After well over a year of running TechMeme (and some other impressive, addictive blog/news aggregation sites) with no source of revenue, Gabe Rivera is now accepting advertising. Gabe’s ad model befits the nature of TechMeme — no Adsense or traditional banner advertising for what has become the first stop in the morning for the world’s tech bloggers and journalists.
Instead, Gabe has taken the blogging concept and built it into his advertising. He’s offering sponsors the right to have their blog items appear on TechMeme in a special, prominent box. A sponsor’s blog feed is polled every few minutes, with the latest post appearing in its assigned slot.
These slots don’t come all that cheaply, either, but that’s the way it should be. Gabe is selling the first, second, and third slots for $4,500, $3,500, and $3,000 per month respectively. But sponsors get something pretty powerful in exchange: the ability to engage on a deeper level with what is bound to be a fairly elite group in the tech and media worlds. TechMeme visitors that click on a sponsor’s blog link will undoubtedly read what the sponsor has to say and might even interact by leaving a comment or signing up for an RSS or email subscription.
Nice guy that he is, Gabe has suggested on his own blog that a simple plug-in could be developed for WordPress or MT that does the same thing for other bloggers or sites out there. I know how hard it is to live on fumes in order to build a business and I know how tremendously difficult it is to come up with a truly new idea. Gabe has done both and he’s willing to let others benefit from his hard work and inspiration. I hope he makes a fortune.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:44 AM|Comments(2)
Paid placement is nothing new, though Gabe has kindly reminded us with his example that it's within the reach of most bloggers too.
I wrote up a blog post about how people with their own Wordpress installation can do a poor-man;s version of this on their own blog with existing free Wordpress add-ons in 30 minutes or less. I need to do a big of digging to see if I can't find a better RSS plugin to improve things further.
I guess I should find a couple of real sponsors...wouldn't hurt either.
Posted by: eas at September 26, 2006 4:53 PM
Thanks Cynthia. A fortune would be acceptable, so would a nice living! Hope there's enough interest in the idea. First signs are encouraging.
Posted by: Gabe at September 26, 2006 12:43 AM
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