Affitliate Marketing

Affitliate Marketing

You joined an affiliate program. Here are the 18 steps to take next

This Affiliate Program Tutorial aims to give you a quick overview.

It's your road map to success as an affiliate.

I've been earning a good living from affiliate programs since 1998. Based on that experience, this tutorial tells you the 18 steps to take to generate a useful income from affiliate programs.

No tricks. No gimmicks. Just solid, reliable methods designed to work for years.

You have the choice of many different ways of earning affiliate commissions.

In my experience, you'll have your best chance of success if you do the following. Find a niche and create a useful, interesting, content-rich, keyword-rich website on one topic and weave in affiliate links and AdSense ads.

This method - with the more recent addition of AdSense ads - has worked beautifully for me since 1998.

I urge you to master this basic method. It's a bit like serving an apprenticeship.

As part of your apprenticeship you'll learn SEO (search engine optimization) skills, copywriting skills and various other Internet marketing skills which will prove to be invaluable, whatever route you choose next.

With any luck, you'll have a bit of fun, too! I do.

I include Google's AdSense in this tutorial. Strictly speaking, AdSense is an advertising network. However, in many ways it's similar to an affiliate program. I think AdSense is fantastic. It's free to join, free to use and easy to use.

It's often much easier to earn good money from AdSense than affiliate programs, so it's essential that you include AdSense in your plans.

OK. Let's get started...

STEP 1: Set a goal

If you want to go somewhere, you need to know where you're going.

Let's start with a modest goal. Say you aim to earn a total of $300 (US) a month in affiliate commissions and AdSense revenue. Imagine what you could do with that money. A holiday? A better lifestyle?

I've kept the amount low, because it's important that you believe you can do this. Achieve small successes first, see the money in your hands or in your bank account, and then increase your goals.

Perhaps you have much larger goals. That's OK. Whatever your goals, I strongly recommend that you serve your apprenticeship by taking these 18 steps. They'll give you solid knowledge and experience on which to build your affiliate business.

Find your niche

STEP 2: Find your niche

To help you find your niche topic, read Ken Evoy's free Affiliate Masters Course and use the excellent advice in it to find a niche that suits you and your interests.

Print out the Affiliate Masters Course, find a quiet, comfortable spot and read it several times.

Spend a lot of time thinking carefully about this and jotting down notes. You're planning a business, so don't rush it. It's very important.

You'll probably avoid Internet marketing topics because that field is so overcrowded and competitive. It's much easier to succeed if you locate a less competitive niche.

Choose a topic that is easy to write about.

Even if you've already chosen a niche, I urge you to read the Affiliate Masters Course. It might make you change your mind.

You can follow your passion or chase the money. With luck - and a bit of keyword research - you may be able to do both.

Examine your potential competitors

If you're considering building a site about hiking boots, type "hiking boots" (using quotation marks) into Google and Yahoo! and carefully examine the top 10 sites which appear in the search results.

They're your real competitors. Can you create a better, more interesting, more useful site? Can you think of a new angle, a new approach?

Do those top 10 sites all have high PageRank - say 6 or more? If so, you'll have to work really hard to get in the top 10.

Let's say the top 3 sites in Google are PageRank 8, 7 and 6. If so, you'll probably have to work hard for a couple of years or more to outrank them. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it will require either a great deal of work, or a very innovative, eye-catching approach.

You can quickly check the PageRank of your potential competitors by using Seochat's free online tool - http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/pagerank-search . Type in "hiking boots" or whatever and you'll be able to see the PageRank of the top 10 sites.

Do those sites all have the phrase in the title? (The title is the words that appear at the very top of your screen when you visit a site.) If not, you may be able to beat them.


How many links do your potential competitors have?

Do your potential competitors all have thousands of links to them? This is important, because links are important to search engines. You need good, relevant links to your site. To find out how many sites are linking to a site, use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer. Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - and login (set up a free account if necessary).

Type the URL of the site you want to explore.

Click on "Explore URL".

Click on "Inlinks".

Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks "except from this domain" and "entire site". This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.

If your potential sites have thousands of links to them, they're likely to be very tough competitors.

Don't decide definitely on a niche topic until you've taken the next two steps...

STEP 3. Choose a profitable niche

Do some research on Google AdWords and Wordtracker to choose the most profitable niche from among the ones you're considering. Because you're planning to use AdSense, you want valuable keywords or key phrases, if possible ones that people are paying at least 50 cents per click for on Yahoo! Search Marketing (it used to be called Overture) and AdWords.

You're going to build a site the search engines love, so you also want to find key phrases that many people are typing into search engines. You don't rely on guesswork.

You must do this BEFORE you start building your web site. That's critically important.

Here's a useful free tool I like using for quick, rough keyword research: pixelfast.com/overture/ (Unfortunately, this free tool is based on the free Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool which Yahoo! doesn't bother maintaining properly. Sometimes it doesn't work.)

Type in a phrase, for example, "hiking boots", click "Go", follow the instructions, and you can see how much advertisers are paying per click for that phrase on the Overture network of web sites.

You can also see how many people searched for the phrase the previous month. For a number of reasons, this figure is often unreliable and can be grossly exaggerated. For example, it gives you the SAME results for "wool rug" and "rug wool", which is ridiculous. That's why I double check results using Wordtracker.

Wordtracker's free trial is fairly limited. Fortunately, they allow you to subscribe cheaply for a week at a time. It's very fast, so you can do an awful lot of keyword research in a week. I use the annual subscription now.

Go to Google's AdWords and find out how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords or key phrases you're interested in. Here's how.

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and play around with the free Keyword Tool.

For example, try putting in a keyword or phrase, such as "recipe" and click on "Get More Keywords". Pretend you're willing to pay the maximum per click the tool allows - 100. (You can choose any currency. I chose US.)

Over on the right side of the page, make sure that "Cost and position estimates" is selected.

The tool will calculate for you the estimated average CPC (cost per click) for a whole lot of words and phrases.

Try entering a different word, say "debt" or "free", click on "Re-calculate" and watch how the CPC changes.

You don't HAVE to choose a topic which has expensive keywords. Often topics that have expensive keywords are very competitive. You may do better choosing a less competitive niche with cheaper keywords.

If you use Site Build It to build your site, you'll find the brainstorming tool in it awesome to help you come up with ideas and phrases you wouldn't have thought of without it.

Beware: If you choose certain topics, Google will not allow you to place AdSense ads on your site and you'll miss out on a very lucrative opportunity.

Such topics include gambling, firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles; beer or alcohol; tobacco or tobacco-related products; and prescription drugs.

For a full list of topics you may wish to avoid see: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US

Advertisers can choose to have their ads displayed only on Google or also on a large network of sites. Will AdSense ads you see on Google appear on your pages? To get an idea, find web pages that have material similar to the content you're planning to create and look at their AdSense ads.

For more accurate research, you can also use the free AdSense preview tool to see which ads are being displayed to people in different countries.

Another niche-finding tool I'm very fond of is Myleena's NicheInspector. Using this powerful tool will save you a LOT of time, because it automates a great deal of the work. If you're going to get this tool, make sure you read her free report before you start using it, because her free report explains why she uses the methods she does.

Don't make any firm decision on your niche until you've taken the next step...

