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The following is a roundup of free banner services to promote your site, as well as free banner designers and other banner resources on the Web. We've also taken a look at several of the banner services that claim to pay you money.
Many banner services operate in following manner: you submit a banner graphic to them that is typically 468 by 60 pixels. You then agree to display banners of that service's other members. In return, your banner is displayed on other sites (usually at a 2 to 1 ratio: that is, every time you display a banner twice on your site; your banner is displayed once elsewhere). If you need a free banner for your site, go here or here. Other free banner-making services are listed below.
Please send us E-mail if you'd like us to list a banner service or if you find a dead link.
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 TrafficX - This free banner exchange "guarantees" traffic for your site. If you abide by their terms, and you don't receive any clickthroughs within one month of placing their code on your page, you'll get 10 free credits and get your banner placed on their font page for one week.
 The Pop-up Exchange Network - With this new free banner exchange, you can promote your site with "Pop-up Internet Commercials." Your ads with this service can be animated and can stream live audio and music without the use of plug-ins. You can choose between standard banners and a larger Window version. This is an innovative service and their "talking" banners will definitely grab your visitors' attention.
- Eurobanner - This is a free banner exchange service from Europe that offers a standard 2-to-1 ratio. Easy to set up. They offer Web site stats and a counter. With this service you can choose your audience (i.e.: have your banner displayed to European audiences only). Your banner must be 400 by 40 pixels and no larger than 12K.
- Freexchange - Here's a new banner exchange that's worth checking out. For one thing they offer a unique 20:19 exchange ratio (meaning that if you show 20 displays of their banners, they'll give you 19 displays of your banner). Banner size here is 468-by-60 pixels. Banners can be animated, but must be under 10 kilobytes. Sites must be in English. No porn sites allowed.
- Frank's Free Banners - Need a free, custom banner for your site? Frank's Free Banners offers quality static banners for business and personal Web sites. Their turnaround is 48 hours. They've made over 3,000 banners so far. From the folks at HelpZone, a new resource that offers lots of helpful info about computers and Web design.
- TeknoSurf AdWave - Here's a new entry in the league of advertising services that claim to pay Webmasters for displaying their banners. TeknoSurf promises "up to 20 cents" per unique click and $5 for each Web site you refer to them, who signs up, and is accepted into the program. Our own results with TeknoSurf have been disappointing. We generated a total of $1.82 for over 8,000 banner impressions.
- WebSite Designs Banner Exchange - Here's a new banner exchange that offers a generous 3:2 ratio (meaning that for every three banners shown on your
site, your own banner is shown twice on other members sites). Banner sizes here must by 400 by 60 pixels and no larger than 12 kilobytes. They offer 500 free banner impressions (credits) for all members after thirty days.
- BannerMall - A new banner exchange, BannerMall gives you two banner views for every three times you display their banner. They offer two banner sizes: 400X40 pixels and 468X60 pixels. Easy to set up. Currently, they're offering 1,500 banner view credits when you join.
- ClickTrade - Impressive, first-of-its-kind service that allows you to set up your own affiliate program and reward your affiliates on a pay-per-click or sale basis. Webmasters should look through their directory to find sites that'll pay you to link them. A popular program that has over 30,000 Web sites participating.
- AssociatePrograms.com - If you're looking to make some money off your site, then pull up a chair and spend some time at this comprehensive Australian site. AssociatePrograms.com offers an excellent roundup of associate and affiliate programs on the Web, as well as Web marketing tips, tricks, tools & techniques.
- Refer-it - Refer-it is the Web's authority on revenue sharing programs. At this search engine and guide, you'll find over 400 affiliate, associate, referral, and bounty programs reviewed. A number of imitator sites have emerged since Refer-it came online last year, but this site remains the definitive resource of its kind.
- Banners for All - This is a good resource if you're in need of a free banner to use in a banner exchange. Lots of good-looking blank banners are available here. Many designs, including gradient fill, glowing, textured, etc. Just select the banner you want and add text (or they'll do this for you). They ask that you provide a linkback if you use their service. Free custom buttons are available, too.
- AssociateCash.com - So you want to make some money off your Web site, huh? Well check out Dan Oakeson's good roundup of associate programs on the Web. These companies will pay you to display their banners on your pages. Find out the details on each program and whether they deliver here.
 LinkExchange - This banner exchange service (which recently became a part of the Microsoft Network) is the biggest and best-known of its type. We've used this service since June, 1996, and have found them to be reliable and competent, two qualities that are quite rare in the banner industry. You get one exposure of your banner for every two hits to your page. Banners at one time here were 400-by-40 pixels, but Link Exchange is starting to phase out this size in favor of the increasingly-universal 468-by-60 size. Note: some WebTV users report technical problems getting LE to accept their banners.
- Link Exchange has experienced some problems recently with being late on delivering sites the banners exposures that they owe them. We've had a number of complaints from Webmasters saying that they are owed thousands of exposures. The Free Site itself was owed several thousand exposures at one point, although they eventually delivered. Link Exchange says the problem is the "result of sharp increases in traffic and other compounding bugs which strained our
system and impeded the smooth flow of ads."
- Linktower - Here's a promising, up-and-coming banner exchange service. With Linktower, you receive one impression of your banner for every credit you earn. They accept banners in GIF image format, from 350 X 40 pixels, up to 468 X 60 pixels and no bigger than 9 kilobytes. (Animations are OK).
