Some people have said that advertising and marketing are even more important than the product or service itself. If no one knows about what you have to offer, it doesn’t matter how good it is. You also want to give people the most positive impression of your product, service, or website as possible, even before they have a chance to try it out first hand.
In an Internet filled with so many banner ads, it is easy to get lost in the mix and hiring a professional ad agency to design your banners can get very expensive, very quickly. There is at least one alternative, however.
The people behind Abracadaban ordered up this sponsored review on John Chow dot Com to tell you about how you can buy custom animated banners for only a few dollars. And you can make money doing it too.
It’s Not Exactly Like Magic
I understand that they’re trying to evoke certain connotations related to magic, but the Abracadaban (beta) name isn’t exactly the easiest thing to remember perfectly. Clearly an off-shoot of abracadabra, Abracadaban can easily be mistaken for countless other slight variations. This could present an issue with branding.
Regarding the service itself, Abracadaban (beta) gives you the ability to purchase a wide range of advertising banners, both in animated GIF and Flash formats, for between $2 and $7 per unit. A number of ad sizes are available too, including 125×125, 468×60, 120×600, and 300×250.
After signing up for a free account, you can work from both sides of the transaction. One unified account is used to create ads for sale and to purchase ads created by other designers. The user dashboard also gives you access to a myriad of stats.
How Much Do the Designers Make?
With each purchased ad unit, the designers within the Abracadaban community make a cut. The average commission rate is 40%. I personally think that the commission should be at least 50%, but it’s up to you to decide whether the 40% rate is fair. Remember that, based on this scale, a $5 sale only results in a $2 commission. The prices are low, so if you want to make money as a designer here, you’ll need to work on volume.
Using the Ad Creation Wizard
Since the banner maker service is still in its relative infancy, there aren’t too many options in the marketplace right now. This will hopefully grow in the future, because running a search using the tool in the sidebar does not yield too many possibilities.
For the time being, it may be more effective to use the category listing to find a banner that suits your needs. After choosing one of the banner designs, you can then select its size and look at related banners.
The banners are not static, both in terms of content and color scheme. The customization tool allows you to adjust the text and the background color (including gradients), add your own images and music, and switch up the animation effects. Each banner can accept up to four sets of text that animate one after the other.
The wizard is very easy to understand, but it also offers a great deal of personalization possibilities. For the 468×60 banner that I created for my freelance writing services site, the total cost with animations was just three dollars. This is very affordable and makes for a more interesting banner than a static image.
Should You Go Pro Too?
In addition to the regular free account, Abracadaban also offers a premium pro account for $4 a month. This gives you unlimited upload space, help desk support, more pictures per ad, monthly reports and more.
To help kickstart the community, the developers behind Abracadaban are offering thirty free “Pro” accounts to the first 30 confirmed users coming from John Chow dot Com. You can’t beat the price of free and if you happen to sell a few banners along the way, you can come up with a healthy profit too.
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