Research affiliate merchants

STEP: 4. Research affiliate merchants

Before you make a firm decision on a topic for your site, you'll need to do research to see if there are suitable affiliate products which match your topic.

You want affiliate merchants that have excellent products, excellent reputations and sites that look as though they're good at selling. You can search the AssociatePrograms.com affiliate directory for ideas.

Consider aiming for lifetime commissions.

If you're lucky, you'll manage to select a web site topic that has affiliate programs which pay lifetime commissions or residual commissions - the sort reviewed at LifetimeCommissions.com.

You'll earn repeat commissions when "your" customers make more purchases

Build a useful, interesting web site on your niche

STEP 5: Build a useful, interesting web site on your niche

Here's an very important step. Many newcomer affiliates who fail do so because they have overlooked its importance.

Don't just build a website. Build a useful, interesting website on your niche.

One of the best ways is to build a site which solves people's problems. Useful sites also often help their visitors decide which products to buy.

Create a content rich, keyword-rich site, designed to be found in search engines.

Show your personality. Have a bit of fun. Be memorable. You need to connect with your visitors. Remember that people like buying from people they like.

There's no space in this affiliate program tutorial to describe how to build a website. For that, you'll need a good instruction manual.

If you're short of money, you can hunt for free information on sites such HTMLGoodies.

You'll save yourself an enormous amount of time and frustration if you take the plunge and buy a good instruction manual.

Here are the two best options:

(1.) For keen do-it-your-selfers, I recommend Rosalind Gardner's Super Affiliate Handbook.

Rosalind is a real been-there-done-that super affiliate.

Her instruction manual shows you how she builds very successful sites using web authoring software.

It starts right at the beginning, discussing topics such as myths about doing business online, mistakes to avoid, how to choose the best topic, how to choose the right domain name, etc.

The book, updated in May 2006, takes you step-by-step through the whole process.

One particularly useful feature is her explanation of how she achieves high conversion rates (visitor-to-sales ratios), achieving conversion rates of 4% or 6% while most affiliates are happy with 1%.

Another of the strengths of the book is her descriptions of a wide variety of ways to get traffic to your site. This is important - too many affiliates rely on just one or two traffic-generating methods. The more traffic-generating methods you have, the safer your business is.

Rosaland is genuinely successful, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Now she's also a very successful author, with sales of more $1 million from her book, which is excellent value.

When you learn from her, you're learning from a winner.

Learn more about Rosalind's Super Affiliate Handbook here.

(2.) For affiliates who want to simplify things as much as possible and automate the tedious techie stuff, I recommend Ken Evoy's Site Build It (SBI).

SBI is a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting suite of tools, all in one place.

Once you have SBI, you don't have to go scurrying all over the Net adding more tools and software. You have almost all you need in one package, so you can concentrate on the fun part - creating useful, interesting content.

Here's what one happy SBI user says

SBI comes with a newly updated, truly comprehensive instruction manual, a step-by-step Action Guide, and a truly superb private forum where SBI users share information and help each other.

SBI is the tool I give my assistants. Take the free Video Tour and you'll understand why.

Ken Evoy's instruction manual is doing my work for me. First it taught Rupert and then Ros how to build a high quality, successful, revenue-generating site. Now it's being used by another assistant to whom I outsource website maintenance.

You could build a site without SBI, but using it saves you time and effort by simplifying the process. It provides a recipe for business success.

SBI teaches you how to optimize your web pages so they'll be found in search engines. After building a page, you click the "Analyze It" button and it tells you what you need to do to improve it.

The SBI technique really works. Two of the SBI sites that Rupert built are included in the case studies on the SBI site.

Add affiliate links

STEP 6: Add affiliate links

As you write the articles for your site, weave affiliate links into them. Always have a typical visitor in mind as you write the articles. Speak to that visitor.

Your task as an affiliate is to help your visitor decide what to buy.

One successful technique is to gradually lead your visitor towards a purchase. Start by outlining a problem, discuss a good solution that has worked for you, and end the article with a link that is a call to action, such as a hyperlink that says, "Find out more here."

Your task as an affiliate is NOT to sell (that's the merchant's job) but to presell, to warm up your visitors. You want your visitors in a ready-to-buy frame of mind when they arrive at the merchant's site.

For superb advice on preselling, I strongly recommend you join Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program. It's free to join.

Ken is an absolute whiz at preselling and he's renowned for working extremely hard to help his affiliates succeed. He has a superb program. It's been No.1 in my Top 10 for several years. I earn five-figure monthly commissions from this affiliate program.

STEP 7: Place AdSense ads on your site

If you have a good, popular site, it's remarkably easy to make good money with Google AdSense. AdSense is free to join.

Get good quality links to your site

STEP 8: Get good quality links to your site

Without links to your site, your site won't be found in the search engines. So you MUST get links to your site, if possible from "authority" sites - ones that have lots of links to them.

First, link to other sites. Choose sites that have similar or related themes, and invite those sites to link to you.

This is hugely important. Search engines love sites that have many links to them - especially if those links come from sites which are themselves popular.

Now you see why I said build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, people are more likely to link to your site.

Here's an article I wrote describing how to get reciprocal links.

Reciprocal links should be only a small part of your marketing strategy - not your whole marketing strategy.

Even better than reciprocal links are one-way links. Here's an article describing how to get one-way links.

Some of these one-way links techniques are fairly advanced and require considerable work. Most of your competitors will be too lazy to do them, so you'll have a big advantage if you do. They can make the difference between a hobby site and a serious, very profitable business.

STEP 9: Anchor text

You'll also need to understand the importance of anchor text, the words you use to link to pages on your site, the words people use when they link to your site.

To search engines, anchor text is very important.

STEP 10: List your site in major directories and niche directories in your industry.

You probably already know about Yahoo! (good but expensive) and DMOZ (often takes months to get into).

Here are some more directories (some charge a fee):

Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
Business.com
GoGuides
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
Looksmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind

Guides to web directories

David Mahler has a Guide to Web Directories. It's a good list of recommended web directories.

Here's another list: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

How to find niche directories:

• Go to Search It! (It's a very handy free research tool.)
• Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
• Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
• Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
• Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It!
• Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results
• Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee, some are free.

Place your articles on other websites

STEP 11: Place your articles on other websites

Write articles and distribute them to article directories (fairly easy) and try to persuade newsletters and other sites to publish them (more challenging.

This step isn't absolutely essential, but it helps enormously if you do it. Now you understand why it was so important that you chose a topic that was easy to write about.

STEP 12: Add more pages and get more links.

Keep adding useful, interesting, keyword-rich pages (you do research at Wordtracker for this) and keep encouraging more sites to link to your site.

Make friends with other web site owners, and more people will link to you...

STEP 13: Be patient.

If your new site is typical, nothing much will seem to happen for the first couple of months or so, and you'll probably become frustrated and find it hard to believe that this is going to work.

You're likely to feel annoyed, cheated and ready to quit. You're likely to be a prime target for people selling get-rich-quick junk.

Many affiliates give up at this stage. Stick with it. If you're persistent and get the details right, the process I'm describing works beautifully.

Learn something new every day. Do something to improve your business every day. If you do this, success is inevitable.

Expect to see signs of success

STEP 14: Expect to see signs of success.

Eventually, because of all the links to your site on other sites, Google, Yahoo! and MSN will find your site and start sending you traffic.

