Monetize Your Niche Sites | Banners

So you have a niche specific website that is getting a ton of traffic. And you have decided that you want to make some money from it.
The question is are banners an option.
Yes and no is what I would say.

The problem with banners is that a lot of web users, in fact the majority, have developed banner blindness. They just don't see banners any more.

But you can still make money from banners. If you think about it for a minute, the big sites eg Yahoo home page, use banner advertising to generate revenue. But they use this with some skill.

The best use of banners is to have a niche specific site with lots of really useful information. Your content must pre-sell the product your banner is advertising without actually overtly promoting it or even mentioning it by name. Then you put a banner that advertises a product that will cater to the specific needs your content discusses.

For example if you have a webpage about downloading movies, and you have talked about the problem of downloads e.g hard disc space. You have discussed how you have to delete things to accommodate your downloads and how much of a pain it is. You can then put a banner on that page advertising, cheap external hard drives with a gazillion gigs of space.

You put a niche specific, problem solving banner on your page that has the ideal solution for problems you have highlighted on your page

The other problem with banner advertising is there are so many products you can promote in any particular niche.

You have a niche specific website that is getting a ton of traffic. It is tempting to just through loads of banners on the page. Don't do it. You just end up cluttering the page and your conversions will go down.

Also you must have visited those sites that have great content an then put the money making banner at the end of the page, where they are least likely to see it, let alone click on it. The best position for your banner is ABOVE THE FOLD

Clean page with a single niche specific banner in a prominent place is the way to go