“I’m opening up my blog to non-obtrusive controlled sponsorship/announcements.”

I’ve been considering this for a while. I’ve put a lot of effort into this blog/site since 2012 and the results are I draw a lot of traffic, I’m very proud of this. Allowing subtle sponsorship on my blog will provide me some passive income for all this work, and additional motivation to continue writing. It also allows me to control who/what I advertise under my personal brand.

Reach and Audience

Traffic fluctuates depending on how frequently I’m writing. I’ve not been writing a lot recently, something I’m going to be changing. However, I’m averaging 1800 users a week, of which 1400 are unique. With a high this year (published May 2019) of 2700 a week and a low of 900 visitors. This will increase as I’m now publishing more regularly, I’m doing for a post every two weeks.

I’ve a large social following, so when I publish it gets shared across my social network which includes Twitter (10,000+ followers) and LinkedIn (4000+ followers). My blog is also included in the Ministry of Testing feed, which get’s published to their site and is pushed into their Slack channels.

Demographics

My blog attracts a global audience, here is the top ten for the last year (May 2018-2019 via Google Analytics)

Positioning

The announcement/sponsorship banner is positioned at the top of the site on each page. It’s designed to be subtle, non-obtrusive, but effective.

The mobile view followers the same principles.

Text

The max character count is 138, this keeps it to three lines when viewing on a mobile device. Going beyond 138 is not an option. The message should be targeted and accurate, and clearly state who is sponsoring.

Sponsor Promotion

Sponsors will be thanked publicly via both my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, with a combined following of 10k+ people.

Sponsor Selection

I value my brand and reputation highly, and with this sponsorship being placed directly above my own content, it’s important sponsors align with my values. This will mean some just don’t fit, such as PayToSpeak conferences, they won’t be advertised on my site.

Pricing

The cost is £250 for the month, I’m happy to offer discounts if people are interested in sponsoring longer.

Potential Customers

I see such sponsorship providing value for those looking to promote:

• Testing Tools
• Conferences
• Webinars
• Testing Services
• Vacancies
• anything testing related really

Interested

If you’re interested, you can find multiple ways to contact me in the page footer.

Thanks to Troy Hunt

I was inspired by Troy Hunt’s blog to try this on my own. He has clearly spent a lot of time getting this right, and I couldn’t improve on the approach, so, thank you Troy.