- SmartClicks - An innovative banner service that goes above and beyond most other link exchanges in many ways in that you can target your banner to a specific audience. We've used SmartClicks for two years and have generally been impressed, particularly with their targeting control panel and stats. Along with Link Exchange, SmartClicks is one of the Web's most reliable banner services. Note: SmartClicks recently recently made a number of major revisions and upgrades to their service. Notable among these is their new banner size, which has gone from 400 by 50 pixels to 468 by 60 pixels.
- K-Moo's Free Banners - This site will make you a free custom banner. There are over 150 template to choose from here. They say their turnaround is "under a day" currently. If they make a banner for you, you're required to linkback to them somewhere on your site.
- HyperBanner - A competent, well-run free banner exchange service with a twist: its banners are Java-based. The advantage to this approach is that you can have far more informative and eye-catching banners than is possible with standard image banners. The only drawback is that Java banners take longer to load. Still, this is clearly the trend of the future and someday all banners will likely be Java-based. HyperBanner allows you to target specific geographic regions and/or topics (such as software, children's content, sports, etc.)
- CyberThrill - This affiliate banner program promises to pay you 20 cents for every unique visitor you steer to their online gambling service. We've been disappointed by every aspect of this service, including their non-responsive customer query department. We've also had numerous complaints about non-payment from many Webmasters. This is a scam.
- Safe-Audit Banner Service - For two years, we looked for a reliable commercial banner service that pays Web site owners. Safe-Audit is the most competent that we've found. This British-based company offers complete and up-to-date statistics, so you can see how your banners are performing at a glance. The only quibbles we have with Safe Audit is their site's slightly cumbersome interface and the fact that it's not always easy to get a response to your questions. Still, if you're looking for some revenue from your site, check with these guys. Note: not all sites are accepted for the program.
- Banner Wizard - This freeware utility offers a spreadsheet-style program that helps you to calculate the costs involved in banner advertising and "to optimize your Web advertising strategy for best possible results."
- Four Corners Effective Banners - Just signing up for a banner service is only a small part of promoting your site. In order to draw hits with your banner, you need an effective design. This site is the best we've seen for offering tips on making a banner that people will want to click on. They even display a list of the Web's most successful banners, so you can get an idea of what works.
- Brian Frye's Free Banners - If you've signed up with a banner service, then you can get Brian to make a free static banner for your site. If he creates a banner for you, he requests that you link back to his site.
- Link-Me Banner/Reciprocal Links Exchange Database - One of the best ways to promote your site is through reciprocal links. This resource is a good place to start. This site also lists over 500 "free-for-alls," which are basically bulletin boards that you can add your site to (and believe it or not, they do pull in traffic).
- Penny Web -
This is a banner service that claims to let you "promote your site at no risk with guaranteed visitors" and to "generate income by hosting banners." Our own experience with Penny Web was disappointing. We get a lot of traffic here at The Free Site, but apparently not enough to generate income with Penny Web. We never received a cent for our participation with this program. Their "host reports" site that purports to give you your account's current data was cumbersome and difficult to get meaningful information from. Their tech support was not helpful. Our advice: be wary of any banner service that claims to pay you.
- Cybermeals - This commercial ad banner service claims to pay you for displaying their large (486 X 60 pixels) banners on your pages. We tried this service for several months on a page that receives around 1,000 hits per day. The results were disappointing, to say the least. Cybermeals wound up generating a grand total of 10 cents for us in November, 1997 on one of our pages that generated 33,000 hits that month. In October and December, we were paid zero. Oh well, 10 cents is better than nothing. Be wary of this service.
- BannerSwap - This banner service also offers a 2-to-1 ratio. Our own experience with this link exchange was disappointing. We often had far lower click-through ratios that we've had with other link exchanges (using the same banner).
- The Banner Generator- If you subscribe to a banner service, you'll need to make up a banner, which this site provides for free. Check out these examples. This service works with WebTV.
- TradeBanners Network. - This service is similar to Link Exchange. We tried it for several months and found them to be a competent service. However, our banners consistently got lower click-through ratios than on Link Exchange or SmartClicks (even with the same design!)
- LinkTrader - This banner exchange offers a higher-than-average 70-to-30 ratio. Banners must be 400 by 50 pixels. Our results with this banner service were less than ideal. Despite the higher ratio, we had few hits through LinkTrader than through Link Exchange, using the same banner. Your own mileage may vary. Incidentally, LinkTrader recently began offering free E-mail accounts, as well.
- Net-On's Banner Exchange - A growing Sweden-based link exchange that offers you a generous 4:5 banner exposure ratio. Animated gifs are OK. They accept banners of varying sizes, which can be a drawback, as you can't take advantage of the HTML size tags to speed up loading of banner images. Sometimes their banners don't load quickly which can hold up your page at times. They still have a ways to go before they can be considered in the top rank of banner exchanges.
- 123Banners - An up-and-coming link exchange with around 4,000 members. The concept is simple: by joining, you agree to display advertising banners for other members, and they agree to display banners for you. You can decide what type of sites to advertise on and advertise for so you don't need to worry about inappropriate material showing up on your pages. You get one exposure of your banner for every two banners displayed on your site (similar to Link Exchange).
- ContentZone - Be wary of this service, which was formerly called the Commonwealth Network. We tried Commonwealth for a number of months and were disappointed by every aspect of their service. Their account information center was down most of the time and their tech support was non-responsive. And we didn't get paid a penny. Get the details about this service here.
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