I ask this question because in excitement of creating your very own website, it is easy to forget (or not even consider) main purpose of your site! Alas, I talk from experience!

In late 1999 I created Shop Tour UK (http://www.shoptour.co.uk): "a unique way to surf secure UK shopping sites." (Well, that's what I thought, anyway! :-) ) The site started out life as a hobby site - no problems there! - but quickly started to take hours and hours of updating each day. (With no clear, measurable objectives it's very easy to continually change and 'improve' a site!)

Shop Tour UK wasn't making any money, either - well, it was a hobby site! So I decided to redesign site, join lots of affiliate programs, find best affiliate programs, and focus site on promoting those programs!

--- sidebar --- Affiliate marketing really does provide a great opportunity for ALL site owners to make extra income. But choose your affiliate programs wisely; otherwise, you'll still be working hard but for very little reward. To learn more about pros and cons of affiliate marketing, visit http://www.associateprograms.com --- sidebar ---

Yes! It took months to sign-up to affiliate programs and seek out best of them. Yes! It took a couple of site redesigns. And yes! It is better to have clear, and measurable objectives right from start! (That is, to know your site's Most Wanted Response!)

But hey! Now I spend much less time updating my site (because I only concentrate on promoting most profitable aspects of it), AND it is now starting to earn money!

The term click through is synonymous with term hit - when a site visitor clicks a banner or text link taking them to another site or webpage.

In this article I will focus on vast difference between banner ads and text links.

Banner Ads vs. Text Links:

If you're only promoting your affiliate programs or advertising your own business using banner ads, you're losing vast majority of your click through traffic, which translates into lost income.

Banner ads tend to have a much lower click through percentage than text links. They also slow speed at which your page loads and can be distracting - even annoying, to your site visitors. We're all very familiar with banner ads, as they are everywhere, which may partially explain their low click through or hit percentage. A lesser used and vastly more successful tactic is text link.

A text link is a very short description of merchant's program, product, or service with a hyperlink to their website.

Example:

Learn how to start and promote an online business - FREE. Click Here

The words CLICK HERE are a hyperlink connecting to merchant's site - http://www.taddgroup.com

The advantage of using text links over banner ads are numerous. The most important is they have a much higher click through or hit percentage than do banner ads.

The following example is actual statistics from one page on our website using one hour of traffic.

Product 1: