As an affiliate you customarily have many options for displaying the click point that your visitors use as a launch point to a merchant or advertiser site. Most affiliates will begin with adding one of the banners provided by a merchant in an affiliate network. Theyre easy, cant be altered and present the branding of your chosen merchant. They also look like the ads that they are. What should you use links and when should you use banners?

Say an individual visits your site because it is the expert site for migrating birds, and they read up on Purple Martin houses. If, at the end of an article on building a house, you placed a link entitled products or bird houses, youd probably get a reasonable number of clicks. But if you displayed a banner for a company that clearly sold purple martin houses, youd be likely to get more because youre being more specific. But if in the text of the article you have links for bird house lumber and purple martin nesting materials, why would anyone go anywhere else? Consider the following:

Banners clearly brand and spell out what theyre selling, and getting to the point of sale doesnt require the site user to do any reading of lengthy text; they just click a box. Sometimes this is what people want, and you need to poll visitors and observe their habits. Links are great in the context of the provision of information. This means in an article or product review. Sites with listings of links, even those arranged in categories, are a turn-off to most people who either know what they want and need the quickest path there, or want product solutions in the context of information.