Hi, I am new here. I have had a site since 2004 that provides a free service that is useful for financial instituitons, lawyers, etc. It has 3 pages, and is very simple and focused. I would say it has about 40% new visitors per month. It had traditionally made about $80 per month, but this year it went to $100, then $200, and this month it was on it's way to $300. All this time it had a tower advertisment on the right of all 3 pages. That's it. Content never changed, and pageviews per day rarely went above 4,500. A week and a half ago I decided to redesign, and the main change was to make the advertisement a banner, just below the header. above the banner are 4 stock photos slightly related to finance, america, etc. I also added on rectangle further down the page, with 3-D box images to the left of the ads. Result: First day about $130, and every day since then (well, weekdays that is) it has averaged about $60/day. Weekends about $25/day. The CTR increased about 6 times. Now I am basically looking at a $1,400/month site with relatively small traffic, and my costs are $9.99 per month and $300 per year for a Yahoo listing. No onto growing the traffic! Hope this inspires someone!
Cool. Have you experimented with making the background of the banner ad blue like the rest of the page? The white makes it jump out.