Banner Freebies

• TrafficX - This free banner exchange "guarantees" traffic for your site. If you abide by their terms, and you don't receive any clickthroughs within one month of placing their code on your page, you'll get 10 free credits and get your banner placed on their front page for one week.
• SiteRewards.com - Got a Web site? Want to make some money from it? Here's an outstanding new directory that offers a comprehensive roundup of the Web's various affiliate revenue programs. SiteRewards.com offers listings and descriptions of over 600 affiliate programs, as well as a handy search engine to help you quickly find just the right program for your site. (One of the best directories of its kind).
• Associate-it.com - The largest roundup of its kind that we've seen yet, Associate-it.com rates and reviews over 860 associate, affiliate, bounty, referral and revenue sharing programs across the Web. A must-visit site if you're looking for the best way to generate revenue for your site. The site is constantly updated and is helpfully broken down into categories, ranging from advertisting to marketing to shopping to travel. There's also a free biweekly newsletter that you may sign up for that offers the latest news on associate programs.
  
• Refer-A-Site - This free banner exchange offers a new twist: you can add sound effects to grab your visitors' attention. No plug-ins are required to hear the sound. The sound clip is played when a visitor moves their mouse over your banner. For every two visits to your site, you'll receive one free advertising credit. Your banner here will be 468X60 pixels. Join now and you'll get 1,000 free advertising credits.
• The Net One - If you're looking to build traffic on your site, this handy directory is an excellent place to get listed. One advantage to this directory is that once you submit your site here, it'll appear instantly. They also offer a free HTML mail newsletter that features lots of useful Web site promotion tips, tools and articles.
  
• Websponsors.com - If you want to earn revenue with your Web site, this is the place to go. WebSponsors.com is by far the most reliable, competent and trustworthy Web site revenue program on the Web. Since launching in April 1998, WebSponsors.com has emerged as the top results-based Web ad network. The Free Site has been a member of WebSponsors.com since June, 1998 and we've found them to be by far the best service of their kind. (Highly recommended).
• Cyberbounty - A solid, free affiliate program, Cyberbounty pays you for displaying their sponsors' banners on your site. There are plenty of good offers to choose from here (many of which we've not seen elsewhere). Cyberbounty also supports mailing lists and E-zines.
  
• DirectLeads - A solid lead generation network, DirectLeads offers a reliable way of earning revenue for your Web site. DirectLeads offers many appealing offers that pay you either per click or per lead. They have an excellent administration center that displays real-time stats, so that you may quickly see how much you're earning. We also like their banner rotation feature, which ensures that the banners that you display never get stale.
  
• Click2Lead - Looking for an affiliate program for your Web site? Click2Lead offers a good roundup of programs that generate revenue, either on a pay-per-click or on a pay-for-lead basis. Lots of categories are listed here, including automotive, books, business, clothing, family, food, games, shopping and more.
  
• Animation Station - This site will make you a free custom banner. There are over 600 templates to choose from here. They say their turnaround is "under a day" currently. If they make a banner for you, you're required to linkback to them somewhere on your site.
  
• buttonXchange.com - A new free link exchange service, buttonXchange.com makes use of 88-by-31 pixel buttons, rather than full-sized banners. Simply sign up and submit your button and it'll be displayed randomly on other participants' pages. buttonXchange.com offers real-time statistics, so you can see how your button is performing. They offer a selection of blank buttons that you may use (you'll need to add your own text, which you can easily do in any graphics program). (No adult sites allowed).
• The Pop-up Exchange Network - With this unique free banner exchange, you can promote your site with "Pop-up Internet Commercials." Your ads with this service can be animated and can stream live audio and music without the use of plug-ins. This is an innovative service and their "talking" banners will definitely grab your visitors' attention. Currently, they're offering all new sign-ups a free copy of Debit Express E-Commerce Solution, "a $195 value," which allows your site to accept checks over the Net.
  
• BannerExchange - Are you looking to drive extra traffic to your site? BannerExchange is a solid new free banner exchange, with a 2-to-1 ratio, that offers comprehensive ad campaign tracking and reports. Easy to sign up for and implement on your site. You can store up to three banners in your account, so you can switch back and forth to evaluate which is most effective.
  
