Create Ads That'll Drive Traffic to Your Site

...on sites, on blogs, on Squidoo lenses... Why? Because they work! Whether you create them to use for your own marketing efforts (which you should!) or to give to your affiliates (which you really should do!), graphic ads will drive traffic to your website.

Now, when it comes to designing a graphic ad, there are two things you must do:



Always keep these two things in mind.

When you're looking at a website and there's something moving on it, you can't not look to see what it is. Use this to your advantage. Animate your ads to catch people's attention but don't go overboard and make them so annoying that people leave the site.

And use bright colors, like blue, green and yellow, that'll grab their attention but go easy on the red.

The "Golden Rule of Marketing" has never been truer than it is when it comes to designing ads that get clicked on.

Answer this one, little question that's on everyone's mind and your ad will bring you a flood of new visitors in no time.

So, what is in it for them? What will your product or service do for them? Use that to craft a good headline for your ad and a message that's short and sweet that you can convey quickly.

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One of the most powerful things about the ebook is he includes studies that show how people's eyes move around as they're looking at a website, and he tells you how to use this knowledge to make your site make you more money.

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• It looks professionally designed
  
  
  

• It's readable - unlike this one:
  
  
  

• It has a sense of urgency



• It has a Call-To-Action in it. Studies show that having the words, "Click here," will increase click through rate (CTR) by 20%.



• It has your URL on it.
  
  
  

• It loads fast. The smaller the file size, the better so use:
  

  - Less colors (set to 16 instead of 256)
  - Smaller or less images
  - Less frames in the animation
  - The optimize feature if your GIF animator has one
  

  More Tips:

• Use your logo to build your brand. Blogging To The Bank their signature shiny, gold piggy bank in their ads:
  
  
  

• If you can, use the word "Free" to get more clicks.



• If you want your ads to look really slick, use pictures. Click here to find professional-quality, royalty-free pictures you can use for as low as 20¢ an image.
  



• Create new ads frequently. People aren't likely to click on an ad they've seen over and over but they are likely to click on one they haven't seen before.
  

Here's a really good article that not only gives you all the standard ad sizes, but it also tells which sizes perform the best and where to place them too.

TIP:
Do you think you'd make more money if your affiliates knew where to place your ads and which sizes performed better?

Include a link to that article on your affiliate page so you can help them help you make more money.

You don't have to make an ad in every size listed in that article - just create at least one ad in each of the popular sizes. To see examples of each size so you know what you have to work with, click here.

First, you'll need a good graphics design program that'll let you do all the tricks to make your ads look good - shadows, reflections, bevels, light, etc. If you don't have one, don't spend hundreds of dollars on one when you can get Real Draw for only $55 and it has a free trial. [Nicholaas Theron, professional web designer and the creator of DIY Web Graphics Pro, uses it and highly recommends it. I love it!]

To create an animated ad, you'll need a GIF animator. Click here for a step-by-step guide on how to use a GIF animator to create animated ads.

And you'll need some cool fonts. For a huge selection of free fonts, check out UrbanFonts.com.

That's it!

The best place to start is with doodle paper. Draw a box approximately the size of the ad you want to create and then start doodling.

Remember: "What's in it for me?" Design your ads FOR your target customer - what they want, what they'll get from your product - and you can't go wrong. Then turn it into a message that'll make people want to go to your site.

Use your doodle to create your ad.

TIP:
The best place to get ideas you can use for your ads is to look at other people's ads. What do you like about them? What makes you want to click on them? What makes you not want to click on them?

Don't let graphics scare you. Look at this ad:

I look at it and see an image in the background and words. It's really not so scary once you learn how. Looks like he used the Saginaw font to create the letters in black and clicked "Glow" in his graphics design software to add that white glow around the letters.

For the orange-y words, I'm guessing that's the Impact font (you probably already have it in your computer). Give the letters that yellow/orange coloring is easy. In Real Draw, you draw a rectangle, then go to your 'Color' panel, select two colors (in this case, the orange and yellow), choose 'Linear Gradient,' and play with the slider till you get it just the way you want it and you get something that looks like this:

Then you click on the rectangle, hit "Copy," then hit "Paste," and take the copy of it and flip it vertically so you have these two rectangles:

Then you slide the bottom one up so the two look like one unit. Next, you hold down your 'Shift' key and click to select the top one and click to select the bottom one, then right-click and select "Create Package." Now your two rectangles are one image:







Now, spell out the word(s) you want in this color. In this case we'll use the 'UNLIMITED' from the ad and the Impact font. So all you have to do is click on the yellow-orange rectangle, right-click and select 'Copy,' then click on your text and right-click and select 'Paste Inside' and you get this:







Then I fiddled with bevels and shadows and ended up with this:







That's pretty close to the way it looks in the ad.

But you see... creating graphics is actually pretty easy (and fun!) once you learn the basics.

  Design Tip:

Look at these two banners:














You probably only glanced at the top one but spent much more time looking at the bottom one, right? That's because when we're looking at something, our eyes naturally move from left to right.

Use this fact to your advantage and design eye-catching ads that'll keep people glued to them!

Once you finish creating your ads, use them in your email signature, forum signature, Squidoo lenses, and in places where your target market will see them (on sites, in newsletters, etc.), but better yet...

Let your affiliates do the work for you and send you tons of targeted traffic. Add them to your affiliate page so affiliates will grab them up.