Internet Banners: Is your small business missing opportunities to promote online?

You will find more opportunities to advertise your business online when you're ready with an online banner for your business! You might be amazed how many free or inexpensive opportunities arise to have your banner placed on web sites and blogs published by your network of friends, your professional colleagues, or your local toastmasters or chamber. Have you thought to propose a banner exchange?

For one really good example, our local women's networking club called Lunch Club Wednesday has a web site for announcements. A member can fill out an online form and upload a photo for approval to be placed on the site. When it is published online, it will then return search engine results for the content of her announcement so even more people will see her banner, logo or photo! If you are a member of a local networking group, you can take link exchanging to the next level and start banner exchanging!

A business banner is simply a picture file, or .jpg, that the web and blog owner can link to your business' web site or blog. Making a banner is most easily done in a program like Photoshop, and I offer to make make them at a reasonable price. The elements of your banners, like photos and text, can be manipulated to create horizontal or vertical sizes. It is a good idea to have a variety of tall and wide formats in typical website ad sizes, and usually a white background will be preferred if you like the floating effect.

Here is an example of a logo I designed for Sharon Leeds' blog which she can easily use in exchanges with other bloggers. You can see the full effect on her Destinations by Sharon blog. It, too features a cartoon effect which I designed using VistaPrint's caricature service. Also above is an example of a banner I created for myself on this lazy Sunday morning! It will probably go through more revisions over time. Since my blog has a black background, I used black but I also have a version of this on white.

There are several web sites where you can "cartoonize" yourself for a logo, banner or simply for your Facebook or MySpace. Here are two of my favorites:

At Obamicon.me, you can make your own "Obamicon" — your image in a style inspired by Shepard Fairey's iconic poster. Regardless of your candidate of choice in the 2008 election, here's your chance to sound-off.

At Befunky.com, you can "cartoonize," "Warholize," or "charcoalize" any picture you upload from your computer and the effects can be adjusted to your liking! This is my lazy Sunday "befunky" cartoon (right).