Ads on Fake Sigi
2010-01-28 23:27:00
You'll notice that I dropped Adsense last week. In general, I was unhappy with the user experience, and I don't consider what I was earning to really be in the ballpark of this site's potential. Going forward, I'm going to experiment with a new ad scheme for the site:1 ad per week will run on all the site's pages, in the style of The Deck - a non-animated image 120 pixels wide by 90 pixels tall, with 80 characters of text to go along with it, running somewhere above the non-existant fold. New ads will appear on Sundays. Also, during the week I will make a short post thanking the sponsor and mentioning what is being promoted. Think NPR-style sponsorship notices for the style of the post. These posts will be titled and tagged as sponsored posts and archived on the site like other posts. Crucially, they will also appear in the RSS feed. No other ads will appear on the site.
As for price, I've gone back and forth. There's certainly an intent on my part to earn a living wage from the web, and I'm very tempted to set the ad price at the level needed to make the site "my job" in addition to coaching the Sounders. I think such a pricing strategy places appropriate value on the work produced, and reassures sponsors of my commitment to post good work and generate page views. However, I'd also like to encourage participation in the new program and price it in the neighborhood of what my (currently exploding) traffic will justify.
Traffic is currently averaging around 250+ visitors and 600+page views per day, along with approximately 135 RSS subscribers. This month traffic and RSS subscriptions have doubled over the previous month, and with the American seasons approaching, more viewers discovering the blog every day, and some planned promotional efforts taking shape, I anticipate traffic to continue to grow at a nice solid rate.
So with that taken into account, the price for an ad will be $350 a week during the months of February and March. I feel that this amount is very small in the world of advertising buys, but big enough to make it worth my time to take on the ads. I feel it also appropriately reflects the exclusive nature of the sponsorship opportunity. While I'll analyze advertiser response and current site traffic in a couple months, I anticipate the weekly ad rate becoming a better value in CPM terms as site traffic grows.
I'm going to be somewhat picky about the ads I accept. I'm more than happy to let an ad slot sit open as opposed to filling it with something misleading, offensive or irrelevant to my readers. I'm also going to give extra scrutiny to ads that might get placed by organizations who are frequent topics of my blog, for example MLS, WPS, or even Puma or adidas.
As for the ethical considerations, I think this guide is a good place to start. While I'm not a reporter, and don't even qualify as a "citizen journalist," I'm going to base my editorial relationship to advertisers around those points. Even if things like separating myself from preparing advertisements is going to be impossible, I can at least work to ensure that ads are appropriate, not confused with content, and that the editorial direction of the site isn't improperly influenced by advertisers.
While it's not necessarily the reader's responsibility to police this blog's behaviors, I ask you to let me know if you feel I've stepped out of line.
Feel free to post further questions in the comments. If you want to buy an ad, contact me via e-mail at fakesigi@gmail.com.
-FS
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