Can anybody suggest the best banner exchange system?

[tech0]

I have seen the list of the banner exchange systems in one of the topics. But can anybody suggest one or two that are the best?
Thank you.

[SteveS235]

I think that banner exchanges can really be a crap shoot. They either work for you or they don't. If you have a site that generates alot of traffic (ie. a few hundred uniques a day and up), than a banner exchange could work for you, but if your site only gets 100 or so hits a month, than it's not really worth it. Most exchanges are 3:2 or 2:1. If you don't have the pages veiws on your site, your banner will never get seen anywhere else.

I use Microsoft's BCentral banner exchange (www.bcentral.com). I chose them because they have 400,000 sites that use it, and you can target where your site is shown. However, my site is realtively new (only 75 hits or so per month right now), and I have never gotten a hit from the exchange. BCentral is 2:1, so with 75 pages views, my banner is shown 37 times across the network.

You need to make sure that you have a good quality banner that will pull traffic, and you have to make sure that if your site targets a specific group of people, that the exchange you use lets you target on what type of sites you banner can be shown.

Good luck!

[tech0]

My site has ~70 unique visitors per day, so I think banner exchange can be usefull for me.

I stopped at bcentral, too.
thank you for reply

[Jason]

You might try going beyond the banner exchange to pull in those first few hits. Supplement a banner exchange with a text link exchange, and possibly even a click program, where you surf other sites, and guarantee that people will surf yours. At the very least, you will be generating more banner exchange exposures this way.

http://www.123webmaster.com/Site_Promotion/Alternative_Exchanges/

http://www.123webmaster.com/Site_Promotion/Click_Programs/

As far as the best banner exchange system, that's hard to say, I'd take a good look at your site's audience, and try to find a banner exchange that fits that audience, or has a category for it.

One last thing, you should try contacting other sites that have a similar audience as yours, to trade links with directly. This is usually the fastest way to grow your traffic without a budget (It worked for 123webmaster.com 3 years ago).

[tech0]

Thanks a lot,

I'll follow your suggestions!

[justjeni]

I'm beginning to think banner exchanges just aren't worth it. I've been doing them since my site went up last April and never get more than a few clicks into my site. I have kept them up in hopes of things improving and am wondering if anyone has ever gotten enough traffic from them to make them worthwhile?

[Jason]

I've gotten quite a few, but we use to get banner credits in BULK from as one of the advantages of a web tool program that we were promoting. I've reached CTRs of over 1% on banner runs of 1,000,000+ banners. Back before I handled big sites, I tried joining a banner exchange with the powerx healthcare site that I use to run (which didn't get real good traffic), and the results were minimum if any. If you are going to go with a banner exchange, study the banners of the big boys. Banners that look like a button interface of some type tend to get very good click rates. High performing banners can be difficult to design if you haven't done a lot of it.

[justjeni]

I haven't learned how to design much of anything yet - hope to, and am trying to learn how to use corel draw 7 - came with my computer. Anyway, where would one find a banner exchange that used buttons? All the ones I look over have the standard big banner. I did try the text exchange but didn't get much response with that, either. I took it off the other night because the size was awkward for my site and can't decide if I should just drop it or give it another try.
heavy sigh.

[Jason]

http://www.linkbuddies (listed at http://www.123webmaster.com/Site_Promotion/Alternative_Exchanges/) offers button exchanges, and even does text link exchanges. You might want to try both of them. Text links can get very good click rates.

[justjeni]

Thanks Jason! Be glad to check that out and I love those sites, too. I've bookmarked them and read some stuff, but there's a lot there; it's great.

[retro]

i have used many of the banner exchange programs, on most of them i got a clickthru rate of 0.6% but i found the best clickthu rate on bannerbarter, i got 1.9 % over 7000 ads, i got 5000 free ads when i signed up with them. i dontknow if they still do this though.

[justjeni]

Thanks, retro - I'll check that out! I signed up for one that said you can pick a button, but never heard back from them to get the code and such, and then my computer crashed and I don't remember the name at all. Back to jump street!

[fonzerelli_79]

I have used banner exchanges (and still do on some of my pages) and i have came to the conclusion that they are rubbish!!

They bring about 2 hits per 1000 banner ads showed.

Wouldnt you rather have an ad for amazon or something.

Think about it.

Cheers

[justjeni]

I'm seriously thinking about dropping the idea all together myself - like you, I get very few click throughs and there the banner sits on my site. Seriously thinking they're just not worth it.

Anyone know any other good ways to get traffic? Or some button banner programs that make a bit of a difference that is worth while?

[R_Russell]

Jeni, find a site that is like yours and gets a lot off hits per day and simply ask them if they would like to exchange links with you. That way you don't clutter your site with useless banner advertisments that don't give you any traffic.

[justjeni]

Hi Russell! How have you been..:)
I appreciate your suggestion and have started doing some of that. I put up a woman's links, a men's links and a product links page. I'm getting a lot of women sites interested but not enough men - I won't quit trying, though! The feed back I have gotten has really been great and you can meet some really nice people this way and see some good sites, too.
I think it's a great suggestion and one I'm going to work on some more.
Hope all is well with you!

[R_Russell]

Everything is perfect with me, I am still waiting for you to get icq up and running :D. I also admir your effort, very rarely will you see people these days try as hard as you do to achieve their goals. I will see you later... or talk to you in a future post.

[justjeni]

What a sweet thing to say! I'm flattered it shows - I am busting my butt trying to make my site a success and it's a highly competitive field. I just know I have a different edge - I've been there, butthat's all another story . You just made my day by saying what you did and I really appreciate it - sometimes one starts to wonder if the efforts will ever pay off.
I do have ICQ loaded but haven't had time to open it - been really cramming here. I did this analysis thing for my site on bravenet and most came out good, but it said my home page took too long to load - something that's been bothering me a great deal, so now I want to see what I can do there...always something, you know! But watch for me, I try to open ICQ for a while at night...

[jollyfactory]

http://www.1for1.com

as well as earning 15 cents per click, you get a banner exchange! Pretty good. They pay too. Your banner is at a 2:1 ratio and then once a week goes into a 1:1 ratio. And I have gotten the highest clickthrough rate than others I have tried.

[Sonya100]

http://www.bighitbanners.com
A better one, this one gives you a 2:1 ratio, with hundreds of members and free impressions, very high clickthru as free members banners are on top of home pages and very reliable - the banner sizes are as they say, no ads from the site attached to make them larger etc.

[justjeni]

Wow, haven't been here in quite a while -- nice to be back!

I am wondering about these banner exchanges...I used to use a couple, but didn't seem to really generate much traffic from them, so I gave them up. However, some of these I never heard of. Does anyone actually get positive results from the banner exchanges? Thanks~!

[Draicone]

Well, i run a game (xtraticwar.com (http://xtraticwar.com)) and I find that the eniasni.com banner exchange is the best. However, I've heard good things about the http://games.advertbox.com banner exchange, and at http://directoryofads.com there is a paid banner system which allows you to convert impressions on your site into impressions for your banner on other sites - and if you don't want to do that, this one pays you for the impressions :) (I use all three, but I get about 15,000 hits a day) I know from experience that you should look around to sites in the same category as yours, and see what banner exchange they use. Generally there are hundreds of thousands of terrible banner exchanges out there with barely a few membes, so if high traffic sites use a certain exchange it would be better joining that.