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Introduction

Banner exchanges allow you - as a website owner - to exchange traffic with other website owners. There are many banner exchange networks that provide a free banner exchange program. The process to participate in one of this programs is like this: sign up, upload your banner, add the HTML code on your website (on as many pages as you want), start receiving free traffic. So prerequisites are: your own website (because you need to be able to edit your pages), and a banner (.gif or .jpg file). There is plenty of help online for creating an attractive banner, try using a free web-based banner creation tool.

Most banner exchanges offer a 2:1 ratio, which means that for each two banners you show on your website (two impressions) your banner is displayed once on another website.

Usually banner exchanges don't provide a great click-thru rate. Even if you produce an awesome banner for every 1000 banner impressions only one to ten will generate a click. So traditional use of banner exchanges is not a great deal.

Strategy

Here is the secret you should know: Join banner exchanges which give you credit for other people who sign up in that exchange through your site. I personally am a member of 2 banner exchanges. They give me credit when someone signs up for their free service through my site. They are giving me credit for hits equal to 10% or even 20% of whoever's site I referred to them. In other words, when someone who gets 1,000 hits a day on their website joins through my banner on my webpage I will receive up to 100 impressions a day (considering 20% from referrals and 2:1 ratio)... That is extra banners that will shown for me automatically every day from now!

When I have 20 people joining a banner exchange through my site and each one of them averages 100 hits a day - This is 2000 total hits or 200 banner impressions for me. That is extra hits I will get every day automatically. These referrals can begin to build over time until you are getting a whole lot more credits from your referrals than you are getting from your own website.

Now, multiply those banner viewings by joining 2, 3, or 4 banner exchanges and you can start getting the picture. A year from now (I wouldn't say this is a get rich quick scheme) you can be getting thousands of hits daily from your own credits and the credits of those you have referred to the banner exchanges.

Now let's get down to the basics of which banner exchanges I recommend you join to start putting this plan into action on your website. As I said above, I am personally a member of 2 banner exchanges. I have joined and reviewed more of them, but I am most satisfied with these two exchanges: LinkBuddies and Relmax.

LinkBuddies

The first site I recommend you to join is LinkBuddies. For every member you refer to LinkBuddies, you will receive 20% of that member's credits for life! LinkBuddies also gives you 500 FREE impressions just for joining. Other features include a wizard-based banner creator and banner targeting.
To join visit http://www.linkbuddies.com/?ref=113644

Relmax Flash Banner Exchange

As the name states this is an exchange for flash banners, but they accept non-flash banners too. Relmax has a two-level referral program. You will receive 10% of your direct referral impressions earnings and also 5% of your indirect referral earnings. Relmax keep only 30% of the banner impressions you generate, that is a good 10:7 ratio. Also you receive 1000 credits when you sign up.
To join visit http://www.rfbe.com/?refid=2589

Conclusion

Traditional use of banner exchanges is not a great advertising tool, even when they are free to use. But using the right banner exchanges with the right strategy they can generate a lot of traffic to your website in the long run.