July 06, 2004 | View Comments (23) | Category: CSS Vault
Summary: Now you can advertise on the Vault at an extremely reasonable price.
If you have a site that you would like to promote, but don't feel like spending a large amount of money you now have the option of advertising on the CSS Vault for only $15/wk. That sounds like a horrible salespitch, but really there is no other way to go about it.
If you are looking to reach designers to pitch your products or services then this is a great opportunity for you. Maybe you are just looking to promote your blog or article. The textads are handcoded without any crazy javascript so the search engines will pick up all the pagerank goodness from the Vault and help your site out.
As of right now the basic sponsors package is $15/wk and ads are featured on the homepage along with the individual pages.
Currently the Vault averages 9,000 pageviews a day with over 4,000 unique visitors daily. These numbers continue to rise every month as more and more people find out about the site.
I assure you this pricing will not stay at $15 forever so now is a great chance to jump on. I will only accept 5 ads at a time so after that you have to wait in line. The adspace at the top occupied by Basecamp has been bought out for the whole year.
Any questions or wishing to purchase ad space use the contact form to let me know. Payment is done via PayPal or check (but obviously there would be a delay) and the max buyout period for ads is 6 months so that the content stays fresh (with the exception of the banner textad).
The benefit of this for the audience is that now the site reviews will be even more indepth as I will be trying to provide the greatest experience for everyone (Advertisers and visitors).
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/275
Look at this in the words of the thugged out web design whitey (me):
You want to increase your traffic,
The vault provides you the demographic,
$15 a week, you know you have it,
This isn't selling out, its increasing profit,
Come on, let the man put a little bit more in his pocket,
You can't stop it, so don't even try,
All you nay-sayersm you're living a lie,
And to answer your question, I was drunk, not high.
Ok too much of a buzz plus music playing in the background leads me to write yet another keystyle that is not worthy of the time it took to type it.
Ryan Latham (http://www.worldoneweb.com)
hmm, I might do it. I'm not sure at the moment. I don't provide services to web designers, however, I am looking to get some more interest from web design companies for "contract" work or possible collaborations.
I definitely will be advertising my project on it at some point..
I'm looking to advertise on digital-web as well.
Trust 37 signals to buy out a years worth of advertising lol - damn them for making so much money :(
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
So, what are you offering for $15/wk besides pagerank and exposure?
Given the history across all your sites, all one has to do is write an interesting / controversial post on another site to be linked to Whitespace / Businesslogs, or have their site design submitted to the Vault, or submit their redesign to the V2 contest, or submit an interesting idea to Forevergeek to be linked to "all the pagerank goodness" for free.
There are numerous folks who post across here who have equal, if not better, pagerank than cssvault.
What would be the motivation of someone to pay to have a link on what is essentially a link dump?
Sorry if that term sounds crass, I know CSSVault is a resource...
Can you offer some numbers on what your click-through rates are? Or some other metric outlining the cost / benefit of paid advertising? Because, right now, there are 17 outside links getting free advertising and 2 paid - all gaining the same goodness.
Of course, then there are the commenters, who also get a "free link" to your site. Granted, we don't directly gain the goodness, we do get the referrals.
So, I guss it all gets back to a post you made previously about making money from blogs - tricky little bugger there.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Also, I would question the relevancy of the advertisers as compared to the content and purpose of the site.
The one advertised site is not CSS valid and designed with tables. The very two criteria CSSVault preaches against.
Things that make you go hmmm...
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Gees Mark. You really take things too seriously... You poop on every party poor Paul tries to throw! (say that three times fast!)
Derek (http://www.twotallsocks.com/)
Derek -
In the book "Good to Great", there is an example of a U.S. President who had a trusted group of advisors who were instructed to give the President an exact and truthful analysis of a situation no matter how bad the news, or how bad it made a decision look. Just the truth without all the syruppy love.
The points I brought out are valid points that anyone looking to spend money on advertising would ask.
Furthermore, it also goes to expertise in content management, and questions information architecture and design - all points discussed here.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Paul -
The book title in my previous was meant to link to your store, but I failed to close the tag. Feel free to close it you like.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Mark asks some realistic questions that most advertisers would want to know if they were paying a lot more ;-)
Even though PageRank does not play that highly in Google's little dance anymore the Vault currently has a PR of (6 for www.cssvault and 7 for cssvault.com....don't ask me, ask Google). Some folks will have a better PR (hard to get above 7), but few design blogs will have the exposure of the Vault.
Clickthrough rate is not measured so unfortunately that statistic cannot be provided, but could be in the near future. Can I guarantee your link will be clicked on at all? Nope, but I can guarantee it will be viewed X number of times.
