The Wardman Wire

[Delayed from Sunday 25th]

As part of the blog redesign I have created a number of sponsorship spots on the right, with the aim of raising sufficient cash to pay for industrial strength hosting when we need it, and some beer money for the editor and (eventually) the regular contributors.

To try and jump start the sponsorship, I have an opening offer with a couple of spots for £5 a month, and two more for £10 a month.

I’m willing to sell sponsor space up until the end of February 2008 at today’s prices (so you can order up to 3 months).

Ads for any product, service or website are fine - subject only to the usual caveats about porn etc (and my decision is final). If you are a blogger or have a political website, this could be a good way to get a degree of exposure to a different or new audience cheaply.

Our Audience

The number of unique visitors to the blog - based on the Wordpress Slimstat Plugin (v 0.9.2) were:

September 2007: 9217 unique users
October 2007: 10610 unique users
November up until 9:00am on 25th: 12065 unique users (projected to 13k+)
We currently get roughly 1000 unique users per day (plus or minus 20 percent).

The audience for the Wardman Wire includes a large number of political enthusiasts - bloggers, media, local councillors and other politicians. The style is analytical rather than polemical, and we publish around 110-120 articles per month.

Unusually for a UK political blog we deliberately target a number of niches which touch on politics, so we also have a more general audience (with apologies to my political readers!). You can get a good idea of our areas of interest by scanning the archive page. This has titles of all 860 posts which have been published on the blog.

How will it work

• I will post an announcement at exactly 12:00pm UK time today.
• Anyone wanting to order a sponsor spot should add a comment then - identifying the spot of interest, and the month which you wish to book.
• Acceptance will be strictly on a first-come first-served basis.
• I won’t take ads for dodgy sites (determined by me). Obviously porn etc as usual will not be suitable.

Tell me about the sponsor spots

• The sponsor spots on the blog are limited to six plus the Premium spot at the top right, and I have four at sale prices.
• There are 2 spots available today for the sale price of £5 per month, plus two at £10 per month.
• All are for 125×125 buttons. They may be animated within reason (and according to my judgement - green fluorescent flashing dancing naked MPs are unlikely to make the cut, for example).

What do I get

• Your button are on all 1000 or so pages of www.mattwardman.com.
• You get your button on the sponsored spot for the month.
• You also get a “commercial break” post describing your product, service or website each month - which will be identified as a “commercial break”.
• If you like, I will add an “opinion” section to the commercial break post with my comments. It is not paid editorial, so it will be my personal evaluation.

Note: All links will use the “nofollow” attribute, as per search engine guidelines.

Promotional Prices

To recapitulate:

• Two spots are available for the promotional price of £5 per month.
• Two spots are available for the price of £10 per month.
• The £10 spots will be above the £5 ones on the page.
• I’m reserving the other 2 spots for now.

I’m open to offers on the premium spot.

Bookings can be made at this point up until the end of February.

Wrapping-Up

I have no idea whether this will work, but it should be interesting.

Tags: sponsor spot sale, sponsor wardman wire, advert
[tags]sponsor spot sale, sponsor wardman wire, advert[/tags]