Hi,
Just thought I would post this, because it got me wondering.

Alot of people rather offer advertising space for money than pay for advertising.

Those that want advertising, rather barter with something like webspace or other services they can provide for basically "free" for them.

Now, most people that click on banners and ads, tend to go out of interest, but how many actually buy something? For instance, gaming sites, most people that come from gaming sites probably have the whole "get everything for free" idea in their head.

In my opinion, advertising is somewhat over priced. Ofcoarse as a seller of advertising space, I wish I could make more money as well.

And how about the adsense and adwords program? I think adwords mostly provide results on the search engines, but not on sites. That is why my adwords will never be found outside of the google search engine. I think we are all getting a free ride from adsense making money off of people that do not know how to have their adword ads only shown on google.

Marketing your business is a very hard thing to do and it never ends. You always need to be out there promoting your services. For example you need to be careful where you spend your time and money advertising, there is no point of advertising game servers at a gardening website for old people :) Teenagers are the ones playing games but don't tend to have much money so the market can be harder. Maybe try focusing on a different age group or sponsor some events.

Advertising online isn't always the best way!