Yesterday when I wrote about advertising on Whitespace for a year I had a couple people ask if we would also provide design services for their ads. What makes textads so appealing to companies and banners unappealing is that most people just don’t have the resources to design great banner ads and this got me thinking why I haven’t seen any designer specifically market their services as a banner designer?
At Work Boxers I discuss the effect design has on CTR and to me it only makes sense that someone in this industry become the expert of banner design. I am sure there are many people that can design a pretty ad, but can you design an effective ad? What if you could guarantee that your ads would get X% CTR for your clients assuming the ad placement is right?
Now this may never replace designing whole websites as your #1 revenue stream, but with the increase in banner ads on the web I definitely see a market for it. One of the perks of the new 9rules Ad Network is that we will list the members who offer banner design services so clients aren’t left designing ineffective ads for themselves and walking away upset with the poor ROI.
If you already offer design services how much harder would it be to add a banner design section and push that a bit? Competition will always be strong in the design industry so it only makes sense for designers to start finding niches where their services are needed.
The word is out that 9rules is working on an ad network of our very own and to help with the cause I am offering a year (well technically till the end of this year) of advertising on Whitespace for $1,200. Since we are almost halfway through the month of January you are looking at around $100/mo to reach the Whitespace audience. This offer will be limited to 10-12 sponsors.
Don’t get the wrong idea because there won’t be 10 ads showing at once. The ads will be rotating in the sidebar and in the footer along with 2 ads showing up on the homepage. Over the course of the year I will be testing new ad formats and placements so this will also prove to be a good experiment for these advertisers looking to see which formats work best for them. Your ad can be changed at any time for something else since it wouldn’t make sense to have the same ad up all year.
The site currently pulls in around 150k-200k pageviews a month (small to many people, but I lost my first 15 months of archives…not easy starting from scratch) and growing. There are some other guarantees that I will make to sponsors, but will only let serious candidates know what those are (oooooo, secrets). As an added bonus all Whitespace sponsors will receive a 9rules advertising discount so if you wish to reach an even bigger audience through the 9rules Network you can at a cheaper price than everyone else.
As an added, added bonus these ads will go up on the new Work Boxers once that’s launched.
That’s all. If you are interested shoot an email to scrivs{at}9rules.com.
Here is a question that I have been thinking about a lot recently since 9rules seems to be sort of in that transition phase between underdog and company that other startups are gunning after (don’t ask me why). If you had a company or own a company what position would you rather be in, the Underdog role or the Big Dog role where everyone is claiming they are going to do things better than you?