Perhaps around the three-month or four-month stage you'll be receiving 100 visitors a day. Visitors will like what they see and some site owners will start linking to you and asking you to link to them.

Keep at it. You're just getting warmed up.

STEP 15: The payoff...

About six months down the road, after little expense but quite a lot of hard work and research, you hit your magical $300 a month mark, from affiliate sales and from AdSense ads on your site.

Depending on the niche you've chosen and the skills you've learned, you might earn considerably more than $300.

Perhaps after 12 months, you'll be earning $500 to $1,000 a month from your site.

The checks keep coming in, month after month, even when you take a little vacation. You start telling friends how easy affiliate marketing is, and are puzzled when they're not convinced.

Of course, it's not really easy. It just seems easy after you've done the hard work.

...or the NON-payoff

If you've merely scanned the instruction manual and jumped right in without doing any research and built a "Make Money on the Internet" site, you'll probably earn very little. A search on Google for "make money" displays more than 4 million pages. If one of those is yours, you have a LOT of competition.

If you did this and it isn't working for you, go back to step 1 and start again.

Tweak your site

STEP 16: Tweak your site

To boost your conversion rate (your visitor-to-sales ratio), try little experiments, one thing at a time.

Try changing the heading on a page, the words, the colors, the placement of your links. With each change wait until about 1,000 visitors have seen the change, and monitor your affiliate commissions to see if they rise or fall.

You do this because you understand that if 1% of your visitors are buying and tiny changes boost your success rate to 2%, you'll DOUBLE your commissions.

STEP 17: The future

When you reach your goal of $300 a month, you wonder whether you should expand your site, perhaps adding a newsletter, an autoresponder course or two, a forum, RSS newsfeeds, a blog, a whitepaper, a report to sell ... and turn it into a portal. You dream big. Perhaps you even start dreaming of having your own affiliates promoting your reports for you...

Or perhaps you just research another little overlooked niche and start on your next simple little, low-maintenance money-generating site.

It can be done. The main ingredient needed is persistence. Been there, done that, and I have a very nice lifestyle to prove it.

The $300 a month target is very conservative. If that's all you earn, you've done something "wrong". You haven't chosen profitable keywords carefully enough, you haven't built enough attractive, keyword-rich pages, you haven't learned the basics of optimizing pages for search engines, or you haven't attracted enough good quality links to your site.

That's the wonderful thing about this business. You can make lots of mistakes and still earn useful money. Just don't make TOO many mistakes.

STEP 18: Take the first step

That's the one that matters most.

I suggest you go back and read through this affiliate program tutorial again.

Picture yourself owning a successful Internet business. Picture yourself opening letters and finding checks in them. Picture yourself going into your PayPal account and seeing the latest commissions you've been paid by affiliate merchants.

Imagine enjoying yourself spending the money, perhaps even giving up your day job so that you can concentrate on your own business.

Now take the first step.

And when you've quit your day job, please write and tell me. I love getting emails like that.

Source Taken From: http://www.associateprograms.com/

Three Ways to Reduce Banner Blindness

Three Ways to Reduce Banner Blindness

If you display your own ads or buy ads from another website, the following methods might help to reduce the likelihood of banner blindness.

1. Ad Rotation. This is a common method used by webmasters to ensure that visitors don’t immediately overlook the specific ads they run. In the case of contextual ads, you can run rotate ads of different color schemes and formats. This might be useful although I recommend tracking clicks to monitor its effect. Wordpress powered blogs can use the Wpads plugin or Ad Rotator plugin.

2. Incorporate Tagline and Unique Names. I’ve not seen this mentioned elsewhere but I think it will definitely improve the clickthrough rate. The trick is to make your ad message a similar variation or spin on the tagline or name of the site you are advertising on.

For example, if you’re running a banner ad on Dosh Dosh, a tagline like ‘making money online‘ or some variation of that will increase the perceived relevance or usefulness of the ad. Use of the site name (”Dosh Dosh”) might help as well, but do confirm if the site owner is fine with attaching their name to your ad.

3. Use Images of Faces. Nielsen mentions that the use of faces will attract visitor attention and I do think this is true. You don’t have to include racy pictures of cleavages but you can include an attractive face in your ad in order to make it stand out from the rest of the site.

Most content-heavy websites feature lots of text and the use of faces in ads may ‘humanize’ the overall experience of the site. Here’s an example of a banner ad that uses a pretty face to attract visitors:

Banner Advertising Continue....

Types of banner ad campaigns

Banner advertising campaigns generally fall into two categories: branding campaigns and click-through campaigns. This article gives a general overview of both types of campaigns and how to achieve good results with them.

Branding banner ad campaigns

Click-through banner ad campaigns

Conclusion

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Branding banner ad campaigns

Branding campaigns are done for the purpose of getting a company's name out to the public. They usually coincide with promotional advertisements in other venues: print, radio, television, sponsorship of events, etc.

The type of company that employs a branding banner ad campaign may either already be well-established with the public (like Coca-Cola or Microsoft), or it may be a company that isn't yet known to the public but has the resources to do a large promotion.

Branding banner ad campaigns have certain advantages over regular click-through banner ad campaigns. A branding banner ad does not have to concern itself so much with immediate or short-term results. It can be an advantage to prominently advertise your company name and web address right inside the banner itself. (Even featuring a contact phone number can work well.)

The goal is not so much to get people to click immediately on your banner ad but to have your company's name stick in the mind of the public through repeated advertising. You want to make your audience feel familiar enough with your company image (or reinforce that feeling of familiarity) that going to your Web site is almost second nature.

Furthermore, if you are purchasing keyword or category displays in search engines and directories, respectively, and your branding banner ad appears on those sites over a period of time, end users will tend to associate those keywords with your company name.

The downside of branding campaigns is that they require much more money to maintain than click-through campaigns, and it's harder to gauge when a branding banner ad campaign is working successfully (or what should be changed if it isn't).

Since click-through rates (CTRs) are not an effective measure of a banner ad's success, you need to establish a longer time frame for whether visitors to and/or sales on your site increase as a result of your branding campaign.

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Click-through banner ad campaigns

If you are a small-to-midsize company and have a limited budget for purchasing banner ads, you need to realize maximum effectiveness each time your banner ad is displayed. This requires a click-through banner ad campaign. You should use this type of campaign not to promote your company but to connect with your audience on the most direct level.

A click-through campaign banner ad may call for action on your audience's part (for example, it may state what they want or need and how they can use your site to get it), or it may share strong feelings, such as humor or outrage, to catch your audience's attention or elicit a reaction. (One banner ad could combine the two and allow you to figuratively throw a pie in the face of a big tycoon who raises our gas prices.)

Another effective click-through strategy is to design a trick banner ad, in which the graphics look like actual links or buttons. For example, many advertisers of software and online utilities use banner ads that look like dialog boxes. As long as the banner ad takes viewers to the kind of site they're expecting when they click on it, clever "trick" banner ad graphics are acceptable enticements to get them to click.

The disadvantage of click-through banner ads is that they force you to target your audience more accurately. If you make your banner ad too general, or even deceptive, you'll get a large number of click-throughs but few sales. This can also cost a lot if you have an account with a web advertising company that charges you per click-through. Make sure your banner ad is an accurate reflection of what you're offering or takes people right to where they're expecting to go.

