When you are using traffic exchanges and safelists you will notice that many banner ads and splash pages look the same. The reason for that is that many programs provide affiliate materials.

Its ok to use those when only few people promote such a program. However if many are promoting the same program you will probably have better results when you create your own. I know I do. They have the additional advantage that you can also brand them with your picture and name.It will help people to remember you and recognize you on other places where you may be active like social media sites like Facebook, APSense and other. As I know from experience, creating your own gives better conversions.

Yes, you may argue, thats easy for you cause you are a graphic designer. However even if you don't know the first thing about creating graphics you can have them designed for you or design them yourself. All it takes is some time and creative imagination.

If you are really not creative at all and have no imagination to create your own you can have them made for you or promote many programs through the SBT Coffee Mug themed downline builder. The coffee mugs look cute and are sure to grab some attention. The service can be joined for free and through this service you can promote over 200 popular programs. Program owners can have their site MUGged for a year for only $99

There are a lot of free and paid graphical services where you can creates all sorts of splash pages and banner, even peel away ads. Several TEs offer the possibility to create your own graphics. And of course there are several services that many people use.
To name a few: AdKreator, Splash Page Maker, Instant Banner Creator (also for headers, footers, splashes and peelaways), Instant Splash (no more trials, 100% free version available now) and the very sophisticated SmartDesignIt which offers 100's of quality graphics for you to use.

Some are simple, others also provide lots of graphics you can use and/or templates. Some do even host your graphics for you. The free services sometimes have limitations on number of graphics you can create/store or the number of templates/graphics available to work with. Although I use my own software I have tried several and most are easy to use for everyone.

If you are capable to create your own my advice would be to upgrade even when it is only for a month. Best is to make list first for what programs you want to create your own with some notes of ideas. No ideas? Pay attention and make notes of why certain ads appeal to you. When you have some ideas and decided for what programs you want to use your own graphics reserve time for it. You can create a lot of graphics in a month time. Some programs only host limited graphics for free members so make sure you store them elsewhere too. I store several graphics in a google album i.e. the mugs from the SBT downline builder. As back up but also to cut back on use of bandwith.

The most worthwile to create are banners in sizes not provided by the program. I.e. there are many that only provide most common sizes 468x60 and 125x125. However besides your own sites and blogs, there are many sites where you can advertise with leatherboards (728x90) i.e. on TrafficBarAds
or SkyScapers (160/120x 600). I.e. I am displaying Surf-Bar-Traffic member ads on several domains and sites i.e.160x600 on  the SBT MUGged downline builder and linktipper.

And ofcourse you can also pin your self created graphics with a link and a decent description. Especially Pinterest Pins are very well picked up by search engines. Pinterst pins also show up on your APSense brandpage if you have a Pinterest account attached to it.

Some samples of branded ones.