As for the type of advertisers shown, yes the current one is done in tables, but also provides a place for creative individuals to meetup so to some it might be useful. No I do not plan on putting up companies that offer no relevance at all to the Vault community.
If you are hesitant about spending $15 then holdout, but I already have one company looking to buy the max 6 months period and if worse comes to worse you could look at it as a way to support the Vault. Not everyone has the ability to get a site up in the Vault so you may see this as the easy way to do it.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
If I were going to use this, I'd possibly do it, not so much to advertise a site, but to advertise a project. You mentioned that one of the sites-to-be-advertised has a "creative meetup". For $15, that sounds like somthing perfectly relevent to advertise.
Sure, the owners of that project could make a comment in one of Paul's entries. But maybe that sort of link-whoring is exactly what Paul is trying to prevent.
Eris (http://erisfree.com)
This is good targeted advertising, but when you say 9000 page views are you talking about the home page or the inner galleries?
Can't find any ads on the home page, so I'm hoping you're either going to move the ads front and center or your drop your numbers.
Hargreaves (http://www.sgdhs.ca/)
Hey, I found the ads... I don't know why I'd never seen them there before, but I did have to hunt for 'em.
At 800*600, I never usually go past the colourful screenshots, so I never caught them. If I do scroll down, I'm looking for the resources, and I guess the ads just blend in.
It could also be that you need more advertisers to take up more room (and draw the eye).
Then again, it could just be me.
Hargreaves (http://www.sgdhs.ca/)
There are ads on the homepage towards the bottom. The ads are better served on the individual pages and those numbers given are low. There is going to be some movement on the homepage in the future, but I am not trying to make the site a giant billboard.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Scrivs, do you know how many people visit the page from the UK? It would help my decision.
Robert Lofthouse (http://www.ghxdesign.com)
I can have a look at my stats, but don't know how accurate they will be. I will email you the info once I get it.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Mark,
You asked, "Also, I would question the relevancy of the advertisers as compared to the content and purpose of the site."
Do they need to be relevant? For the person advertising it is important but it doesn't need to be for the viewer. If I want to pay $15.00 to advertise selling pickle juice does it matter? When I visit abcnews.com and am hit with an ING ad how is that relevant to the news?
Brian (http://savedbyzero.org)
Mark, I don't see why anything should have to be related to the content. It's not the content you're advertising to, it's the audience. When you go to userfriendly.org, they aren't advertising comic strip books, they're advertising geek gear... stuff the audience is interested in (or at least, stuff the advertisers are betting the audience is interested in).
It is advertising, after all, not paid placement in the vault. People are quite capable of determining the difference.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
JC -
I don't recall ever saying the ads had to related to the content - or at least that wasn't my intent. I DO believe however that ad ad based program should be relevant to the spirit or mission of the host (in this case, site) on which it appears.
Bryan mentioned the ING ad on ABCNews not being directly related to the content. Of course, it's not - but it is conceivable that financial management is very relevant to the type audience who visits ABCNews.com
Bryan's pickle juice, even if he had the money to pay ABC for an ad, would probably get rejected.
The other arguments I made, were meant to spawn the discussion - not rain on anyones parade.
For instance, I think the type of ads, which ads to accept, the placement of those ads and what dictates one advertiser getting better placement than others goes to:
- Content management
- Information Architecture
- Marketing
- Website Design
Paul has said in a recently written post that it's getting harder and harder to think of things to write about, which haven't been discussed 1,000 other places. I think advertising placement as it related to those 4 bullet points would make a great series.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
I suspect if I offered abcnews 2% more than ING was paying, they would run my Pickle Juice ads. Just like every site out there was running x10 camera ads not so long ago.
The online ad market is starting to turn around, 1 year ago these sites would take whatever they could get their hands on.
For a small site I can see the point that ads should be relevant as you say - because it is a very specific audience. But when you say, "The one advertised site is not CSS valid and designed with tables. The very two criteria CSSVault preaches against." That truly shouldn't matter.
Brian (http://savedbyzero.org)
Hey Paul -
Nice rework on the layout. The ads aren't quite as lost anymore.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
Thanks. Finding out its a fine balance between providing the best of both worlds for the audience and the sponsors.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
Forgot to add that of course the audience comes first, hence why I listed them first :-)
Them = You People ;-)
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
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#1
And to answer anyone saying that I am "selling out" please look at this logically. I am giving people/companies a chance to reach their desired demographics while also providing the same quality content to you for free. I took away the Google Ads and hopefully am providing something more useful for everyone.
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)