Originally Posted by Forkbeard

I've been using thumbs as banners for quite a while, and I concur that it's a winning strategy. In my head I think of them as "textless banners".

However, with all due props to Sarah for her handy tutorial on using sponsor hosted thumbs, I think you might have better luck making and hosting the thumbs yourself (assuming you've got a sponsor who will let you -- and if you don't, you need a new one.)

I find that making an eye-catching thumb is an art. Most sponsor thumbs range from "OK" down to "yuck" with very few "WOW" thumbs in the bunch. It's not so much the individual thumb that's a problem, it's the mass production angle. Whoever made your sponsor thumbs was probably making dozens or hundreds or thousands. They could settle for "pretty good", and had to, and did. You need 1-3 *SPECTACULAR* thumbs that are a good match for your site and your traffic. For that, you can afford to look through a hundred or a thousand pics and choose the best possible source material.

Plus, even the best sponsor thumbs tend to be standard sizes. The textless banner thumb works best in a non-standard size. In a blog sidebar, that tends to mean taller than it is wide -- something that's rare in a sponsor thumb.

I tend to use sizes like 150x250 and 100x200 -- tall and generous.