Choosing the Best Banner Ads for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has fast become one of the easiest ways for casual Internet users to take the bull (the Internet) by the horns and begin making profits. With very little startup costs, affiliate marketing has the promise of generating hefty returns once the process has been mastered a little bit. Where most newcomers begin and are often stymied initially, is picking their niche market. Before putting your affiliate website together (a whole different problem entirely), it is necessary to decide what sort of audience you wish to cater to and what sort of product you would like to promote. After this initial decision has been made, you will want to join an affiliate program that offers these products and more as well as tools to help with your success. One advertising tool that must be understood, used to your advantage, and provided by most affiliate programs is the banner advertisements that have fast become the meat and potatoes of many affiliate campaigns. Knowing how to place and use them properly will be one key to starting the successful climb of your reputation as an affiliate marketer as well as the size of your profits.

Banner advertisements come in all shapes and sizes, but generally they span the width of the page (like a banner) and should display a brief, concise message that will motivate an action, namely a click. While in some industries as well as areas of life, bigger might be better, with banner advertisements this might not always be the case. Remember, the bigger the size of the banner, the bigger the size of the file that must be downloaded to a viewer’s browser; hence, the longer download time. If the banner advertisement you have chosen to appear at the very top of your affiliate website is so large that it takes more than a couple of seconds to load, chances are your viewer might have already scrolled down the page, missing your banner’s message altogether. If a page is slow to load because of the largeness of your banner ad file, a viewer might lose patience and close your site window, moving on. This is unacceptable, of course! Remember, that though your banner advertisement is meant to be eye-catching and motivational, you want your viewers to read the content you’ve worked so hard to create on your site as well. It is important to place banner advertisements that are smaller file sized, simply written, and sparingly used in order to be most effective. A most helpful hint that should be remembered is to make sure your banner ads open a smaller, different window when clicked as well, so that your readers may continue to read your page before they advance to your affiliate merchant’s site!