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Conclusion

We have found the most effective banner advertising campaigns to be a combination of branding and click-through strategies. Both types of banner ads should feature a call to action and offer a clear benefit to end users. Any web site that has a clear benefit to end users and actually delivers on that benefit will get positive branding with its customers.

Make money from your web site - the best banner ad networks

There's more than just contextual advertising networks as a means of generating revenue from your web site. In some scenarios, contextual ads just don't work and you need to be able to take greater control over what appears in the ad space. Consider utilizing banner ad networks.

Banner advertising payout rates have definitely decreased since the heady days of the late 90's, but there is some good news for web masters looking for a flexible and reliable way of selling banner ad space. Banner ads have come a long way with many different options and variations on creatives. On a related topic, if you're more interested in implementing pop up/under ads as a means of generating income, learn more in our pop up and pop under revenue guide.

Best Banner-Popunder Network Our recommendation for generating income Valueclick Advertising network Save yourself the hundreds of hours of trial and error & view our review of the best banner advertising network around

Teaming up the best banner advertising network rather than intensive marketing to individual clients can save a lot of time and provide you with a steady income. The size of that cash flow is a numbers game - the more relevant ads you display, the more you will probably make. The networks provide the clients and the ads, you simply implement some code in your banner space and the ad will appear. In your association with these companies, you will be known as an "affiliate" or "publisher".

We decided to research the best banner advertising network for publishers/affiliates who have a site of our size. We tried many different networks, but only one stood out - more on that later. Many promised a great deal, but returned nothing. Some networks allowed very unethical advertisers to peddle their wares. On investigating a number of networks, we also discovered a few of them did not pay in accordance with their terms and conditions - worse still, some did not pay at all.

The following is a list of desirable affiliate/publisher features that you should look for before agreeing to "rent" out your prime advertising space to an agency:

Targeting

Does the network provide ads that are relevant to your subject area or that would appeal to the users of your web site? Irrelevant ads will not only fail if you are participating in a CPC campaign, but they may annoy your visitors.

CPC, CPM and CPA options

A good ad agency will give you a mixture of CPC and CPM ads. CPC ads pay when a visitor to your site clicks on a banner through to an advertisers web site . CPM advertising is based on $X.XX per thousand views (impressions). Another variation is CPA - a visitor clicks a banner, passes through to the advertiser's web site and either purchases (a sale) or expresses interest (a lead) in the companies products or services. CPA pays the highest but usually has a much lower conversion ratio.

Control over ads displayed

The better ad networks have comprehensive publisher/affiliate administrative interfaces where you can preview a banner and decide whether you want that particular campaign displayed on your site. This is particularly useful if you (or your visitors) object to certain kinds of advertising - such as those wonderful flashing ads that we have all grown to love ;0) - an interesting and amazing fact is that those flashing ads do draw high clickthrough rates - figure that one out! If your agency is really on the ball, there will also be visual flags in your administration area to indicate that the ad contains references to adult material, gambling or tobacco related products etc.

Default ad control

Most agencies have quotas on the number of ads appearing to particular users. After that quota is filled for the hour or day etc., "default" ads will be displayed. These banners do not earn you any money - but they do tend to display community oriented ads, so you can also be promoting positive social messages - but be sure to check this out before signing up. Quality agencies will also give you control over these default ads allowing you to display your own offers instead. This gives you further opportunities in making money from this prime advertising space. If the default banner rate is too high in proportion to paying banners, and those non-paying banners promote other businesses, then these networks are well worth avoiding.

Rates

The days of the $10.00 CPM ads are pretty much well over, unless you find advertisers yourself by direct marketing, but there are still great payment rate differences between networks. Shop around carefully. You should aim to receive on average US$1.00 - $4.00 CPM or at least US$.15 - $.20 CPC.

Referral Bonuses

Another way to benefit financially from your publisher/affiliate association is to be paid a percentage of any referrals of new affiliates or advertisers to the network from your web site. Again, the rates vary greatly between networks, but an ongoing rate of 5% is a level that can provide you with decent residual income in the years ahead. With advertising campaigns quite often running into thousands of dollars, it is possible to draw a good supplementary income from referring advertisers.

Payout Schedule

Look for a banner network that pays promptly. I came across a couple of agencies that paid up to 4 months after the end of month! A common pay schedule is anything from 15-30 days after the end of month.

Terms and Conditions

Before joining any banner ad network, ensure you read the terms and conditions carefully. The banner advertising industry is well known for its share of fraud - perpetrated by all parties. Some agencies combat this with Draconian rules, which gives publishers and affiliates very little flexibility - look for an agency that takes fraud seriously, but still gives you some room to move. It is also EXTREMELY important to read the terms and conditions carefully, otherwise you may be breaking the rules without even knowing it. This usually results in termination of your account and forfeit of any money that you have made.

Variety of mediums

Many major ad networks now also offer interstitial, in-vues, pop-up and pop-under campaigns and other advertising creatives as a means of creating income from your web site. For a more detailed look at the pop-up and pop-under industry, read our guide.

And the winner is..

So, back to the results - who did we find to be the best banner ad network? The Valueclick Advertising network. Learn more about why we chose them as the top banner agency.

Other revenue generation options

One of the most popular revenue generation methods that pay well and is very easy to implement is Google AdSense:

Another way to derive income from your web site is through affiliate programs that offer text links. Descriptive text links are not only kinder on bandwidth and load times, but tend to draw higher click through rates. Learn more of the benefits and pitfalls of the text link affiliate game and also some of the better networks around.

While you may not make a million dollars through banner ads, they can be a good way to recuperate web site maintenance costs and stick a few bucks in the bank. If you do make a million bucks as a result of our recommendations, donations will be gratefully accepted! ;0)

Affiliate marketing - resources

Working with merchants

Successful affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing survival strategies

Protecting your affiliate commissions

Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
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Copyright information.... This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety & this copyright statement must be included. Visit http://www.tamingthebeast.net for free Internet marketing and web development articles, tutorials and tools! Subscribe for free to our popular ecommerce/web design ezine!

Online Marketing with SEO Services by Chandan Singh

Hi All,



Before my Posting first of all i want to introduce my self.........



My name is Chandan Singh and done MCA from UP technical Univer Lucknow (UP) India. Presntly working in vAngelz Technology Pvt Ltd as a SEO-TL from last 2.5 Years.

I want to share my ideas and informations about online marketing and SEO services to all of you that's why i am creating this blog.



First of all Starting from Online marketing Strategies and ways then after i'll discuss how we get profit by SEO services in india and in all worlds.



In this blog i am explaing following point for online marketing.



1) Banner advertising

2) Affiliate marketing

3) Email Marketing

4) PPC (Pay Per Click)

5) Viral Marketing

6) SEO Services



After these abve points i'll give you another ways for online marketing.



Lets discuss about above point................



1) Banner Advertising: I am starting from some Glossary.....

Ad: An ad can refer to a banner, button, pop-up screen, and so on. Ads are counted with impressions and clicks.

Ad clicks: The number of clicks on an online ad within a specific period of time.

Ad views: The number of times a banner ad is actually loaded.

Banner ad: An image file that displays an online advertisement typically sized for placement at the top or bottom of a Web page and linked to another page.

Brand equity: A positive image established through name recognition (for example, Amazon.com).

Click-through: A click-through is registered whenever a viewer clicks on a banner ad. This measurement is important to determine whether an ad is successfully getting traffic.

