Hello cVillain readers. Many of you have asked about publishing information about your business, sales, specials and events on our site. As you know, we reach about 40,000 visitors each month and have the largest, most interactive online audience in Charlottesville. We can’t cover everything, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reach our audience. We’re going to start experimenting with clearly labeled sponsor posts (in addition to our standard banner advertising). Sponsors’ posts will not be published more than 3 times per week.
You can write whatever you want to our readers and you can choose your publish date. It’s really effective and that’s why a lot of the major blogs are doing it. If you are still buying print advertising, you are probably overpaying. Make sure your message is read by sponsoring posts!
Benefits and details after the break…
Benefits of Sponsor Posts:
- We deliver accountability to our advertisers. We can give you clear statistics on how many people read your post, how many people clicked through and you can listen to what readers think in comments.
- Having a post on cVillain with links to your website means that you will get very good search engine results. Ever search for a brand in Charlottesville and cVillain pops up as a top result? That will likely be your sponsor post.
- Advantages of this approach over banner advertising are many. Click-throughs can lead to the visitor browsing, commenting, and subscribing to the sponsor’s blog or website. A sponsor has direct control over what appears on cVillain simply by writing it.
- Many major blogs do this and advertisers love it. It gives you total control about what you want people to read and see.
We have some guidelines to make sure that sponsored content is clearly labelled and fits with the rest of cVillain content:- no more than 150 words and 1 picture, not larger than 640×400 before the break
- only 1 link is allowed before the break and a maximum of 3 links are allowed in the post
- we will not publish more than 3 sponsor posts per week and will not publish 2 within a 48 hour period; times are first come, first serve
- although we recommend you keep comments turned on, you have the option to disable them for your post
- your post title must start with “Sponsor Post:” and can be no longer than 75 characters
- you must choose a category: drink, events, food, gossip, news. no featured Sponsor Posts
- after the break you can include any number of pictures, slideshows, videos, etc.
- we won’t allow any attacks on other businesses or individuals or any political advertisements
- we reserve the right to reject any sponsor post
- pricing – email kyle@spicybear.com for more details and for help putting together your sponsor post
Related posts:
Tagged as: Advertising, sponsor posts
Hmmm. Sounds like someone got their free liquor cut off, and now needs to rake in some duckets. *snicker*
More power to you.
I wouldn’t mind a few sponsored links. I do however feel it sucks to have comments turned off as an option…
“We have the largest, most interactive online audience in Charlottesville, which you can totally disable if you like!”
Excuse my ignorance, but isn’t this an open blog with largely user-generated content? Anonymous, user-generated content? I appreciate your attempts to make this blog profitable, but realistically, why would anyone pay for a post when they can call his ad a “review” and post for free? Do it well enough and who’s the wiser?
@2 – we don’t allow advertorial and it’s pretty obvious when people slant stories or want to promote their own stuff.
/haven’t had a problem with it before
@3:
it’s pretty obvious when people slant stories or want to promote their own stuff.
Is it? Look at your current featured story – the korean place review. It’d be difficult to write better ad copy. Now we both know it’s not, that it’s a legitimate review, but only because you know belmont, yo, and know that he is decidedly unkorean.
But what if I submitted that review? Someone with no posts and a handful of comments under my belt? I could very well be Mr Korean House and you’d never know. Why would I pay for it? The anonymity that the site prides itself on (yknow, The Code) seems to preclude this from ever really working.
The only way I can see this working is having posts be restricted to a handful of verified users, and I don’t think anyone wants that to happen. Just curious as to your thoughts.
/Devil’s advocate
//sorry to crap all over your own meta-advertisement. we can move this to the FFA if you wish
K-RED?
KCHO!
/also, what?
KCOO KCOO KCHO?
@8 All I’m getting out of that is koo-koo-kachoo.
@8 Oh Jaysus. Never mind.
/apparently, i iz not the walrus.
//tired. last day of working til midnight and my body and midn have completely shut down.
@4 if belmont yo’s engrish was as bad as the tara thai people’s it would be obvious…