You may ask yourself exactly how you can tap into the demo market of a particular web site and bring some of their web site traffic to your site. Banner advertising is the way to do this. Concentrate your search on sites that focus on a similar niche to your site without being a direct competitor. Review their pricing for banner advertising to see if buying their ad space is within your budget. You may even want to contact the site administrator or Webmaster to ask about the possibility of a banner exchange program between your two sites with the idea that both sites could generate increased web site traffic. A free banner swap with a similar niche site may save you some dollars by avoiding the need to buy high priced ad spots. It’s important to remember that banner placement is crucial to the success of your banner advertising actually increasing web site traffic. This is especially important if you are spending a lot of money for your banner advertising. Many popular high traffic websites are not one bit shy about charging a good penny for ad space on their site - so know where your banner is getting placed to ensure that the money you are throwing out will actually increase your web site traffic!

It was once believed that the most effective placement for banner advertising on any website was the very top of the page. This made sense since the banner ad is immediately visible at the very beginning of the page load and requires no scrolling. Most web visitors are likely to ignore a banner that is near the bottom of the page that requires scrolling down. Banner advertising is still a hundred times more effective with a banner advert placed at the top of the page rather than the bottom of the page, however, there is also evidence that suggests that banner advertising is most effective in increasing web site traffic when ads are placed next to the right scroll bar, usually in the lower right-hand corner of the homepage or at least 1/3 down the page. This placement may generate a higher click-through rate and increased web site traffic than ads at the top of the page. This news should be particularly good for Webmasters on a tight budget when
it comes to advertising because the ads on the right-side of the page are typically smaller dimensions than ads running at the top, which typically