Conversion rate: The rate at which people are converted from viewing an ad to committing a desirable action on an advertiser's site, such as a sale or registration.

Cost per sale: The average advertising cost per online sale.

CPA (cost per action): When referring to banner ads, CPA is the cost the advertiser pays to the site publisher each time a specific, visitor-initiated action occurs, e.g., the completion of a sale.

CPC (cost per click): When referring to banner ads, CPC is the cost the advertiser pays to the site publisher each time a visitor clicks on the advertiser's ad.

CPM (cost per thousand): When referring to banner ads, the CPM is the cost per thousand impressions. This equals how much an advertiser pays for 1,000 page views or impressions of its banner. See also impression.

CTR (click-through rate): The percentage of times an ad is clicked on, based on the number of times it's viewed. If a banner ad is seen by 200 hundred site visitors and 10 of them actually click on the ad, the banner ad has a click-though rate of 5 percent.

Exposures: The number of times a viewer sees a sponsor's banner image.

Filter: A program that processes individual, personal preferences in an attempt to deliver relevant information to a particular end user.

Flat-fee advertising: Banner ad fees based on a stable rate each month, unrelated to the number of impressions or click-throughs the banner receives.

General rotation: Random display of a banner ad on a Web site. Equivalent to run of site advertising.


Hit: A hit occurs when a surfer downloads a file for viewing in his or her Web browser. Every time a site's Web server passes information (text, graphics, calls to CGI scripts, MIDI recordings, QuickTime movies) to an end user, it records a hit in the log file with that file's path name. For example, if you download a Web page containing text and three images, you will have registered five hits -- one hit for the HTML page, one hit for the text file, and one hit for each graphic file. The Web server hosting these files keeps track of the number of accesses made by each viewer and stores this information in a log file. Hits are not the best measure of how many people are viewing your site; however, they do tell you exactly what your viewers are downloading.

Impression (page view): This term is often used to tell advertisers how many times their banner ad was seen by visitors viewing the page. Impressions (page views) describe the information received by a Web site visitor after he or she has downloaded all the elements (text and graphics) that make up a single Web page. A reasonable rule of thumb is that approximately 10 "hits" equals one page impression. See also hit.

Impression totals: The total number of times a banner ad is displayed on a Web page.

Media objects: Files, other than HTML documents, that can be displayed or executed within HTML documents, or in a stand-alone fashion. Examples include GIFs, JPEGs, video, audio, PDF files, and Java applets.

Qualified hits: Hits to a Web server that deliver information to a user. Qualified hits exclude error messages (e.g., "URL not found" or "Permission denied"), redirects, and requests by computer programs.

Rate card: A page with detailed pricing information.

Run-of-site advertising: Random display of a banner ad on a Web site. Equivalent to general rotation.


Visit: A request made for a page by a user. On any given visit, a user may request several pages as he or she navigates through the site. If a user makes no requests during a predetermined period of time, his/her next request would begin a new visit.

Visitor-to-sales ratio: The number of people who have visited a site divided by the number of people who made a purchase on that site.

If you've spent any time surfing the Internet, you've seen more than your fair share of banner ads. These small rectangular advertisements appear on all sorts of Web pages and vary considerably in appearance and subject matter, but they all share a basic function: if you click on them, your Internet browser will take you to the advertiser's Web site. But how do they work and why are they there?

Banner ads are usually relatively simple pieces of HTML code, but their presence on the Web and their importance in Internet-based business is immense. In this edition of How Stuff Works, we'll examine banner ads and their place on the Internet. We'll see how they work, how advertisers rate their effectiveness, and how you can use them to advertise your site or bring in revenue. We'll also examine the technology behind them and look at some of the different forms they can take. By the end of this article, you will be a banner ad expert!

What is a Banner Ad?

Over the past few years, most of us have heard about all the money being made on the Internet. This new medium of education and entertainment has revolutionized the economy and brought many people and many companies a great deal of success. But where is all this money coming from? There are a lot of ways Web sites make money, but one of the main sources of revenue is advertising. And one of the most popular forms of Internet advertising is the banner ad.

A banner ad is simply a special sort of hypertext link. If you've read the How Stuff Works article "How Web Pages Work", then you know how a basic text link works. A bit of HTML code instructs a Web server to bring up a particular Web page when a user clicks on a certain piece of text. Banner ads are essentially the same thing, except that instead of text, the link is displayed as a box containing graphics (usually with textual elements) and sometimes animation.

Because of its graphic element, a banner ad is somewhat similar to a traditional ad you would see in a printed publication such as a newspaper or magazine, but it has the added ability to bring a potential customer directly to the advertiser's Web site. This is something like touching a printed ad and being immediately teleported to the advertiser's store! A banner ad also differs from a print ad in its dynamic capability. It stays in one place on a page, like a magazine ad, but it can present multiple images, include animation and change appearance in a number of other ways.

Types of Banner Ads

Like print ads, banner ads come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) specifies eight different banner sizes, according to pixel dimensions. A pixel is the smallest unit of color used to make up images on a computer or television screen. The IAB's standard banner sizes are:

Rich Media Banners:

Definition & Dimensions: Standard banners (468x60 pixels) which use rich media technologies such as HTML, Flash and Java.

Rich Media File Size: Up to 15kb initial load. Up to an additional: 85k may be loaded after a user moves their cursor over or clicks on the banner.

Rollover Expands: A banner may expand to as large as 468 x 240 pixels after a user moves their cursor over it, and should automatically close when the cursor moves off the banner.

Click Expands: A banner may expand to as large as 468 x 240 pixels after a user clicks on it, and can stay expanded until the user clicks a clearly labelled "close" button.

Audio/Video: A banner may play audio and/or video content after a user clicks on it, and should display a visible "stop" or "pause" button once the audio/video begins.

Rich Media Skyscrapers

Definition & Dimensions: Interactive Marketing Units (120 x 600 or 160x 600 pixels) which use rich media technologies such as HTML, Flash and Java.

Rich Media File Size: Up to 20kb initial load. Up to 3 additional loads of up to 50kb each may be initiated after a user moves their cursor over or clicks on the skyscraper

Non-rich File Size: As previously stated in the February 2001 IAB IMU Guidelines, non-rich media skyscrapers should be 15kb maximum file size.

Audio/Video: A skyscraper may play audio and/or video content after a user clicks on it, and should display a visible "stop" or "pause" button once the audio/video begins.
Rich Media Rectangles

Definition & Dimensions:

Interactive Marketing Units (336x280, 300x250, 180x150 or 240x400 pixels), which use rich media technologies such as HTML, Flash and Java.

Rich Media File Size:

Up to 25kb initial load. Up to 3 additional loads of up to 50kb each may be initiated after a user moves their cursor over or clicks on the rectangle

Non-rich File Size:

As previously stated in the February 2001 IAB IMU Guidelines, non-rich media rectangles should be 20kb maximum file size.

Audio/Video:

A rectangle may play audio and/or video content after a user clicks on it, and should display a visible "stop" or "pause" button once the audio/video begins.

Rich Media Pop-ups

Square pop-up:

Definition: Pop-ups automatically launch in a new browser window when a Web page is loaded.
Dimensions: As previously stated in the February 2001 IAB IMU Guidelines, these pop-ups should be 250 x 250 pixels.

