The link exchange and banner exchange method started off as informal agreements between webmasters whereby they would trade off links to increase traffic to both sites. As usually happens in such circumstances, entrepreneurs started moving in and changing the scene somewhat. There are now a number of companies that specialize in link and banner exchange programs and work in the following manner:

1. These are no longer informal agreements, but are systematized advertising strategies.
2. These companies will ask you to put an HTML code on your page which will create a banner on your screen that will display the banner advertisements of their other clients, one at a time.
3. Every time one of their banners appears on your screen, you'll get credit for an impression. Depending on the particular program, for every two or so impressions that you get credit for, you will earn one impression on the page of one of their other clients. Thus, if you have a lot of traffic to your site, you will generate a tremendous amount of free advertising on other web sites. The downside is that the exchange rate offered by these companies is rarely equal, so you wind up only getting about half the impressions that you give.

In general, you will not get tons of traffic from these programs, but if you are interested in "branding" your site, getting your name seen, a banner exchange could help.

Participate in one of these link or banner exchange programs:

Fair-x actually offers a 1:1 ratio and claims to pay their members. Check it out and let us know.

INFINITE-LINKS Premium members get 5000 banner impressions and a NO LOSS GUARANTEE. Recover the fee in 1 year or get a full refund. You pay in at $10 and get 5,000 free impressions. Ratio of returns is 1:2, but you get credit 100 levels downline.

BannersGoMLM.comfunctions a bit like a multi-level marketing scheme for banner exchanges. As in all banner exchange programs, you receive credit for the number of banners that you display on your site, and these credits are redeemed by displaying your banner on other sites. Joining BannersGoMLM.com is free:

As a member, you earn a full ONE to ONE credit. This means each time you have a visitor to your web site you receive an exposure of your banner on another member's site. Plus, you earn a full 10% of all impressions generated by each and every member of your downline, five levels deep.

Ban-X-Change Banner Exchange Network has a 2:1 ratio, but also pays for banner impressions made at your website. Currently they are offering 500 bonus banner exposures for signup. We recommend the Ban-X-Change Banner Exchange Network.

Free-Banners.com also gives you credits and a downline: Whenever someone clicks on your Free-Banners Button, you'll earn 5 extra credits. And whenever someone ends up joining Free Banners after clicking on your Hits Button, he/she will be recorded as your downline and you'll earn 10 cents. PLUS you'll earn 10% of all banners displayed by your downline. This can grow to be pretty substantial as your downline grows. We're giving it a try and will let you know more. Free-Banners.com is currently having a design contest. You will earn 1,000 credits for any banner or button you submit which they use.

Another system that has cropped up for webmasters to find new visitors is to trade visits with other sites. We have found that this system generally brings you non-targetted, non-relevant visitors. We participated in the program at animationonline.com, I Love Clicks Network, Hit Harvester and were not impressed. Any program that is in frames assumes you are surfing just to get hits back to your site. You cannot even bookmark the sites you visit in a framed system, so noone is bookmarking your site to come back and visit!

Clickthru.net also works on the basis of points. You accumulate points through banner display, surfing other member's sites, or other options they provide. Each point earns you one visitor. We recommend this network above the others for several reasons.

1. The sites registered with Clickthru.net are higher quality. At least you can visit some interesting sites while earning points.
2. They have a directory with search function.
3. The system is very easy to use. The sites you visit are not framed, so you can bookmark interesting sites for more viewing later.
4. You can earn extra points or higher priority in their search engine with "Bonus Credits" icons.
   

Need to make a banner? Try one of these freebies on line if you need help with image production:

• animationonline.com
  
• mediabuilder.com
  
• Instant on-line banner creator
  
• Coder.com's banner creator form
.

We've found this little program BannerCrafter to be very handy in making simple amimated banners with reasonably small resulting file sizes. Download it and try it yourself!:

• Banner Crafter freeware banner creation program.
• unFREEz is a GREAT freeware program to use if you can make your own gif images. We used it with Photoshop to produce a bunch of animated gif buttons and banners.

Of course, for a professional business, you may want a professional to make your banner. We recommend

• Flash Banner design. They are an award winning banner design team.
• Flash Banners by YDesignIT.com -- $35 for a Flash banner, $50 for a logo. An eye catching logo or banner can really help your click through rate, branding, and site style.

We at Virtually Ignorant are offering a banner/link exchange program as well, but one that functions a bit differently than the other link programs discussed on this page. If you have built your site using tools found on our page, we would greatly appreciate it if you would be willing to paste this small banner on your site that will inform your visitors about the tools we provide. In exchange, any site that puts our banner on their page has the option of being included in our links page. Our links page is essentially a directory of pages built using Virtually Ignorant tools. By putting our icon on your site, you will earn the right to put a link to your site and a small description of its content into our directory.

Below are banners from banner exchanges we belong to. Go ahead and click on some to support us getting you this information ;-).

• Read about Pay-per-click search engines: tips, techniques, and recommendations. By Elisabeth Archambault.
• Link Exchanging -- to build traffic
• Banner Crafter freeware banner creation program.
• Free-Banners.com
• Ban-X-Change Banner Exchange Network
• BannersGoMLM.com
• 
• I Love Clicks Network -- get more traffic to your site.