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SPIN MONEY WITH ROTATING
BANNERS
by Patrick Tan
Banners can be found in almost every website. Its
popularity as
an online advertising vehicle is undisputed although
its
effectiveness has been under scrutiny lately. Just
like radio
and TV commercials, we are beginning to click past
banners
without paying much attention to them. The average
click-
through rate on banners is only 2.6% - about the
same as
regular direct mail.
If you want to sell banner ad space on your site,
you must come
up with a winning strategy to increase the banners'
click-
through rate. Here are some tips to make your banner
advertising more effective:
+ Accept only advertisers whose products or services
are
complementary to your web contents.
+ Encourage the use of animated banners to attract
viewers'
attention.
+ Place only one banner per page.
+ Your web page should have a light color or white
background
for maximum contrast with the banners.
+ Entice people to click on the banners with phrases
like "Click here for more information!" or
"Win a prize!"
The above measures may attract first-time visitors,
but
definitely not the repeat visitors. Having seen the
same banner
in that same spot over and over again, it is
unlikely that a
repeat visitor would ever click on the banner.
This banner burnout phenomenon can be avoided with a
good
banner rotation engine. Each time a person goes to
your site,
the rotation engine will rotate the banners stored
in its
inventory and present a new banner to the visitor.
The rotation engine can also be used to rotate
banners
throughout the entire site, in effect, increasing
your ad space
inventory by many folds. With this system, you can
actually run
as many banners as you like if you accept
advertising on a pay-
per-impression basis.
Most advertisers want to place their banners on the
main index
pages for maximum exposure. As a result, it is not
uncommon for
popular portal to display up to ten banners on its
homepage and
none on its content pages. With an automated
rotation engine
installed throughout the entire site, advertisers
need not
specify where they want to place their banners.
Their banners
will be randomly displayed wherever the visitor
goes.
Obviously, you need a good banner rotation engine to
achieve
the above objective - one that will let you track
vital
statistics such as impressions, click-through, and
click-
through ratio. There are more than a few banner
rotation
engines available on the net, but their prices of a
few
thousands dollars would cut deeply into your profit
margins.
This is where OrbitCycle comes in.
OrbitCycle banner rotation engine is free of charge!
It
provides real-time detailed statistics on your
banners'
impression, click-through and click-through ratio.
With OrbitCycle, you don't have to know any type of
programming. The
program is hosted on OrbitCycle's server, which
offers an easy-
to-use interface that lets you add, delete and track
your
banners easily.
You can get the banner rotation engine at http://www.orbitcycle.com.
There is no catch! For allowing you
to use OrbitCycle free of charge, the company will
use 10% of
your account's banner impressions to run its own
banners or its
advertisers' banners. This is a low price to pay
considering
the fact that most banner exchanges offer a 2-for-1
exchange,
which represent an effective cost of 50% for using
their
services.
Note:
We have installed a similar banner rotation system
in Aloha-
City - Resources for Enterprising People. Click here
for more
information on banner advertising in Aloha-City http://www.aloha-city.c
om/income/.
About the author:
------------------
Patrick Tan, an entrepreneur and former journalist,
offers a
complete range of e-commerce solutions and services
(editing,
writing, translation, content development, web
design, etc) to
help you build a successful career online. Visit his
site at http://www.aloha-city.com for more information.
He
publishes a
free newsletter to share his experience and business
know-how.
Subscribe Now! mailto:basics@aloha-city.com<
/a>
SPIN MONEY
WITH ROTATING
BANNERS
by Patrick
Tan
mailto:patrick@aloha-city.com
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