Rich Media File Size: As previously stated in the February 2001 IAB IMU Guidelines, these pop-ups should be 20kb maximum file size.

Large pop-up:

Definition: Pop-ups automatically launch in a new browser window when a Web page is loaded.
Dimensions: Up to 550 x 550 pixels maximum

Rich Media File Size: 100kb maximum file size

Why these formats?

original IAB banner guidelines were landmark for online advertising industry help publishers, advertisers and their agencies make the Internet a more effective marketing medium new additional spaces offer greater flexibility and expanded capabilities and choice for the creative community wide adoption will create a more effective medium, for cohesive branding and direct marketing campaigns note that these voluntary guidelines are additions to the existing banner guidelines that we have previously issued as our medium evolves, additional new formats which move the business forward will be recommended to the industry many websites have agreed agreement that these new shapes and sizes will accept an initial load of 15K for Skyscrapers and 20K initial load for all other new shapes. Larger file sizes may also be agreed to by the publisher and the client.

Researching these formatsNew research proves their branding power Key findings from IAB research world-wide:

The traditional IAB 468 X 60 banner works to increase brand awareness, message association, brand favourability and purchase intent.
The new larger IAB “Skyscraper” formats improve key branding metrics by an average of 40% across all three studies compared to baseline measures for the nine advertisers.
Rich Media technologies such as audio, video, Flash and DHTML used with IMUs deliver greater impact and conclusively increase branding effectiveness.
Ad implementation makes a difference e.g. interstitial ads, displayed during a transition from one Web page to the next, boost key brand metrics by an average of 194%.

The IAB conclusions:

Rich Media creates higher post-impression activity
Rich Media creates higher post-impression sales activity!
Bigger Ads Work better for Branding
Prime Time is work time
Use day-targeting or other targeting options
Use frequency-caps to avoid ‘irritation’

Banner Ad Objectives

Advertisers generally hope a banner ad will do one of two things. Ideally, a visitor to the publisher site, the Web site that posts the banner ad, will click on the banner ad and go to the advertiser's Web site. In this case the banner ad has brought the advertiser a visitor they would not have had otherwise. The banner ad is a real success if the visitor not only comes to the site but also buys something. Failing a click-through, advertisers hope that a publisher site visitor will see the banner ad and will somehow register it in their heads. This could mean the visitor consciously notes the content of a banner ad and decides to visit the advertiser's site at some time in the future, or it might mean that the visitor only peripherally picks up on the ad but is made aware of the advertiser's product or service.

This second effect of advertising is known as branding. We've all experienced the effects of branding before. Say you see ads on television for Brand X glue all the time. The ads don't seem to particularly affect you -- you don't leap from your couch to go buy glue -- but down the road, when you're at the store shopping for glue, they may affect the decision you make. If you don't have any other reason to choose one type of glue over the others, you'll probably choose the one you're most familiar with, Brand X, even if you're only familiar with it because of advertising.
So there are several ways a banner ad can be successful. Consequently, there are several ways advertisers measure banner ad success. Advertisers look at:

Who Makes Banner Ads?

Pretty much anybody with computer knowledge can learn how to make a very basic banner ad. To code the banner, simply combine the HTML tag for a link with the HTML tag for an image. You can create the necessary graphics using a simple computer art program, like Paint Shop Pro, which you can download from this site.

To understand the coding involved, let's look at an example. Here is a basic static banner ad for How Stuff Works:




As you can see, the information in quotes is the URL for the How Stuff Works home page. If you were writing a text link, you would simply write something like "How Stuff Works" in the blank space, and a site visitor could click on those words to bring up the HSW home page. To make a banner link, you do pretty much the same thing, except instead of text, you put a tag for a graphic in the empty space.

In this case, the tag simply consists of the URL location of the graphic image; the full URL would be "http://www.howstuffworks.com/gif/banner-ad-static.gif" (go to this URL and you will see the graphic), but we only need to put the last part of the URL here, since we are already within "http://www.howstuffworks.com." This tells a visitor's browser to load the image posted at that particular URL. The visitor can then click anywhere on the entire image to visit the How Stuff Works home page. For more information on how to code image and hyperlink tags, check out the How Stuff Works article, How Web Pages Work.

Basic, static banner ads are so simple you can make a few for your site in an afternoon, and animated GIF banner ads aren't much more complicated. On the other end of the spectrum are complicated rich media ads. Ads with elaborate animation or user interactivity require much more extensive programming ability.

Amateur banner ads often work fine, but with so many ads competing for viewer attention, many Web sites need the help of professional ad designers. Good advertising agencies and professional designers not only bring their programming skills to banner ad creation, but also their creativity and extensive marketing experience. They work to match a banner ad campaign with the advertiser's product or service, and to make innovative, attention-getting graphic content. There are many ad agencies and free-lance banner ad designers serving Web sites today, and they have a wide range of experience, ability and success. They also have a wide range of fees: You can get a professional banner ad for $50 or you can spend upwards of $1,000.
There are also Web sites that offer free banner ad creation. They either provide you with all the components you need to create your own banner ad, such as backgrounds and fonts, or they create a banner ad for you. These designers and companies do this for a number of reasons. Some simply make money from advertising on their sites, some offer free banner creation in exchange for their customers posting client banner ads on the customer's site and a few designers simply create banners as a hobby.

Some popular free banner design sites are:

Make Your Banner.com
ABC Banners
Atomic Arts
Like most forms of advertising, banner ads vary considerably in quality because their creators vary a great deal in ability and experience. The range is even greater with banner ads than with most other forms, however, because it is so easy and inexpensive to create and post banners.

Advertising with Banners

An advertiser that is interested in posting banner ads on other sites has three basic options. The advertiser can: Arrange to display other Web sites' banner ads in exchange for them displaying its ad.

Pay publisher sites to post its banner.

Pay an organization, usually a banner network like DoubleClick or Flycast, to post the banner on a number of publisher sites.

These three arrangements take many forms and advertisers and publishers must choose the specific arrangement that best suits them. If you want to post banner ads on other sites but don't have the capital to mount a traditional advertising campaign, you may choose to exchange banner ads with other sites. There are two ways you can go about this. The first is to individually develop relationships with other Web sites and trade specific banners. This is a very natural process and allows you to place your banner ads conscientiously and post other Web site banner ads that fit your site well. Your banner ad doesn't end up on very many sites, however, unless you invest a whole lot of your time in seeking out interested webmasters.
If you want to get your banner ad on a lot of sites in a short amount of time (and don't want to pay for it) then your best bet is joining a banner exchange program.

Banner Exchange Programs

Banner exchange programs offer a simple service. If you post a certain number of banner ads on your site, they will post your banner ad on another site. Usually, this isn't an even exchange; you have to post more than one banner ad for every one of your banner ads they post. This is how the exchange program makes a profit. Their arrangement yields them more banner ad spaces than actual banner ads they need to place for their members, so they can sell the extra banner ad spaces to paying advertisers. The exact ratio varies, but 2:1, posting two banner ads on your site for every one of yours posted on another site, is a typical arrangement.

Most banner exchange programs distribute banner ads in the same way. For every banner ad you've decided to display, the exchange provides you with a piece of HTML code. This code instructs a visitor's Web browser to bring up a banner ad from the exchange program's server. This enables the exchange program to easily change which banner ads are on which sites. They can also monitor the success of particular banner ads on particular member sites, which helps them to pair sites with suitable advertisers.

