Advertise

Help StorageMojo support itself
StorageMojo gets requests for advertising, and as a long-time 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 and may give readers the feeling that StorageMojo’s independence is compromised. After all, StorageMojo was founded to offer vigorous independent analysis and opinion, not sell ads.

I’ve had Google ads on the site for some time, and they’ve more than covered the direct costs of the site. More recently IDG was repping the ads as part of their TechNet business. That was better than Google financially, and the IDG folks were a pleasure to deal with, but there were storage companies that wanted to advertise but found IDG problematic.

With the recent move to a new theme, it is simpler to insert ads than before. Not as easy as some HTML that called 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. The pricing is designed so that an advertiser can recover their entire advertising costs should they make even a single sale. In other words: it’s <strike>cheap</strike> cost-effective.
• Style.Text, graphic and video ads are ok. Flash animations must be tasteful. StorageMojo isn’t a used car lot.
• 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 C&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.
• Price lists. A surprising number of visitors come to StorageMojo by entering a part number in Google. Many are looking to budget or buy. Wouldn’t you want to be visible on your competitor’s price list?
• Limits. Maximum of 10 text ads, 2 tower ads and 1 box ad per page. Today, 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.

Some StorageMojo readers use an RSS feed or with browsers that block externally served ads. If your ad can be served from StorageMojo that might give it an advantage. I don’t think RSS readers get counted among unique visitors either. 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 6! – 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.