Ads on the blog (in the interest of full disclosure)

Example of an ad placement on the blog.

Example of an ad placement on the blog.

After mentioning it many times here in the last few months, I’m finally actually getting ready to sell ads on my blog. There are some things I should probably get in place in order to do this in a dignified and orderly fashion — such as a rate card, or getting someone else to do the selling so as to preserve the illusion that I am above such things.

But hey, this mayoral campaign is almost over, and I am haunted by the thought that there may be money on the table that I could be grabbing. Just to put it in plain terms that everyone can understand.

As to what this means in terms of my editorial independence, here’s what I said about that in the e-mail I just sent out to the three leading (you know, the ones with some money) mayoral candidates:

Once I get this going as a regular thing, I hope to find someone to sell ads for me. Until then, I’m my own advertising department. That said, anyone who buys ads on my blog needs to understand that my opinions remain my opinions, regardless of who buys ads on my blog. So I will neither reward you with laudatory coverage if you do buy an ad, nor retaliate with negative coverage if you don’t. So either buy an ad or don’t for your own reasons.

That may not be the most brilliant sales pitch in the world, but hey, I’m new to that. Telling y’all exactly what I think — that I know how to do.

And I’ve got all of y’all to call me on it if you think I’m doing otherwise.

By the way, I’m also open for business if you happen to be running for some other office, or — better yet — if you have nothing to do with politics at all. I’d love to take some plain old All-American ads from private businesses. (Starbucks, are you listening?)

Anyway, this should be interesting. I hope it will also be, um, rewarding…

12 thoughts on “Ads on the blog (in the interest of full disclosure)

  1. Tim

    Why don’t you just let Google be you ad broker by using Google AdSense? You can do basically the same thing with Yahoo, BlogAds, etc…

  2. Kathryn Fenner

    So how did you get Juanita to marry you? “Either marry me or don’t for your own reasons.” That would make Mark Sanford seem downright passionate–but wait, I seem to recall some emails….

    Tim’s right, plus Salon.com gives one the opportunity to go “premium, ad-free” for a small annual sum….

  3. Brad Warthen

    And I may pursue those avenues as well, once I find someone to explain them to me. But in the meantime, display ads on the blog are something I understand. And I figure political campaigns are a natural customer for me.

    You can ask Juanita about the proposal sometime. But yeah, it was just about that matter-of-fact. I can be romantic, but to me that was just a matter of acknowledging what made sense. It seemed obvious to me that we should get married, so I just said so in a very plain way. No theatrics.

  4. Doug Ross

    FYI, when I connect to bradwarthen.com from my Blackberry, I get about 20 screens-worth of of text links for viagra, cialis, pfizer, etc. that I have to scroll through before getting to your blog entries. Its been like that for months… not sure if you were aware of that.

  5. Kiki

    Dad — see if you can get some advice from the Shop Tart (Anne). Either she’s doing really well selling ads to be able to finance all the meals and shopping she reviews on her site, or she’s independently wealthy.
    Kathryn — I asked my Mom once how Dad proposed. I think the quote she gave me was, “So, are we gonna get married or what?” But he was only like 20 at the time.

  6. Brad Warthen

    Doug, that’s some kind of spam junk that keeps attaching to the mobile version of the blog like barnacles on a ship’s bottom.

    I managed to go into the guts of the blog and find that junk once and eliminate it, and it was clear for awhile. Then it came back. I tried just the other day to get rid of it again, but I kept deleting the wrong codes or something; I couldn’t make it go away.

    I’ll go give it another try. It IS irritating…

  7. Kathryn Fenner

    Anne uses an agent. I gave you her name a while ago…

    I guess the unRomantic way worked out pretty well….

  8. Brad Warthen

    Doug, I think I fixed it again!

    Check and see if that junk’s gone now. I’m not getting it on my Blackberry.

    The trick was deleting the right stuff without blowing up the whole main page…

    I have no idea how that stuff gets in there…

  9. Wally Altman

    Good for you, Brad.

    I don’t know how many of your readers use some kind of ad-blocking browser extension, but when the time comes it might help your bottom line a little if you politely request that they set it not to block ads on your site (as I have just done, and do for other sites I visit regularly and want to support).

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