I have decided to roll out a new feature here on PaulStamatiou.com. Sponsored Links will be a cluster of links that sit in the sidebar and are visible on every page. I have always been against monetizing this site and have kept the advertisements as low-key as possible. However, Yahoo doesn’t seem to be providing relevant ads and what ads exist don’t pull in much at all. I figured I would let readers plug their sites. If you run a tech-related site, you really can’t get advertising much more targeted than here.
Here’s how it works. If you’re interested in having your link displayed in my sidebar, drop me a line, tell me a tad about your site and provide a link. Sites that are in good nature, informative and bear no resemblance to spam sites will get approved easily. Upon payment of $50 USD via PayPal, your link will be posted for exactly 1 month. I can make no guarantee regarding uptime as there are times when the server might act weird when extreme traffic makes its way over here.
Until the end of May 2006, I will be offering a one-month link for a price of $25 USD. If you’ve been an avid reader, purchasing a sponsored link is a great way to contribute to the site and boost your traffic in return. This site has a Google Page Rank of 6 and daily traffic around here is generally above 2,000 uniques per day and roughly 40k-60k uniques per month as seen here.
To sum everything up, you get hits and the satisfaction of furthering the development of this blog and I get $50 USD (well more like 48 something after PayPal takes out its fees) which allows me to eat. Okay it’s not that bad, but with an extra $50 from each link I won’t have to pick up a job this summer and should be able to afford Ikea furniture for next semester’s off-campus townhouse. Depending on how successful this little venture turns out, I might be able to completely remove Yahoo ads, which I’ve been wanting to do for some time.
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Well that is a great deal. I’m sure many will be interested.
Great offer Paul. Once I get some more money in my paypal account, I’ll definetly take you up on this.
That’s a great idea Paul! It would be great if you could put together this thing called a media package. Basically you would put together a page of useful statistics: demographics, page views per month and banner sizes.
Very interesting idea, perhaps you should put the Sponsored Links at the top of your sidebar, or atleast a little bit higher so they are visible on the initial load instead of having to scroll down.
If there is enough space to the right of the URL I’m considering having people select a tag line or a brief description. If I counted correctly, up to 35 letters can be displayed without line wrap.
I think this is a great way to get some pocket change Paul! Much better than posting graphic ads. I really don’t mind the Yahoo ads either, the way they are styled makes them fairly unobtrusive. The people that have signed up for sponsored links so far are fairly tech related, I like that. Hopefully this trend continues in the future when more people purchase your sponsored links.
Take Care,
John from Iceland.
I love Ikea, and I also never even noticed you have Yahoo ads on your site, so they don’t bother me much.
Good idea, unambiguously you should put the Sponsored Links at the top of your sidebar.
Maybe this can help you
http://www.text-link-ads.com/link_calculator.php
I would pay to have my site listed in the sidebar… But nobody wants to read what I have to say. To be honest with you I need the, “Nobody Reads My Blog” shirt from J!NX…
That and I would buy that long desired Flickr Pro account first… Sorry Paul, love the site… But I love and
Good idea.
Paul, correct the typo “If you’re interested in having having your link “
Ah thanks Titanas, didn’t see that one!
Great idea Paul. If you don’t like Yahoo! Ads, why don’t you try Google Adsense. They display ads matching your content. This will increase your click ratio.
Best of luck :-)
Adsense cancelled on me, accusing me of using a robot to click ads hahah. Apparently that happens a lot, if they don’t believe the number of clicks you’re getting. It happened to a friend of mine as well. Now we can’t sign up for any Google-related money making programs.
Anyway, Google somehow makes billions out of its Adsense. So, I guess they make the public think that they fight with click fraud while at the same time they do it by themselves. Hah.
I was cancelled on adsense too, they made me feel like a criminal…but I had done nothing against their code of conduct. I applied for Yahoo beta ads, but didn’t get accepted.
Bad luck
This is a great idea, Paul. Even though I neither update as much as you, nor take the time with posting, this might be a great avenue for a little boost in traffic and exposure!
Getting banned may be because of sudden increases in traffic as well, did you get digged, featured in a popular newsletter (these are the worst because google sees no referrer) etc before you got banned? I would try to email them and ask to reconsider providing any facts that I could find. Here is a related post
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