Breaking the Technorati top 10K with free advertising

What’s that? Free advertising? Tell me more.

In honor of this site’s venture into the Technorati top 10,000 blogs, I’m kicking off my new advertising campaign. I’m giving away 2 - 3 advertising spots for free. Currently, I’m using AdSense in the far right sidebar. This is where the new ads will go.

Note: These ad spots have now been filled. Thanks to everyone that participated.

I’m a little late on doing this because I’m currently within the top 9,000. I dropped rather quickly, much quicker than I had expected, below the 10K mark and was a bit unprepared. I’m ready now though.

How do you get this free advertising?

Simple. Leave a comment on this post or use the contact page requesting the free ad spot.

I’m not sure how many people might be interested in this, so I can’t guarantee that you will get a spot. Priority will go to sites or blogs in the WordPress, blogging, or Web design niches because that’s the type of advertisers I’d like to have on this site in the future.

I, of course, will pick the sites that get their ads put up. If there’s enough interest, I might run a rotating ad script or something like that.

So, what's the catch?

There’s no real “catch,” but I would like a little help. I’d like to get weekly reports on what kind of traffic you’re getting from my blog. This is just a little stat-tracking to help me out.

That’s it. Free advertising in exchange for statistics.

I’m not sure how long I’ll run these ads, but am looking at about a month or until I start seeing some more serious advertising proposals. A lot depends on how much traffic my blog’s getting, bringing you, and other various factors.

The only other thing I ask is that you have a 125 x 125 px ad. This is becoming more standard, and I would like to try this out.

Am I crazy for offering free advertising?

To some extent, maybe. I do have some goals in mind. Part of the reason I’m doing this is to see if my site is ready for advertising beyond Google AdSense. I’m also experimenting with ad placement because I might change this site’s layout or theme some over the course of the next month.

It’s all one, big experiment, and I feel like this blog’s still at a point where I can do a lot of experimenting.

No, I won’t make any money from this in the short-run. However, I think this could help draw in a little more traffic and subscribers. I’m looking toward the future to see what my advertising options might be then. There are still a few kinks I’ll probably have to work out with my advertising system, and this experiment should help straighten those out.

Help celebrate my blog entering the Technorati Top 10K 9K by signing up for a free ad spot now!