The advantage of joining a banner exchange program is it's a free way to get other sites to post your banner ads. The disadvantage is that you give up a lot of control over where your ads are posted and what ads are posted on your site. In most cases, the banner exchange program chooses where to put its members' banner ads, and you may not like what they decide to post on your site or where they end up posting your banner ad. Most banner exchange programs attempt to link banner ads and sites intelligently, and they often do a good job, but there is a possibility that at some point you will be dissatisfied with a banner ad that ends up on your site.
Some major banner exchange programs are:
LinkExchange
BannerSwap
SmartClicks
Free Banners
LinkBuddies

Buying Advertising

If you are interested in buying advertising space, you have a few different options. You can:
Approach Web sites yourself
Employ an advertising agency
Join a banner ad network
Start an affiliate program

Each of these options has its own advantages and disadvantages, as we will see.
Approach Web Sites YourselfThis is an involved, time-consuming way to place your banner ads, but it does offer some significant advantages. Mainly, placing all your banner ads yourself gives you a lot of control over how you advertise. You can fully investigate potential publisher sites to decide if their content matches yours and you can often work with the site to find the best location for your ad. This can be a relatively inexpensive way of advertising, if you target small Web sites that don't attract a lot of other advertisers. If you choose such sites carefully, your banner ad can be fairly effective. A small Web site that caters to a particular niche may not have very high traffic, but the people who do visit are all interested in some of the same things. If you sell rare PEZ machines, for example, a well-placed ad on a small toy collector site could bring you significant traffic.

To place advertisements this way, you have to approach each site individually, follow its particular procedures and purchase its particular advertising packages. Start by searching the site to see if they have a page for potential advertisers. If you can't find anything online, call the site or send them e-mail. Shop around for an advertising arrangement that meets your needs and fits your budget.

Larger sites will probably have a set advertising package with a relatively high price tag. Most sites sell advertising space on a CPM basis, in a package consisting of a certain number of impressions. CPM varies considerably -- you can expect to pay anywhere from $5 to $100 per thousand impressions on a fairly popular site. There is such a wide range because different Web sites have different levels of popularity and different sorts of audiences. A site with consistently high traffic will usually charge a lot more than a less popular site. If a site caters to a particular niche, it may charge more than a general interest site because its advertisers can more effectively target a specific demographic. The amount of impressions in an advertising package varies, but 50,000 to 200,000 impressions sold at a time is typical of good-sized sites. Smaller sites may not have any advertising plan whatsoever, which means you might be able to work out a good deal with them.

Employ an Advertising AgencyA full-service advertising agency will do most of the work of posting banner ads for you, and it will lend its expertise to the process. Agencies help you seek out suitable publisher sites, they negotiate the price of banner ad space, and they help you make the best use of your advertising budget. Additionally, advertising agencies work with you to conceive advertising campaigns and they create professional banner ads for your site. They can often get a better price on advertising space because they have a lot of clients and can buy impressions in bulk. There are many good Internet advertising agencies, offering a wide variety of special services.

It's clear that using an advertising agency has a lot of advantages, but it also has one significant drawback for smaller sites: Advertising agencies usually deal only with accounts of a certain minimum size. Agencies vary considerably in reputation, services offered and size, and so also vary a great deal in price and account minimum. The best way to find out if an ad agency is right for you is to shop around. Find out what an agency offers, how much it charges and how much experience it has. Look at several agencies so you can make an informed decision.

The cost of using an agency is certainly worth it to very large companies because they need the expertise and talent of professionals to make their ads competitive with rival companies' ads. It may be a necessary investment for a smaller Web site too, if it wants to establish itself as a significant presence on the Internet. Advertising is a very difficult process and an important ad campaign is certainly best handled by experts. If you have a limited advertising budget, however, you might do better to spend most of your money on actual banner ad placement, rather than marketing plans and top-of-the-line banner design.

Join a Banner Ad NetworkIf you want to place your banner ads on a lot of sites and don't want to put in the time to negotiate with the sites yourself, then using a banner network is a good option. Banner ad networks simply act as brokers between advertisers and publishers. Like banner exchange programs, they take care of placing an advertiser's banner ads and tracking all activity related to that ad. They also share one of the main drawbacks of banner exchange programs, however -- a lack of client control. Banner networks decide where to place banner ads, and they don't give each client the level of attention an advertising agency would. Consequently, there's a good chance you won't always be happy where your banner ad gets displayed. Many Web sites happily accept this shortcoming in light of the extensive services ad networks provide at a relatively low cost.

You definitely need to shop around to find a suitable banner network. For one thing, many of the larger banner networks primarily sell advertising space from high-traffic publisher sites, which may be too expensive for your budget. There are banner ad networks that specialize in more affordable advertising space on smaller publisher sites, and a few networks offer discounted "remainder" advertising space, also called excess banner inventory, which is simply ad space that didn't sell at the regular price. You should also check out networks that specialize in a particular kind of site, as they may place your ads more effectively. Unfortunately, there are plenty of banner ad networks that promise more than they deliver and that fail to place your ads effectively, so be sure to research a network thoroughly before you join.

You'll also need to decide whether you are interested in impressions or click-throughs, as most banner ad networks specialize in one or the other.

Some major impression networks are:
DoubleClick
Flycast
BURST! Media
ContentZone
Some major click-through networks are:
Banner Brokers
ValueClick
BannerSpace
eAds

Start an Affiliate Program

This is a very cost-effective way to get your banner ad on other sites. If you set up your own affiliate program you can arrange to pay publisher sites only when you get a specific result. This could be a number of things, such as a visitor simply clicking through to your site or the visitor actually purchasing something once she gets there. Unlike traditional banner advertising through a banner network, you don't have to buy affiliate program click-throughs or impressions in bulk. You pay a small amount for each click, or you pay a percentage of your profit from a referred visitor. You can learn all about affiliate programs in the How Stuff Work article How Affiliate Programs Work.

Selling Advertising Space

Selling banner advertising space is a great way to use your site's traffic to generate revenue, but it can be a bit tricky. The easiest option is to join a banner ad network, which will recruit advertisers, keep track of your earnings, and control banner ad placement on your site. In exchange for these services, the network will take a hefty percentage of the advertising money generated by your ad space.

Because there are more sites that want to sell advertising space than there are sites that want to buy advertisements, banner networks tend to be somewhat choosy about the publishers they recruit. Most banner networks set a minimum monthly traffic amount, which is often fairly high. A lot of the bigger banner networks require publishers to have upwards of 250,000 visitors a month to join a CPM program. Many banner networks do cater to a range of sites, setting up different tiers to divide publisher sites based on monthly traffic. This is a good service for advertisers because it lets them choose the range of sites that best fits their budget and marketing campaign. Additionally, most banner networks put certain restrictions on publisher site content. They may exclude sites featuring adult content or socially offensive material, and they may also exclude publishers that already feature too many advertisements.

If your site gets a good deal of traffic, more than 100,000 impressions per month, then you should be able to join a good banner network's CPM program. If you have a smaller site, you should look into banner network click-through programs, which tend to have lower minimum traffic requirements. You probably won't make much money in a click-through program, however, because you are only paid when visitors actually click on the banner, which is very seldom (typically, less than 1 percent of the people who see a banner will click on it).

