5 Ways to Create the Banners You Need
You need ads on your site. They need to catch a reader’s eye, so you need something different. How do you get unique ads without spending hours learning Photoshop?
There are five ways:
- Pay $5 to a freelancer in a land far, far away
- Use a free graphics site
- Use a banner creator
- Use graphics software
- Pay a graphic designer
Creating banner ads is not a one-off task. You will need to make constant small adjustments as you change different parts of your ads using A/B testing in continuous attempts to maximize click-through rates (CTR.)
Ads need to match your blog color scheme, so taking default ads from your supplier is rarely going to work. You must be able to make changes in color, font, and layout in just a few clicks.
1. Paying a Freelancer $5
Forget the first option. You might get lucky and find an embryonic genius who is happy to work for next-to-nothing, but you are far, far more likely to find someone who over-sells and under-delivers. The cost of putting the design right negates the “value” of this option.
Want another almost identical design tomorrow for comparison testing? That will be another $5, please. Every day. Suddenly it’s not even cheap anymore.
Sites like Fiverr are a gamble. You might win the lottery, but often it’s like throwing notes out of the car window when driving at 70mph on the freeway.
2. Using a Free Graphics Site
Free graphics sites take your precious time to create banner ads. You only have 24 hours in a day, and your day is already full, so what are you going to stop doing so you can design and redesign display ads every day?
You need to be able to change your ads as quickly as breathing, or it won’t happen. Free graphics sites fall down here.
3. Using a Banner Creator
A banner creator is designed to do one job well. A drag and drop interface and hundreds of banner templates make the creation and subsequent daily modifications to your ad a walk in the park.
Yes, there is a financial cost, but a software license for a year costs less than a graphic designer would charge for one ad.
This is the only way to create those animated banner ads you love.
Modifying your ads is so simple all you need to do is to set aside ten minutes a day to check your built-in A/B statistics, decide which ad to keep, set up a new variant, and a new A/B test.
4. Using Graphics Software
You can find free graphics software online, or maybe you already have software on your computer.
All these programs have one problem; overwhelm.
The SumoPaint screenshot above is typical of most online graphics programs: Simple, it is not.
You might be thinking about maybe using that program you have had sitting on your hard drive since 2008. All these programs are the same; they all have full orchestras of bells, whistles, tubas, and trombones, so it takes months to learn to use them.
You need something so simple a 9-year old could use it.
5. Paying a Graphic Designer
Has the advantage that you can don’t need to do it yourself. However, you will need to spend an hour filling in a design brief and another hour on to-and-fro emailing.
Finding a good graphic designer will take time. He or she will draft you a banner ad, take your money and send you all the images you contracted for. The End.
When you want to make changes for your A/B testing, you find you need to make another payment first. This could become even more expensive than you anticipated.
Summing Up
Above all else, you need simple. Next, it must come at a reasonable cost, including daily changes to your banner ads if necessary. Only a banner creator tool hits all the buttons. Some even come with a free option, and most have a free trial, so you can work out whether you are going to use it.