Going to one of my favorite blogs, 45n5.com, I noticed new banners. I then noticed right away all the ads are the same with all different affiliate links on them. Now this brings up a point because someone just bought a 250 * 250 ad spot on my blog as well and it is the same banner design. I thought to myself 'does anyone think for themselves?' Obviously no one is going to click on these banners or one person CTR may be higher than ones because of the similar 125 * 125 banner button.
Just take a look at this image I snap shot at 45n5.com - sorry Mark for cutting you in quarters. =P
You can clearly see the 4 banners that are all about making 5k a week. I mean literally you are just bombarded with red and $5000! Before you actually want to advertise on a blog/website LOOK at the banners, who else is competing with you and is it the same offer. If it is the same offer and the banners are all the same I advise you to get creative and simply make your own. This way you have more of a leverage over the 'other' guy because you are promoting the same thing but a different banner attracts someone's curiosity. I can almost assure you being different can get you a higher CTR even some leads.
This just proves to everyone out there that we are lazy and we do not look on how we are spending our money. Spend it wisely by simply creating another unique 125 * 125 button. This way you stick out as a person and you have a better chance of earning. So many people are promoting this 5k a week thing and I bet no one has created their own banner creative. It is all over the internet I bet everyone already acquired the banner blindness for it. If you have created your own you will be able to escape the banner blindness and again earn from your banner creative.
For the people that just buys ad space for the hopes of acquiring the traffic from the popular blog is useless because where is the research? A quick glance will easily tell you that it is not worth it to use the same banner image. It is common sense also that you will not get a high CTR because of all the similar images surrounding your image.
It does not take 2 seconds to look at a blog and figure out what ad space has been bought and what banners are being displayed. So I do not know why marketers are just purchasing space for the hell of it. This really gets to me because even a noob would know not to buy ad space with similar buttons surrounding it or at least choose a different campaign to promote.
So how can you be different? Just think! Go to the landing page of your affiliate campaign and just see what it is about - I bet 98% of the promoters do not even look at the landing pages. What context can you put in a button to make it stick out? What colors should you chose? What logo to put on? There are so many ways to create a unique banner and still convert. THINK!
I do not understand why we are getting lazier every new coming year. I did a great link bait back in the day and got on John Chow's blog for FREE because I was unique. Everyone on his blog all wanted to get his traffic filtered to their website. Everyone left comments and tries to be the first commenter in trying to get his traffic - I made a video about him and now I got his traffic for free.
The best thing to understand is to be different, look and think at what you can do differently. Leverage on the other losers that do not want to look at small things and make it big. Just looking at Mark's blog you can easily leverage his traffic by advertising a different banner or even a different creative. It does not even take 15 minutes to slap up a colorful or new banner to upload to marks blog or anyone else's - as long as it is unique you will win!
