Text Links vs. Banners

By Frederic Hom

Despite the fact that most affiliate programs offer both text links and banners to promote their offers, affiliates usually prefer promoting banners, which is not always the best solution, especially if there are already too many of them on a site.

Banners and Text Links have each their pros and cons, their effectiveness mostly depending on affiliate sites’ layouts.

If the affiliate site is content-rich, with mostly articles, banners should stand out more. However, hotlinking keywords that relate to your affiliate offers in the articles or making recommendations with text links at the end of articles has proved to be an effective way to make sales.

If the affiliate site already has a lot of banners, it is recommended to use text links as having too many banners creates a blindness effect or turns visitors off.

As for newsletters, the best performing creative format is by far text links, especially as lots of subscribers still opt-in for text e-mails or prefer to hide images in messages.

Format-wise, 460x60 or 720x90 banners placed above the fold are still the best option. As to columns, 120x90 and 120x60 are discreet enough to do the job and be seen without the need for scrolling down. However sites with longer pages can go with 120x240 or 120x600. A pretty recent format that has been increasingly popular is the 336x280 rectangles, which get great visibility, whether they’re placed inside articles or on home pages.

Another important detail that is often overlooked is the way the ad will open. While most affiliates usually set the offers to open in new windows so that their visitors don’t get lost, the popularity of pop-up blockers makes it now difficult for new windows to open, which results in less affiliates sales. It is recommended to now have affiliate offers open in the same widow – you might loose a couple of visitors in the process but if your goal is to earn revenues, it will considerably increase your sales.

With several thousand affiliates, Employment911 is a premier provider of employment and resume services, allowing its affiliates to earn substantial revenues while helping people get jobs.

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