other than the obvious - a “blind link” banner that looks like several clickable thumbs - what works best for you when it comes to banners that send clicks? i do best with something that makes it clear surfers are to click, and do worst with very animated and active banners or banners that are basically a watermarked pic of a hot guy but don’t let surfers know they are actually banners.
funny thing is i still do best with a standard size like a 460x80ish banner.
and of course, sticking a text link directly under the banner doesn’t hurt to send more clicks, either.
i dont know if my top click-pullers can be called banners as they are more collages of pictures in banner format… width: 180-200 - height: 460-500…
they get good clicks but are they banners, perhaps not so much…
on what can be called banners i have to agree, overanimated banners are not doing good for me… and blindlink banners simply end up giving me a higher rejecting rate according to google stats so i dont think they are worth it when you work with niche.
You talk about blind link banners as if they’re infected with swine flu or something. I’m reading a book right now (Groundswell) that talks about the constant cat and mouse game between advertisers and television watchers. That’s just the nature of business.
There’s nothing wrong with blind link banners, except if they’re taking you somewhere malicious, causing something bad to be downloaded to your computer, or promise to do one thing but doing another. But if someone clicks a blind link banner that looks like a bunch of thumbs and it just takes them to Butch Dixon, too bad, that’s my job.
they click well, but convert poorly. the people clicking them expect content, not ads.
many link lists and pretty much all tgps won’t post your sites/galleries if you use them.
[quote=dzinerbear;41987]You talk about blind link banners as if they’re infected with swine flu or something. I’m reading a book right now (Groundswell) that talks about the constant cat and mouse game between advertisers and television watchers. That’s just the nature of business.
There’s nothing wrong with blind link banners, except if they’re taking you somewhere malicious, causing something bad to be downloaded to your computer, or promise to do one thing but doing another. But if someone clicks a blind link banner that looks like a bunch of thumbs and it just takes them to Butch Dixon, too bad, that’s my job.
Don’t quite agree on that one either. As a surfer and link list owner I really do not like blind link banners. Specially the ones that might look like content or a gallery link.
I’m sure they attract clicks but if it was me clicking on it, it would piss me off and I would just close the window.
But then I’ve always favored the honest approach were I give people the choice and knowledge about what choices they have, be it links, banners etc. In my case thats worked out far better than using blind links or banner. But I guess it comes down to what type of site it is.
[quote=dzinerbear;41987]You talk about blind link banners as if they’re infected with swine flu or something. I’m reading a book right now (Groundswell) that talks about the constant cat and mouse game between advertisers and television watchers. That’s just the nature of business.
There’s nothing wrong with blind link banners, except if they’re taking you somewhere malicious, causing something bad to be downloaded to your computer, or promise to do one thing but doing another. But if someone clicks a blind link banner that looks like a bunch of thumbs and it just takes them to Butch Dixon, too bad, that’s my job.
I couldn’t disagree with you more on these two points. I had a freesite template that I used with mediocre results. I created a banner that I put at the bottom of my gallery pages that was basically a row of thumbs with some small click text and a line of large click text. It lead to the sponsor. It wasn’t completely blind because it did say “click blah blah blah” on it. But some, I think even you in a review thread of my freesites once, called it blind. But when I put that banner on my freesites, my sales went through the roof. I sold heaps of College Dudes 24/7 memberships with those banners. So people were obviously clicking and I’m guessing they weren’t pissed. And when I took them off because people said they were blind, my sales went down.
And, to my knowledge, I’ve never had any of those galleries rejected by any gay link list. I think when you’re talking about link lists and their rules it would help if you said “straight link lists” or “gay link lists” because they’re completely different. I find these blanket comments about what links list will and won’t accept largely pertain to straight links lists. I’ve rarely had one iota of problem with gay lists, except Hunk Hunter and his “too much of the same content” policy. But aside from that, I can’t think of a time where I’ve had anything rejected by a gay link list. Straight lists, I couldn’t crack them. Too many stupid rules like no _blank target window links. :bang:
basschick, sometimes I wonder if you and I work in the same business, we have such opposite and contradictory results, like with TGPS … hahaha … I couldn’t sell them to save my life. But I keep forgetting that you work, or have worked, quite a bit in the straight arena, and I never have. And it’s definitely two different animals.
I made most of my sales on free sites off blind links. My favorite template was a two gallery template, at the bottom of gallery2 I had the following…
Click here for Site XYZ videos
or
Enter the private galleries here
Both linked to the Sponsor. I actually gave them a choice of blind links to click. Most of my sales came from that page and I would assume that since those were the only two links to the sponsor that it had to be one of those links.
a banner with text on it isn’t a blind banner at all. a blind banner would have no text on it - just thumbs. and you couldn’t submit it to places like [SIZE=2]link-o-rama or any related sites, who would blacklist you for it. also no tritech avs will allow a blind banner - one that doesn’t look like a banner, but just a row of thumbs.
a row of thumbs with words on it is a banner, not just thumbs.
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Well, I’m pretty sure you guys all chastised me for using a blind link. I’m not going to search for it now, I just don’t have the time.
But like I said in my previous post, I don’t care about submitting to straight link lists like link-o-rama. I would totally have to revise my template just to submit it to link-o-rama because they have so many stupid rules.
Like these:
Sites with 2 or more pages from the same set of content: the content MUST be in order
Your site has to look decent and fit at 1024x768
Sites with poor grammar or broken English will not be listed
Don’t mix softcore and hardcore content
No Flash movies unless you’re trusted.
And a whole host of other stuff that is only allowed with “trusted” submitters.
And straight link lists are of no concern to me. Maybe they send traffic, I’ve never experienced it. I do, however, get heaps of traffic from gay link lists and that’s where I expend my efforts.