• AssociateCash.com - So you want to make some money off your Web site, huh? Well check out Dan Oakeson's good roundup of associate programs on the Web. These companies will pay you to display their banners on your pages. Find out the details on each program and whether they deliver here.
• PowerExchange - A promising new free banner exhange program to help you promote your site. PowerExchange offers a 4:5 ratio and offers you the chance to target your banners. They offer real-time traffic reports and ready-made banners, if you don't have one made up already. Your banner here will be 468X60 pixels. (They're currently offering 250 free exposures when you sign up).
  
• Banner Crafter - So you've joined a banner affiliate program. And now, you want a really eye-catching banner to draw in traffic. Banner Crafter is the solution. This advanced freeware banner creator has a fairly steep learning curve (mainly because it offers so many bells and whistles). But if you spend some time with it, you can create amazing animated (or static) banner images. By far the best program of its kind. (2.5 megabytes). For Windows 98/95 and NT.
• Power In Numbers Power Banner Exchange - A new free banner exchange aimed at small businesses on the Web. Offers 100 free credits and a 1:1 ratio. Your banner here will be 400X40 pixels.
• ClickTrade - Popular, first-of-its-kind service that allows you to set up your own affiliate program and reward your affiliates on a pay-per-click or sale basis. You can browse through their large directory to find sites that'll pay you by the click to link them. Over 30,000 Web sites participate in ClickTrade, (now owned by Microsoft).
  
• Palm Pilot Banner Exchange - This free banner exchange is geared toward PalmPilot Web sites. They offer a minimum of 30 banner impressions every two weeks. Your banner here will be 468X60 pixels in size (and under 10 kilobytes in size).
  
• Eurobanner - This is a free banner exchange service from Europe that offers a standard 2-to-1 ratio. Easy to set up. They offer Web site stats and a counter. With this service you can choose your audience (i.e.: have your banner displayed to European audiences only). Your banner must be 400 by 40 pixels and no larger than 12K.
• TeknoSurf AdWave - Here's a fast-growing entry in the league of advertising banner services that claims to pay Webmasters for displaying their banners. TeknoSurf promises "up to 20 cents" per unique click and $5 for each Web site you refer to them, who signs up, and is accepted into the program.
• WebSite Designs Banner Exchange - Here's a new banner exchange that offers a generous 3:2 ratio (meaning that for every three banners shown on your site, your own banner is shown twice on other members sites). Banner sizes here must by 400 by 60 pixels and no larger than 12 kilobytes. They offer 500 free banner impressions (credits) for all members after thirty days.
  
• AssociatePrograms.com - If you're looking to make some money off your site, then pull up a chair and spend some time at this comprehensive Australian site. AssociatePrograms.com offers an excellent roundup of associate and affiliate programs on the Web, as well as Web marketing tips, tricks, tools & techniques.
• Refer-it - Refer-it is the Web's authority on revenue sharing programs. At this search engine and guide, you'll find over 400 affiliate, associate, referral, and bounty programs reviewed. A number of imitator sites have emerged since Refer-it came online last year, but this site remains the definitive resource of its kind.
• LinkExchange - This banner exchange service (now part of the Microsoft Network) is the biggest and best-known of its type. We've used this service since June, 1996, and have found them to be fairly reliable and competent, (although service has deteriorated somewhat in the past six months). You get one exposure of your banner for every two hits to your page. Banners at one time here were 400-by-40 pixels, but LinkExchange has phased these out in favor of the nearly-universal 468-by-60 size. Note: some WebTV users report technical problems getting LE to accept their banners.
  • If you want to make sure you're getting full credit for the banner impressions you're owed, try LE Check, a nifty freeware program that'll make sure that your LinkExchange account is recording credits properly by simulating the earning of credits.
    
  • LinkExchange experienced some problems in the past few months with being late on delivering sites the banners exposures that they owe them. We've had a number of complaints from Webmasters saying that they are owed thousands of exposures. TheFreeSite.com itself was owed several thousand exposures at one point, although they eventually were delivered. LinkExchange says the problem is the "result of sharp increases in traffic and other compounding bugs which strained our system and impeded the smooth flow of ads."
• SmartClicks - An innovative banner service that goes above and beyond most other link exchanges in many ways in that you can target your banner to a specific audience. We've used SmartClicks for two years and have generally been impressed, particularly with their targeting control panel and stats. Along with Link Exchange, SmartClicks is one of the Web's most reliable banner services. Your banner here will be 468 by 60 pixels.
  