Once you've joined as a publisher, banner networks operate very similarly to banner exchange programs. You put a piece of HTML code in the ad space on your site and the banner network takes care of the rest. They place banner ads they feel fit your site and track the relevant impressions or click-throughs so you will be paid correctly. As with exchange programs, you will probably end up with unsuitable banner ads on your site from time to time, and you won't get a whole lot of control over the process.

How much money might you make through a banner ad network? Most networks are selling "run of site" ads to advertisers, and they are getting something like a $5 CPM rate for the ads. Then the network takes between 30% and 50% of the $5 as its cut. Therefore, you might expect to earn something like 0.3 cents per impression that appears on your site, or a $3 CPM rate. If your site generates 100,000 impressions per month, you can expect to receive a check for $300 every month.

If you are getting paid per click, you might receive anywhere from 3 cents to 20 cents per click. 5 cents might be a typical average. If you get a 1% click rate and you have 100,000 impressions per month, that means that you might expect to receive $50 per month.

Selling Space YourselfIf you want total control over the banner ads that appear on your site, you may want to recruit advertisers yourself. There are many more sites on the Web that want to sell ad space than there are advertisers, so you need to have a fairly impressive site to go this route. The things that impress advertisers are high traffic and specialized content, because these are the things that translate into impressions and high click-through rates. If you want to sell ad space, your task is to convince potential advertisers that placing a banner ad on your site is a good investment. You do this with traffic numbers, information about your visitors (called demographic data) and with specific content that relates to their product or service. Since you won't be using a network or exchange program, you'll also have to set up technology to track visitor traffic, so you can bill your advertisers correctly. Approaching advertisers, marketing your site, tracking traffic and collecting money from advertisers all require a lot of time and effort, but if you are committed to growing your Web site and only running banner ads that would appeal to your visitors, the payoff can certainly be worth the effort.

What Makes a Banner Ad Effective?

There are no concrete rules about what makes a good banner ad. As in all advertising, an effective banner ad is the product of a number of different factors, and there is no sure way to predict how well any banner ad will do. A lot of successful banner ads are the result of extensive trial and error experimentation: A Web site puts a banner ad up and monitors the response it gets. If that doesn't work, the site tries something else. What makes a good advertisement is largely a mystery.

That said, there are a few qualities that generally make for more effective banner ads in many situations. If you are mounting a banner ad campaign you should keep these suggestions in mind:

Post banner ads on pages with related Web content -- the more related, the better.
Advertise a particular product or service in your banner, rather than your site generally.
If you do advertise a particular product or service, link the banner ad to that part of your Web site, rather than your home page.

Put banner ads at the top of the page, rather than farther down.
Use simple messages rather than complicated ones.
Use animated ads rather than static ones.
Your graphic content should pique visitor curiosity, without being too obscure.
Keep banner ad size small. If the page takes too long to load, a lot of visitors will go on to another page.

The most important things are to make visually appealing ads with interesting content and to intelligently place the ads so they are exposed to audiences that would be interested in them. Combining these qualities is a simple notion, but effectively accomplishing this is a complicated art. And like any art, advertising is constantly evolving. New approaches to banner ads pop up all the time.

One interesting development that has been around for a while is targeting. Banner ads that are targeted appear based on the Internet user's activity. For example, advertisers can buy keyword advertising on a search engine, such as Alta Vista or Yahoo, so that their ads are displayed when someone performs a particular search. If an advertiser buys up keywords related to its product or service, it can probably increase click-through rates, because the visitor has already demonstrated an interest in finding sites on that particular subject.

The Internet is an attractive medium to advertisers, because cookies allow sites to gather information about each visitor. It's a good bet that the future of Internet advertising will involve extensive use of this technology to target individual Internet users. Many Web sites are already experimenting with presenting each visitor with specific banner ads that would be likely to interest them, based on information gathered from surveys and the visitor's Web-surfing activity.

Lots More Information
Banner Exchange Networks
LinkExchange
BannerSwap
SmartClicks
LinkBuddies
HitExchange
BannerDirect
BannerClicks
Banner Ad Networks
DoubleClick
Flycast
BURST! Media
ContentZone
Banner Brokers
ValueClick
BannerSpace
eAds
Internet Ad Agencies
Digital Pulp
Lot21
Internet Advertising Corporation Pty Limited
HookMedia
Banner Ad Designers
everythingbanners
Data Jugglers
MediaBuilder
Digital Designs
WebPencil.com
BannerWorkz

Ad Management Software
Manage and serve all Rich Media desktop advertising
Display interactive and context sensitive content
Rotate, track, report the affiliate programs you have joined.
Update your web site content dynamically on the fly without refreshing the browser.
CPM, CPC, CPA and Timed campaigns
Serve eye catching ads such as Contextual ads, Floating Sticky Ads, Moving Ads, Scratch Offs, Vertical Scrollers,Text ads.
Serve pages containing random images and random text.
Track and report the ads of your advertisers on your Web site, ezines and newsletters
Manage and serve ad inventory in house and save thousands without outsourcing your ad management to third parties.
Whether you would like to run a few ads on your web sites or run a complete Ad Network with hundreds of millions of impressions like DoubleClick.
Deliver and track more advanced desktop advertising rich media formats such as Contextual Ads, Java Applets, Flash, RotatingText, Text Ads, Floating Sticky Ads, Moving Ads, Scratch Offs, Vertical Scroller, SSI and Non-SSI capabilities, Shockwave, Audio, Video, Mpeg, Avi, Pop ups, Pop Unders, Gateway Pages, Slide Shows, all types of Rich Media Ads, Third party ads and much more.
Manage and serve slide show style pages
Sell your web site, ezine and newsletter advertising space
Track and report pay per click listings, Contextual ads or banner ads from sites such as Overture, Google, Findwhat, Mamma.com
Track and report the links to your web pages
Manage and distribute content such as articles and page content.
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Ad Network Software
If you would like to run an Ad Network with hundreds of millions of impressions like DoubleClick, now you can do so with our software and have full control.
This is an add-on Module for our Ad Management Software. This will not work as a stand alone product.
Security: Privileged based access to data and tasks based on roles and individuals, allowing you to control access to data as well as the actions permitted to certain individuals.
Billing Information.
Extensive controls to protect brand sensitive clients.
Customer Data information.
Permissioning which ensures privacy control and thorough management of how information is shared.
Complete control over all data including advertising mediums, ad file types and file types allowed.
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Affiliate Software
Unlimited Tiers! No restrictions!
Pay per click, per sale, per lead, per email address, per impression, per download -- or any measurable event.
Start your own affiliate program and only pay for results.
Support for recurring Commissions
Self Replicating Pages
Tons of features!
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Banner Exchange Software
Start a banner exchange, text exchange, link exchange, button exchange, pop up/under exchange or exit exchange.
Built in cheating protection to prevent users from illegally accumulating impressions.
Exchange co branding allows you to create a co-branded look to your Exchange. Customize your Sign up page, banners, ads, text, logos, page color, font color and more.
Customize categories for your Exchange. Example: Business, Computers, Internet, Etc
Set dynamically changing ads to prevent banner burnout. You can set ads to refresh, changing the ad to new customers through the use of banners, text ads or rich media ads.
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Please Wait for my next posting about more Banner advertising...............it is continue