There are thousands of places on the World Wide Web to advertise banners. Link exchanges, banner swaps, free banner posting, paid banner advertising, banner slide shows, rotating banners... there is no way to avoid banner advertising.

You can easily find places to post your banner, but what's more important is the look of the banner itself. This lesson will provide you with a great start toward attractive, effective banner design.

Designing your own banner can be very easy. With some practice, your creative abilities will soon shine through. Once you start, it's hard to stop tweaking and improving your creations! You can purchase inexpensive graphic design software packages at retail stores and several places on line, many dedicated solely to banner creation. You may already have PaintShop pre-installed on your computer, which is a good program to start with. If you're on AOL, just go to Computing and do a software (shareware) search for graphics software to see what you can download for free.

One program we found on the Web is called "Banner Show" by Web Genie. This program allows you to create your own rotating banner show quickly and easily. Point your browser to http://www.webgenie.com/Software/Banner/. At this time, the cost is $99.

If you're looking to design banners without purchasing software, we found several sites you'll want to check out. Some let you start from scratch and pick your own colors; others provide you with a colorful variety of blank banners with really cool backgrounds, to which you would add text in a program like PaintShop or Image Composer; and yet other sites actually create a free banner for you according to your specs. They usually require, or at least ask for, a return link to their site if you use the banner they design.

If you can't find what you need here, just get to a search engine and search for "free banner creation."

Here are some guidelines you should read before designing your banners:

~ It is best to keep your banner under 10K in size. The faster your banner loads, the more likely it is to be seen.

~ Use short action phrases on your banners. There's a reason most of the banners out there simply say "Click Here" or "Click Now" -- these banners are more effective because they issue a command. Active language is always better than passive language when it comes to Internet marketing.

~ Use animated banners when you can. Even though some people complain about being distracted by them, isn't that the whole point? Animated banners definitely are more effective than static banners.

~ Use words like FREE and NOW, and convey a sense of urgency to your audience.

~ Change your banners often, especially if you have repeat viewers. Create a feeling of newness.

~ Use the ALT (Alternative) attribute in the image tags of your banners. Many people navigate with images turned off so they can view sites more quickly. The ALT tag describes the content of your banner and brings some of these people to your site. Here's an example of what your banner with an ALT tag would look like: <img src="banner.gif" alt="Click Here to Earn Money NOW!">

Another idea is to take some time perusing the various banner exchange sites for the most eye-catching banners to get some ideas for your own attention-getter!

We hope this has provided you with a good start on your banner creation. Here's to your inner creative genius!

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Janet Wilson is the President of Life, Education And Prosperity, Inc., a company dedicated to enriching the lives of networkers worldwide through personal and professional development. LEAP specializes in training new and traditional networkers, as well as entire MLM companies, to become proficient in Internet marketing. For more information on this $10/mo. training, please email janet@leapnews.com or visit http://www.leapnews.com