Advertise On Whitespace For A Year
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.
Oh and I will get this beast up to 1M pageviews a month by the end of the year.
By Scrivs on January 11, 2006 1:35 pm
Hm… let me guess… you need money.. fast! or what?
By Julian on January 11, 2006 2:44 pm
Interesting. What tools/stats are you using to estimate the number of pageviews?
By Roger Johansson on January 11, 2006 2:49 pm
If I needed money fast I would’ve done this 6 months ago :-) Really these sponsors become the first “guinea pigs” for the ad network and helping us make it better.
By Scrivs on January 11, 2006 2:49 pm
Roger: I use StatCounter for my stats. Uses JS so numbers could be a tiny bit higher depending on how many people have JS disabled.
By Scrivs on January 11, 2006 2:51 pm
It’s $1,200 for the text-based ads, or the graphic banners?
Also, a quick search on stat counter shows there might be some issues / counting being a bit inaccurate. Do you or would you provide a couple of different stats reports to potential buyers to verify your count?
By Mark on January 11, 2006 8:03 pm
Mark: From my understanding the discrepancies tend to be in unique visitor count and returning visitor count. Our server stats point to the site receiving more, but we don’t trust those as much. But if it’s a trust issue (how can you not trust Scrivs) then I will find a way to provide another set of reports.
And this is for the graphical ads although text ads will be part of the testing down the road.
By Scrivs on January 11, 2006 8:44 pm
It’s got nothing to do with personal trust, bot everything to do with best practices in business — but you know that.
Here’s the next question -
$1,200 for just posting to the site, or does that include design services as well?
I ask because there’s some fugly banner ads out there. I can’t imagine you being hip to trashing up your site to animated gifs and graphics generated by CorelDraw and their library of clipart.
I further can’t imagine, however, you turning down a G because someone’s got a great offer, but not so great skills in the banner ad design department.
By Mark on January 11, 2006 9:11 pm
Mark: Haha, I know it’s a business thing. As for design, I would have to talk to Rundle, but we could probably throw design in for a very nominal fee. Since I wouldn’t be doing the designs it’s hard for me to say yes or no, so let me get a response from him.
And you are right, ugly ads are so not in for the ‘06.
By Scrivs on January 11, 2006 9:17 pm
Interesting. Posted the day after a certain keynote with a series of product announcements. Wonder where the money’s going… :)
By Justin Michael on January 12, 2006 2:54 am
Haha, nah I’m good with my Dual G5 + 30″ LCD and iBook. Nice thinking though.
By Scrivs on January 12, 2006 3:00 am
so that boils down to $6.67 cpm if you only hit 150k/traffic a month. (excuse my math if i’m wrong, i am tired.) It goes down to $5/cpm if you hit 200k. This becomes a really good deal if you hit your million page mark.
so what if my products compete with one of your existing advertisers then? Also, do we get the option to modify our banners throughout the course of the year? So they don’t get stale?
By Brian B on January 12, 2006 11:55 pm
If you compete you compete. The best product will win out in the end and yes you get to change the banners as this is also a case study for everyone involved.
I will be sending out reports and stay in constant communication with each sponsor as to what ads are working and in which areas.
By Scrivs on January 13, 2006 12:07 am