Banner advertisements are a staple of web promotion. The key to having a profitable Internet commerce business is getting customers to visit your site. Advertising banners are the best way of getting your site seen on the Internet. Banner advertisements or "paid links" on web sites can be a powerful means for generating a considerable amount of traffic.

You can advertise your site using free banner services, as well as free banner designers and other banner resources on the Web. Many free banner services operate on "exchange" basic: You agree to display banners of that service's other members and link back to those. In return, your banner will appear on other members sites and will link back to yous, usually at a 2 to 1 ratio; every time you display a banner twice on your site, your banner is displayed once on the other Web site.

A banner advertisement is simply an ad graphic that will represent your site, usually a GIF image measured in 468*60 pixels. You can create your banner just as you would any other image for your Web page. Use a graphic design program such as PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro to make your banner. Then save it as a GIF. Colour, concepts and animation are all crucial elements in getting a banner that works.