I can help increase your product or service’s visibility more than any other tech comm site online. idratherbewriting.com is one of the largest hubs where technical writers go to stay updated with the latest technical writing news, trends, and information in the industry.
How I increase visibility
I help increase visibility of your product primarily through ad impressions. An impression occurs when someone loads a page where your ad is visible. In 2016, idratherbewriting.com had an average of 2,100 page views a day. Impressions are tracked through Google Analytics.
Different ad spaces are more visible than others. You can select from among 3 different ad spaces:
I also offer product review posts.
Sidebar ad space
Sidebar ads (125px x 125px) appear in the left sidebar and randomly rotate positions each time the page refreshes — this helps refocus the reader’s attention on the ads. There is no specific hierarchy to ads in the sidebar.
Your ad can be any image type (JPG, GIF, PNG, or SVG) and color, but the dimensions must be exactly 125 x 125 pixels in size. Slow-looping animated GIFs are allowed, but not Flash. You can switch the ad at any time by sending me a new graphic.
The cost for sidebar ads is $900 per year.
Horizontal Inline Ad Space
The Horizontal Inline space (728px x 90px) appears below each post, right above the comments, in the single post view. This highly visible space is inline with the reader’s eye and provides a natural click-point after a reader finishes reading a post.
Horizontal Inline ads can be JPG, GIF, PNG, or SVG. Animated GIF is also allowed. The positions also rotate randomly with each page refresh.
The cost for inline horizontal ads is $1800 per year.
Top Banner Ad Space
The top banner ad space (500px x 70px) refers to the top section of the site, in the upper-right corner.
The top banner ad is placed in one of the most visually dominant places on the site. Horizontal Inline ads can be JPG, GIF, PNG, or SVG. Animated GIF is also allowed.
There is only one ad in the Top Banner ad space, but it can rotate depending on the number of ads in this space.
The cost for top banner ads is $6,000 per year.
Product review posts
I also offer product review posts to help with visibility. Here are some sample product reviews I wrote previously:
- MadCap Central – a first look at MadCap’s new cloud-based collaboration and publishing solution
- The Story of Paligo: A new browser-based CCMS with all the features you’d ever want
- Simplified Technical English and HyperSTE
- Evaluating Adobe FrameMaker’s responsive HTML5 output
- Xeditor, a CMS editor for XML content
Product review posts are typically 800-1,000 words long and ideally focus on features in a new release. (Having something newsworthy to write about helps establish the article as relevant.)
These review posts aren’t merely marketing material converted into a blog post. I try to put a personal spin on posts to connect with my audience. A product review post typically takes 3-4 hours to write.
If possible, I’ll download and explore your product before writing about it. But I don’t have unlimited time to ramp up to an expert level on your product. I try to draw upon my industry insight and perspective to make insightful points. You’ll also probably supply me with the information and messages you want to communicate.
Each product review post costs $500 per post. If you’re already advertising on my site, I drop the price to $300. I will write as many product review posts as you want during the year.
I always review these posts with you and, when published, I identify them as being sponsored posts.
Product review posts have powerful results with search results. If you search google for Xeditor, HyperSTE, Paligo, or Madcap Central, you’ll see that my product review posts appear on the first page of search results. This is because my site has a high page rank and influence.
I also infuse the posts with SEO techniques when I write them. Almost no one else in the tech comm industry has as much online influence as I do with idratherbewriting.com.
Number of impressions per year
From Jan 1, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016, idratherbewriting.com had about 778,000 page views. Here’s a chart from Google Analytics.
The following table shows a little more detail from Google Analytics (date range is Jan 1 2016 to Dec 31, 2016):
| Jan 1, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016 | Metric |
|---|---|
| Total Sessions (unique visits to site) | 497,134 (about 1,360 visits a day) |
| Page Views | 778,000 (about 2,100 page views a day) |
| Pages per visit | 1.57 pages |
| Users | 359,000 |
| New sessions | 72% |
| Average visit duration | 1:34 minutes |
A session refers to a unique visit to the site, not counting the number of pages the visitor views per the session. (In a single session, a visitor could view a dozen pages.) A page view is when a visitor loads a page. If the same visitor loads a page twice, that would count as two page views.
Audience demographics
Google Analytics indicates the following about audience demographics for idratherbewriting.com (for 2016):
- 43% of users are from the US, 11% from India, 6% Great Britain, 5% Canada, 3% Germany
- 64% are using Chrome, 13% Firefox, 11%, Safari, 8% IE
- 60% use Windows, 19% use Mac
- 33% of readers are male, 67% female
- 17% are 18-24 years old, 39% are 25-34 years old, 25% are 35-44 years old
- 72% are new visitors, 18% are returning visitors
- 84% arrive by desktop, 13% by mobile, 3% by tablets
- 38% of mobile comes from iPhone
- 77% of visitors arrive through Google’s organic search
Quality of impressions
The quality of impressions depends on the influence of the site. Impressions from a highly influential site carry more weight than impressions from a less influential site.
Is idratherbewriting.com an influential site? Yes. MindTouch regularly ranks the most influential people in tech comm. They have consistently named in their top influencers lists since they started publishing reports.
See the following links for more details:
- Top 25 Content Strategist Influencer 2016
- Most Valuable Professional #2014, Indigo Byte Systems.
- #3 Influencer in #techcomm in 2014
- #1 Influencer in #techcomm 2013
- #1 Influencer in #techcomm 2012
- Most innovative tech comm blogger of 2011
- #2 Influencer in #techcomm 2010
Costs for ads
The cost for each ad space is as follows:
| Ad space | Cost per year |
|---|---|
| Sidebar graphic (125px x 125px) | $900/year |
| Horizontal inline post view (728px x 90px) | $1,800/year |
| Top Banner space (500px x 70px) | $6,000/year |
CPM. Here’s a breakdown of ad costs in CPM (costs per mille). Assuming 778,000 page views per year, the CPM rate for the sidebar graphic comes out to $1.15 CPM, for the horizontal inline view $2.31 CPM, and for the top banner ad space, $7.71 CPM. These costs align with the average CPM rates for 2014.
Billing
For billing, I send you an invoice through Paypal. Billing is done prior to any advertising efforts. Although the transaction is through PayPal, you can use either your credit card or PayPal account to submit payment. You can also mail me a check if you prefer.
If you have questions, contact me.
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