Banners were a great marketing tool when they began. As of now banners are not considered to be that effective. But banners are still part of your arsenal in your home business. They are very effective to brand your business. Plus they are very valuable tools in building affiliate program.

So, marketers still make a use of them.

Banners are great branding tool like billboards on highways promoting the companies.

You cannot ignore banners at all. You should get few for your site too. As usual there are two choices

* Do it yourself

* Get them made

To do it yourself,you need to have a graphics editor. You would need to build image from the scratch. There are different standard sizes of the banners which have evolved with time. They are also given different names according to their sizes.

Banner size is measured as width X height in pixels. Here is the list of standard banner sizes

* 728×90 - Leaderboard

* 468×60 - Full Banner

* 234×60 - Half Banner

* 180×150 - Rectangle

* 336×280 - Large Rectangle

* 125×125 - Square Button

* 120×600 - Skyscraper

* 160×600 - Wide Skyscraper

* 88×31 - Microbar

No body stops you from building your own size. But it is better to be aware of the trends

Following points are important to remember when you think of using banners

* Make it very simple! Flashy and fancy banners repel visitors

* Make it readable without needing to strain.

* Adding an action call like buy now greatly increases the chances of click through.

*It should not be ugly and it should not be so heavy that it takes ages to load.

There are some online sites which would offer you banner templates or let you build a banner online using their services

* Creative Connectivity - crecon.com allows you to download banner templates which you can customize using your graphic editors

* Quick Banner - auickbanner.com provides dozens of free templates and online customization.

* Coder.com offers a free banner generator online service.

There are many more. Just conduct a search.

Other option is getting them made. If you are not a professional graphic designer from the start, you will need a learning period before you can become good at it.

Here are few good resources to outsource your banner work

* Bannerworkz-bannerworkz.com/

* Lounge Lizard-loungelizard.com/

* Animation.com-animation.com

You can use animated banners too. Animated banners are a couple of gif images strung together by an animator program. First you need to use a graphics editor to build a series of gif images. Then you need to use an animation program to string them together. This will program the banner to display each image after an allotted period of time and the banner appears to be animated.

Do not use too many images to make a animated banner. This would make your file extremely heavy.

You can try Ulead’s Gif Animator(ulead.com/ga/runme.htm). A trial version is available and actual version comes at quite affordable cost.

There are services that will let you build free animated banners online. Here are two services I could find quickly

*banner.com/

*creatingonline.com.

Arun Pal Singh is an internet marketing consultant and web author who runs website http://www.homeforprofits.com to help budding online entrepreneurs with information and ready made products. Visit http://www.homeforprofits.com to find how his ebooks, softwares, audios, website building material, traffic strategies and training videos and information can provide the leverage that your business needs to grow and expand.

Subscribe to his “Online Business Manual Course” by email. Visit http://ebizgo.info now and sign up for free.

Very seldom do you visit a web site that is free and clear of any banner advertising. We always have to scroll past banner ads. They literally appear everywhere these days whether the adverts are at the very top of the page, running down the right side of the page or at the bottom of the page. And let’s not forget the infamous pop up ad! Each banner ad is vying for our attention, wanting our clicks to raise their profile and web site traffic. The very idea behind the advertiser running a banner advertising campaign is to increase their web site traffic by drawing you in with their ad. You may notice the ad promising you information on something unbelievable or an offer that you can’t pass up! The banner advertising will be a well-crafted message with action verbs that serve as a call to action. This call to action is typically you clicking the advertisement and boosting their web site traffic. Good banner advertising is typically brief, clever and informative while also leaving the viewer wanting more – giving them no choice but to click the ad!

There are only a few seconds to entice people into clicking your banner advertisement and potentially becoming regular web site traffic, frequent visitors, paid subscribers or customers at your site. It is important to avoid two common mistakes in banner ad creation.

Many times someone will mistakenly feel the need to be obnoxious with their ad in an effort to make their banner advertising stand out from other ads. There will be constant animation, tons of Flash, celebrity pictures, sound effects and loud colors. You want your banner advertising to lift web site traffic rather than annoy every set of eyes your ad will meet. Also, be conscious of the content of the web sites that you are placing your banner advertising on.

In general, most graphic designers, when it comes to banner advertising, follow the KISS method of marketing. Keep It Simple and Stupid. Now, when we say stupid, we are talking about making sure your tone and the wording aren’t overly complicated or above the heads of the general audience. There isn’t enough room within a banner ad to post every single detail about your company or product. The dimensions of banner advertising don’t provide the space to be too wordy or descriptive. Remember, the goal is to turn the people seeing your ad into web site traffic. They will have plenty of time to learn the specifics about your site… when that person actually clicks your ad and browses your site for more details! Keep the message of your banner advertising concise and to the point!

Instead of writing long descriptive text and, worse yet, fitting more and more text into your banner ad by animating frames or using a Flash presentation, keep the wording short, the font size and style large and prominent, so your banner advertising will catch the eye.

A creative and well though out banner advertising campaign will always remain an effective way to attract interest and increase your 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

Banner advertising was first used in the early 90’s as a means to increase web site traffic. Global Network Navigator (GNN), one of the first web sites in cyberspace, sold the very first clickable banner advertisement to a law firm in 1993. Within a very short time, Hotwired.com was selling banner advertising in large quantities. AT&T and Coors were the first big name corporate clients to buy into banner ads in 1994. For the record, Hotwired.com also coined the phrase “banner ad” and became the very first company to release click through reports to clients.

These types of sales became the primary tool behind any successful online advertising campaign. Sites fortunate enough to have considerable web site traffic were able to lure in advertising clients with the promise of high volume banner ad impressions on the most popular sites online. Sales reps were able to easily draw in new business despite the fact that banner advertising packages weren’t necessarily a bargain. There was a demand. It was pretty much a given that people would pay a pretty penny to advertise on sites with a reputation for consistent web site traffic.

This approach to banner advertising sales worked like a charm, providing sites with plenty of revenue and an economic base for their web site. Sites had more money for design enhancements and advertising funds, which increased their web site traffic, guaranteeing them higher banner advertising sales. This fairytale built mansions for young entrepreneurs until 2000 when the dot com industry’s bubble ruptured and banner advertising as we knew it literally crashed!

Banner advertising is still a practical modern day method of Internet marketing but the value of the ads are no longer what they were at the Internet’s dot com peak. While this news may sound unwelcoming, the great news is the ad rates are no longer ridiculously overpriced and more people can actually afford banner advertising, reaping the rewards of increased web site traffic!

This is also a lot more visually stimulating than it was in the past and can be used in other ways besides increasing your presence on the web and your web site traffic. Not only can you profit from turning your web site traffic into paid subscribers, someone that buys your product, pays for your services, etc. but you can also build revenue by selling banner ad space on your own site or earn commission from a banner advertising affiliate program. This type of banner advertising will have you selling products and earning commission whenever a click through on your site turns into a purchase on the other site. We see this method of banner advertising everyday whenever we visit a web site and notice banner ads for books, DVD’s or music available through Amazon.com or a similar site.

So, in closing, while the Internet bubble did indeed burst back in 2000, there are computers in more homes with more people online than ever before, meaning more web site traffic than ever before. Banner advertising is still a very effective way to boost your web site traffic and potentially make money as a result!

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