There are currently several dozen great-looking banner ads in the Marketing Tools section of the Reseller Control Center under "Banner Downloads." We've created these ads for you to use in promoting the products you sell.

So how do you get people to see your ads?

The idea is simple, really. You place one of these ads on a Web site that attracts customers who may be interested in what you sell - this can be another site within your own network of ventures, or you can find external partners. Customers who see your ad and are interested in your product can click on the ad to be taken directly to your Web site. Every time someone clicks on a paid partner ad, you pay a small fee to the host site. On your own sites, or sites that offer trades, there will be no cost to you.

When you're looking for sites to advertise on, look for businesses that don't compete directly with yours. For instance, let's say your Web site sells domain names and related services to golfers. You might place a banner ad on a Web site that sells golf equipment. While your site and the site hosting your banner ad have customers in common, you don't sell the same products so you're not competing directly against one another.

There are a number of ways to find likely sites on which to place your banner ad. If there are trade journals in your niche market, read them and look to see who's advertising there. Visit those companies' Web sites and look for a page on advertising rates. Be sure to get answers to the following questions:

1. What are your rates and how many visitors do you attract each month? Rates are typically either flat (5 or 10 U.S. cents per click) or based on Cost Per Thousands (CPM) views. Expect to pay $10-$15 CPM depending on how much traffic the Web site attracts.

2. Do you have a banner exchange program? Programs like these don't cost you a thing - you exchange ad space on your site for ad space on theirs. Be picky about where they place your ad, though. Make sure it gets placed on the top half of a relevant page.

3. My ads have already been created - do you offer an agency discount? This can be as much as 15% or more, so be sure to ask.

Choose one or two sites and place an ad for a month. Be sure to check the click-through ratio once a week-this is the number of times your ad appears on a page compared to the number of times a viewer clicks on it. (An average click-thru ratio is between 0.5% to 2.0%.) If the host site doesn't provide this information, you can just check your access logs to see how many visitors you're getting from the ad. (Using Marketing Source Codes appended to the end of your link as ‘?isc=MYCODE' makes tracking easy - see our Blog article "Setting Up Marketing Source Codes" to learn how.)

At the end of the month, if you're not making more money that you're spending on the ad, try another site. If it's working, stay with it until performance drops off, then try another ad or another site. Remember, constant measurement is the key to knowing when to try something new - be sure to schedule time for this activity whenever you initiate an advertising campaign.