At the dawn of the Internet, I realized that small business was likely to get the shaft while big businesses make big deals between themselves to dominate the web.
I decided that I wanted to do something to help small business; So I started making little directories for local businesses in select towns in the Mountain West.
The original idea was that I would build directories and web services for small communities. The directories would be funded by affilate ads from big business. The big businesses would pay for free services for small businesses and charities. This worked okay for awhile.
This year, I decided to experiment with selling ads directly to small businesses. The ad rate will be $25.00 for 100,000 page views. The Ads are 728x90 banners that gone in the upper fold. Note, I serve the ads in SVG and they scale to screen size. The ads can be a 728x90 banner or just plain text. I present the Text in SVG. The ads scale to screen size.
The sites show at most one ad per per page. The click through rate on my old affiliate ads was a little over one click per thousand page views.
I am only interested in local ads from small business. The directories are in the mountain west. I have select towns in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. I have a county by county directory for Arizona.
The work flow for ordering an ad is: You select a directory and a subject within a directory. You then define the ad. The Text ads have two lines. The title line should be under 28 characters and the text line under 75.
If you have a 728x90 image on line, you can enter a link for the image. I will copy the the image to my server.
I also use box ads (336x280). These ads go on calendar events. My ad inventory for these box ads is really small. So I am not pushing the box ads.
When you order an ad I require that you give me your name and an email address.
If I approve the ad; I will place the ad on apropriate areas on my site. After placing the ad, I will send you an invoice via Paypal to your email address for $25. The invoice includes a link showing the placement along with ad stats. You can then review the placement.
If you are unhappy with the placement; don't pay the invoice!
Note, I do not offer a money back guarantee after you pay the invoice. I am giving you a review period in lieue of a money back guarantee.
Some ad campaigns have a fixed duration. If your ad expires in the next 90 days, enter the expiration date. I charge only $12.50. I turn fixed duration ads off when they expire or have 40,000 page view, which ever comes first. I cannot guarantee 40,000 page views and don't offer a prorated refund as calculating a prorated refund for $12.5 is a pain in the tush.
This program is in an experimental phase. I do not mind if people order the ads just to test the program. Write in the note area that the order is a test.
Here is the ad ordering page for Park City. The first line of the program lets you select the site for your ad. Park City is the only site on my new server. This new ad program goes live as I move sites to the new server.
