When you are trying to make money off of the articles on your website, it is important to effectively promote your site so that you will attract customers and they can see just what a good, quality site you have. There are several ways so market and promote your website, one of them being though banner advertisements.

What Banner Ads Can Do For You

Banner ads can help bring visitors from others sites to your own. Although monthly fees can be expensive to advertise on high traffic sites, in the end it may be cheaper and/or a faster way to start seeing significant revenue from your website efforts, rather than waiting for SEO techniques to bring your own site to the top of search engine results. Aside from paying to advertise on someone else's site, there are also free banner exchanges to choose from. We will look at the pros and cons of each banner advertising method below.

Free Banner Exchanges

Free banner exchanges are when you and other sites exchange each others banners. Their banner will go on your site and your banner will go one their site. Although this option is free, there are two main problems with it. First, if you want your banner on a significant number of sites, it will mean cluttering your own site up with these banners. This could even shot you in the foot if you run an affiliate website because, instead of clicking on your affiliate links, your visitors may be clicking on your banner exchange links. Secondly, you have to be really careful about the types of sites that you exchange banners with. Some sites like to gather a lot of banners so that they can be a directory or portal site and not have to have any real content. These "banner farms" or "link farms" will do nothing positive for your site and, in the meantime, you will be bringing them potential traffic.

Paid Banner Ads

As we saw above, paid banner ads cost money, but they will eventually pay off if you choose the right ones. You need to ensure that the site produces the amount of traffic that they say and that they have your ad placed in a way that invites visitors to click without being too pushy. You also want to choose a site that does not house too many other banners on the same page as yours or that there are no competitor links on the same page.

All in all, banner ads can end up being profitable for you site if you go about it the right way. If you do decide to check out banner advertisement as a marketing avenue, be sure to keep the above tips in mind.
Networking with e-zine publishers in your field is a good business strategy. These publishers are one of the most important parts of your marketing and it is suggested you start building a list of appropriate e-zines now.

There are ezine directories that can direct you to appropriate places. Vist them and subscribe to several e-zines in your chosen area. Don't try submitting articles until you get a feel for the e-zine by reading a couple of issues. The Directory of Ezines at www.directoryofezines.com , along with several others, even tell you information if article submissions are accepted, where to send them, and what rules tofollow. This information is priceless.

Contact the ezine publisher directly if you decide to submit an article. Most e-zine owners like to know the person who is sending them an article for publication. Not contacting the publisher first does not create a good raport.

Send a personal note telling the publisher how much you like their publication. List something specific you especially like about the ezine. Next, tell the publisher you believe readers would like your articles and ask if you might submit one or more. Finding one specialized point within the general interest area will increase your chances of being positively received.

Don't send tons of articles all at once and overload the publisher's already full mailbox. Limit yourself to sending only one article weekly, and sometimes even one a month. Make the e-zine publisher feel important by providing short articles once a week that you wrote just for that e-zine. E-zine publishers like knowing they are the only place a person can find a particular article.