Thank You To Our Sponsors!

You’ve probably noticed a few more advertisements dotted around here on Social Media Explorer. With the addition of more authors last fall and a desire to move SME to more of a publishing platform than a personal blog, I’ve started experimenting with both some content changes (raising the bar) and monetization efforts as well.

Don’t get me wrong: My advertising policy has not changed. It states:

Advertising on Social Media Explorer is possible, but under certain considerations. My audience trusts me. I don’t want to lose that trust. Therefore, I don’t accept advertising from products or services that are A) Irrelevant to them or B) Products I wouldn’t use myself.

That won’t change. For example, this month’s sponsor is SpredFast. They have put together a 28-page guide on planning and measuring social media initiatives. The white paper can be downloaded by clicking their banner advertisement over on the sidebar. (If the ad has expired by the time you read this, you can click on their name in the line above and get there.) That’s a product you will probably have some interest in if you’re a regular reader of this blog. It passed the litmus test with me as well, so I accepted their advertisement.

I promise to put sponsors through that filter before you’re ever presented with their messages.

I’m using iSocket, a neat new advertising platform that fuels lots of the ad networks on the world’s top blogs. The reason is that it makes managing my advertisements very simple. Interested advertisers can click on “Advertise” up there on the navigation bar, read about my site metrics and demographics and decide if they want to buy and ad. They click through to the sales page on iSocket where they can add the different offerings I have to their cart. They pay and upload creative. I review and approve and their ad runs.

The service is free until you sell your first ad. Your monthly fee is based on your site’s traffic. So if you’re small-ish, you won’t pay more than $20 or so a month for the service. You can price your own ads, define the zones on your site where ads can be placed and elect to approve or just take all comers.

I would caution you that you’re probably not going to see much traction on advertising sales until you get about 50,000 unique visitors per month. But stranger things have happened. If someone out there is looking to buy advertisements on blogs and your niche tickles their fancy, you could have a buyer. Of course, it helps to promote the fact you have advertisements as an option. No one is likely to notice you have ad space to buy otherwise. But the more your traffic, the better chance you have of drawing interest.

So, thank you SpredFast for wanting Social Media Explorer’s audience to see your report. I hope everyone goes and downloads it. I know it was helpful for me.

If your company would like to reach the 80K+ unique visitors that produce 100K+ pageviews each month on SocialMediaExplorer.com, you can see our advertising options here.