Do you enjoy this site? It’s read by hundreds of thousands of intelligent cycling fans every month with currently about half a million page loads per month.
There is space on here for one advert, see the box on the top right occupied by the spoof Dirk Hofman ad
What do you get? The specification is as follows:
- 240×240 pixel space across all pages
- It’s your space for static or dynamic content
- Content can be rotated as often as you like
- The RSS and email feed gets a “sponsored by” footer with your branding
- Monthly booking is preferred, longer periods available
- An advertorial message on the blog and Twitter to say thanks for sponsoring
Who do you reach?
- About 500,000 page loads per month
- over 25,000 followers on Twitter
- over 4,000 subscribers via RSS and email
- English-speaking readers in USA, UK, Australia and Canada, then various European nations
If you or your business are interested and would like to learn more or make a booking, please get in touch by email and we’ll take things from there.
Dirk Hofman might hog the space above but past sponsors include reputable names like Ride Cycle Review, Selle Italia, Competitive Cyclist, NeilPryde Bikes, Strada Wheels and Seven Cycles.
* Dirk Hofman is a Belgian company selling motorhomes but seemingly with a crafty line in ambush marketing. A sign appears at a lot of bike races, flashing as the riders go by for publicity
So how much is Hofman paying?
why don’t you want to use that space for Google Adsense (or any other algorithmically-optimized ad service)?
The Google text often sits awkwardly, it’s been nicer to see real ads from real supporters.
But I should look into this, thanks. If anyone has used it, I’d welcome any tips and suggestions.
Google advertising is very complicated.
Essentially the higher the click through rate on your ads the more you get paid per click. Getting this right is key.
As such there are a whole lot of things you can do so you maximise your revenue, ie only display ads to the people likely to click on them. That doesn’t tend to be your repeat visitors, more likely people who have found the blog through search engines etc. I’d be looking at the retention rate of these visitors (are newbies just coming, having a quick look and flying off somewhere else – in which case google ads might be ok. If they tend to stick around and have a look, I’d consider not putting google ads in as you may be losing them forever).
Do some googling, install some plugins and have a play. Effectively you should be able to do it without most loyal people (ie the ones you don’t want to piss off) without seeing an ad.
Also, you need to be quite vigilant with the ads that people are seeing. These can piss people off, so you need to monitor what is showing and block those that aren’t consistent with what you want to show.
Note I’m no expert, just looked into it for local sporting club seeing as we got decent website visits (no where near what you do of course), but it didn’t come anywhere near the required revenue to make it worth while, even with lots of fiddling, so ditched it. That was a few years ago, so knowing google, things have changed dramatically.
Thanks for the detailed help here, it’s fits with what I’d thought.
Good luck! The seven cycles link was a nice touch. As a resident of MA my next bike could be a seven after seeing their advert. love to buy local!
Kickstart the spot to fans! I’d for an ad free inrng.
Dear Inrng,
Before you put Adsense on, do read the section from Chris Guillebeau’s book about what Adsense is (lead generation for other (dodgy?) sites; takes them away from Inrng; doesn’t fit with your philosophy):
http://chrisguillebeau.com/3×5/files/2009/04/279days.pdf
If your goal is to replace the income from a small advert, I wonder whether you can repurpose some of your content on the site into a product people will buy. With your loyal following, you’ve got to think it viable (possibly a lot better than Adsense).
I’m not a purist, so it’s all fine by me, but just worth looking into the ramifications of going down the Adsense route…
All the best,
Andrew
PS I’m a hypocrit, so I may use Adsense in the future…
There’s a long way to go before Adsense appears here. I can see the appeal of dropping in some code and then never having to do anything again but that’s outweighed by the sterile nature of it all, the cold text doesn’t appeal much.
Off to read the material you link to, thanks
EDIT deleted your duplicate comment, the original was salvaged from the spam filter.