Advertise

July 2012 Update: Making some changes in ad types and pricing. Here’s the gist:

• Introducing square format ads – 140px by 140px – that replace the tower ad.
• Retiring the price list specific ads. All ads show up on the home page and all text and square ads show on every other page too.
• Introducing 90 and 180 day pricing options. The 90 day ads are more expensive to cover set up costs. StorageMojo doesn’t use an ad network, so ad blockers don’t usually work.
• Existing cients are grandfathered in with today’s pricing, but most prices have increased. Hint for the thrifty: text ads are a bargain.

Help StorageMojo support itself
StorageMojo gets requests for advertising, and as a capitalist roader, I’m pleased. But StorageMojo’s relationship with advertising is a bit ticklish.

I don’t mind ads and I like the money, but dealing with advertisers is time-consuming. Nor should readers get the feeling that StorageMojo’s independence is compromised. After all, StorageMojo was founded to offer vigorous independent analysis and opinion, not sell ads.

Early on there were Google ads that covered the direct costs of the site. IDG also repped ads as part of their TechNet business. The IDG folks were a pleasure to deal with, but some storage companies found IDG problematic.

With the recent move to a new theme, it is simpler to insert ads than before. Not as easy as a call to an external ad server, but easy. Therefore StorageMojo is offering ad space directly.

Carrying the vigorous independence bit further, the ads are offered under a set of profit sub-optimizing constraints. You’ll see what that means in a moment.

I’m laying out the constraints so I don’t have to field phone calls and to maintain transparency for StorageMojo readers.

First, StorageMojo is not a profit-making institution. It is a personal labor of love. The ad revenue that StorageMojo generates is by far the smallest part of TechnoQWAN’s – StorageMojo’s parent corporation – income. It has always covered direct costs, but has never covered the cost of my time.

Because StorageMojo is not an advertising driven publication the advertising has special features. Or bugs.

• Easy. As in easy for both of us. That means payment in advance and minimum three-month terms. One link per ad and you’re welcome to set up a landing page.
• Pricing. Pricing is NOT per click, CPM or per lead. Pricing is designed so that an advertiser can recover their entire cost from a single sale. In other words: it’s cheap cost-effective.
• Style. Text, graphic and video ads are ok. Flash animations must be tasteful. My judgement on tasteful is final.
• Editorial influence. Advertisers get zero editorial consideration: neither in my topics or in my judgment. I write about what I find interesting and relevant and nothing more.
• Audience. StorageMojo readers are high-end: average income ~$180k; well-educated; storage knowledgeable; a nice mix of D level managers, architects, engineers, academics, financial analysts, other analysts, consultants and a sprinkling of working storage admins and inquisitive civilians. They tend to be opinion leaders, early adopters and evaluators. A smart bunch.
• Limits. Maximum of 6 text ads, 5 square ads and 1 box ad per page. Text and tower ads go on every page, but I only guarantee visibility on the home page. The box ad is page-specific: if it is on the home page that is only page it shows up on.

Here’s a graphic that shows what the various ad types are and where they fit on the page.

If you want some numbers to justify spending on ads, try Alexa. All Internet stats are hinky, but I once saw that there are some 300 external links to StorageMojo.

Rates
Here’s the monthly rate card for a 6 month insertion.

The rotating ad is cool: just as the header images on StorageMojo rotate – collect all 9! – the ad images in the box can rotate as well. Not a requirement, just a nifty plus.

Questions? Shoot me an email.

Courteous comments welcome, of course.