Civil Tower

FREE Banner services

TrafficX - This new 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.
Oliweb.Com Banner Exchange - A promising new banner exchange with a standard 2:1 ratio, Oliweb offers 50 free credits to new members. Your banner here should be no bigger than 468 by 60 pixels and no more than 20K in size. Animations OK. Members get goodies such as free submission to 15 search engines, a directory listing and a newsletter.
Hitraisers Banner Exchange - This is a new banner exchange that offers a generous 10:8 ratio (which means that for every 10 of your visitors who view their banner on your site, you get eight exposures of your banner on other sites). You are allowed up to three banner to advertise your site (and their combined size may be up to 30 kilobytes).
Safe-Audit Banner Service - For the past two years, we've been looking for a reliable commercial banner service that pays Web site owners. Safe-Audit is by far 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. They offer a sensible interface and speedy responses to questions. If you're looking for some revenue from your site, check with these guys.Note: not all sites are accepted for the program.
LinkExchange - This banner exchange service 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 must be 400 X 40 pixels in size (to get a free banner, go here or here). Note: LE recently started a "Deluxe" program, which requires a larger (468X60) banner that must "be placed on the first screen view of the pages they are on." In exchange, LE says you'll get better exposure and "increased visibility" among other advantages.
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 several months 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.
GSAnet.com - Banner services are a dime a dozen these days, but if you're looking to get the most exposure for your Web site, GSAnet.com is hard to beat. This service offers you some of the best ratios of any major link exchange. If you display their banner at the top of your site, you'll get an impressive 1-to-1 ratio of displays for your banner. Our initial verdict after using this service for several months is that it is a good, solid service.
Eurobanner - This is a promising new 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.
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.
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).
Kewl X-Change - Here's a new exhange program, with a novel twist. Rather than giving you credits based on banner impressions, Kewl X-Change is based randomly, meaning whenever someone clicks the Kewl X-Change banner, it will randomly choose one of its members and bring that person there. It's definitely a different approach; might be worth exploring, particularly if you have a small site with little traffic.
Banner World - After you signed up for a banner link exchange service, you should check out this site, which offer over thousands of blank banners. Just add your text (which you can do by using a shareware graphics program like Paint Shop Pro) and viola: you've got a custom banner to advertise your site. Banner World also offers tutorials on creating banner and many examples.
Brian Frye's Free Banners - If you've signed up with a banner service, then check in with Brian to get a free banner created for your site. He offers both animated and static banners.
Jaxworld: Free banners - Need a banner? Then check in with Linda; she creates custom banners for free. All she requests is a linkback on your site. View examples of her banners here.
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.
Frank's Free Banners - OK, so you've signed up for a banner service. What's next? Well, for one thing, you're gonna need a banner. (Duh!) That's where these guys come in. This site's the place to go for getting a free banner for your site.
KorCar Free Banners - This site is offering free animated and static banners. There's also other graphics here for your Web site. Linkback required.
Order a free banner - This site is offering free banner graphics. They even offer animated banners. Just fill out the form on their page, specifically what'd you'd like. Responses are promised within 48 hours.
Banner Power - New banner service that allows you to either earn advertising credits or cash. Their banners are a larger-than-usual 468 by 60 pixels. (Animation is OK, but the size should not exceed 11,000). Each time you display two banners, a banner promoting your site will be displayed on another member's Web site.
Paramount Banner Network - This banner exchange accepts banners that are a larger-than-average 450 pixels wide and 70 pixels high (GIF or JPG format) and no larger than 14,000 bytes in size. GIF animation is OK. If you go with Paramount, check out Wired 2000's offer of 1,000 free banner impressions. Go here for more information
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).
BannerWeb - New banner service that allows you to submit up to 10 banners simultaneously and have the most effective ones shown the most often, automatically. Note: this service is currently in "beta test mode."
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).
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.
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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