• HyperBanner - A competent, well-run free banner exchange service with a twist: its banners are Java-based. The advantage to this approach is that you can have far more informative and eye-catching banners than is possible with standard image banners. The only drawback is that Java banners take longer to load. Still, this is clearly the trend of the future and someday all banners will likely be Java-based. HyperBanner allows you to target specific geographic regions and/or topics (such as software, children's content, sports, etc.)
  
• CyberThrill - This affiliate banner program promises to pay you 20 cents for every unique visitor you steer to their online gambling service. We've been disappointed by every aspect of this service, including their non-responsive customer query department. We've also had numerous complaints about non-payment from many Webmasters. This is a scam.
• Safe-Audit Banner Service - Safe-Audit is a reasonably reliable commercial banner service. This British-based company offers complete and up-to-date statistics, so you can see how your banners are performing at a glance. The only quibbles we have with Safe Audit are the site's cumbersome interface and the fact that it's not always easy to get a response to your questions. Note: not all sites are accepted for the program.
• Banner Wizard - This freeware utility offers a spreadsheet-style program that helps you to calculate the costs involved in banner advertising and "to optimize your Web advertising strategy for best possible results."
  
• Four Corners Effective Banners - Just signing up for a banner service is only a small part of promoting your site. In order to draw hits with your banner, you need an effective design. This site is the best we've seen for offering tips on making a banner that people will want to click on. They even display a list of the Web's most successful banners, so you can get an idea of what works.
  
• MagnaGrafix - If you've signed up with a banner service, then you can get Brian to make a free static banner for your site. If he creates a banner for you, he requests that you link back to his site.
• Link-Me Banner/Reciprocal Links Exchange Database - One of the best ways to promote your site is through reciprocal links. This resource is a good place to start. This site also lists over 500 "free-for-alls," which are basically bulletin boards that you can add your site to (and believe it or not, they do pull in traffic).
• Penny Web - This is a banner service that claims to let you "promote your site at no risk with guaranteed visitors" and to "generate income by hosting banners." Our own experience with Penny Web was disappointing. We get a lot of traffic here at The Free Site, but apparently not enough to generate income with Penny Web. We never received a cent for our participation with this program. Their "host reports" site that purports to give you your account's current data was cumbersome and difficult to get meaningful information from. Their tech support was not helpful. Our advice: be wary of any banner service that claims to pay you.
• BannerSwap - This banner service also offers a 2-to-1 ratio. Our own experience with this link exchange was disappointing. We often had far lower click-through ratios that we've had with other link exchanges (using the same banner).
  
• The Banner Generator- If you subscribe to a banner service, you'll need to make up a banner, which this site provides for free. Check out these examples. This service works with WebTV.
• TradeBanners Network. - This service is similar to Link Exchange. We tried it for several months and found them to be a competent service. However, our banners consistently got lower click-through ratios than on Link Exchange or SmartClicks (even with the same design!)
  
• LinkTrader - This banner exchange offers a higher-than-average 70-to-30 ratio. Banners must be 400 by 50 pixels. Our results with this banner service were less than ideal. Despite the higher ratio, we had few hits through LinkTrader than through Link Exchange, using the same banner. Your own mileage may vary. Incidentally, LinkTrader recently began offering free E-mail accounts, as well.
  
• Net-On's Banner Exchange - A growing Sweden-based link exchange that offers you a generous 4:5 banner exposure ratio. Animated gifs are OK. They accept banners of varying sizes, which can be a drawback, as you can't take advantage of the HTML size tags to speed up loading of banner images. Sometimes their banners don't load quickly which can hold up your page at times. They still have a ways to go before they can be considered in the top rank of banner exchanges.
• 123Banners - An up-and-coming link exchange with around 4,000 members. The concept is simple: by joining, you agree to display advertising banners for other members, and they agree to display banners for you. You can decide what type of sites to advertise on and advertise for so you don't need to worry about inappropriate material showing up on your pages. You get one exposure of your banner for every two banners displayed on your site (similar to Link Exchange).