Once you have created a site for your niche market and created relevant content, placing merchant ads becomes a priority for capturing sales revenue. Youve worked hard to ensure that your site is highly relevant to your visitors needs, and need to take the same amount of care in ensuring that the ads you place on the site add, rather than detract, from the quality and relevancy of the site. You want each page to be easy to read and you dont want the ads to get in the way of the activities the reader is there to perform.

Finding the best place for ads, and the optimal density of ads is a trial and error exercise, but there are a few guidelines: Consider the placement of ads based upon the purpose and content of each and every page. If a page contains an article, putting an ad at the end of an article is a natural the reader will see it, but it wont be jarring interruption of the text.

If there are functions that are to be performed on the page, put the ads near the radio buttons, fill-in boxes or other controls. Ads for your most important products should generally be placed near the top of the page, clearly visible to the viewer without the need for scrolling.

Consider designing some pages with no ads, even if most of the site has them. This will support the feeling of an environment of value without commercialism. Magazines do this effectively.

Decide how prominent, in terms of size and color, the ads should be. Dont disguise ads as copy, but dont let them take over your pages. Think service provision, not hard sell.