Feb 5 2011
Thanking our February Advertisers
This year we have 8 advertisers a month and the advertisers help us to pay for hosting fees, postage, giveaways and the like. I just want to say thanks and use a once a month post to thank them for their sponsorship of Dear Author:
- Avon: Joss Ware’s Envy Chronicles exclusive shorts
- Berkley: Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth
- Harlequin: Carina books for Valentine’s Day
- Samhain: New books to read on a snow day
- All Romance eBooks: The Perfect Strangers Collection at All Romance eBooks
- Courtney Milan: Unveiled by Courtney Milan
- Nalini Singh: Archangel’s Consort by Nalini Singh
- Simon & Schuster: How to Woo a Reluctant Lady by Sabrina Jeffries
Send to Kindle
Feb 05, 2011 @ 21:13:32
How about an ad index link on the sidebar as well?
Feb 05, 2011 @ 21:18:40
@whome: I’m not sure what you mean? Like, just a listing of the advertisers and their links like at the beginning of the post?
Feb 06, 2011 @ 01:50:03
@Jane:
No, right now you have two sponsors on the sidebar on the home page. Immediately underneath or above that area create a small ad index box that clicks open your post page or some permanent page.
I like the extra acknowledgment of sponsors via an individual post. But I’m lazy and sometimes I remember seeing an ad, can’t remember which month and I hate to scroll through posts or try to remember what it’s tagged under. Yeah, sponsor should be easy I know but brain farts happen.
Some of the paper/online weeklies are doing this although their ad index area is a big section of their home page. I was thinking something a lot more discrete but easily findable.
Feb 06, 2011 @ 06:16:53
@whome: An index of links to actual adverts or an index of past advertisers (book title / author name / publisher / month of their advertisement) in text?
Feb 06, 2011 @ 06:45:10
I totally bought the Joss Ware books at the sale prices. And Archangels Consort b/c I adore Nalini Singh’s books:D
Feb 06, 2011 @ 10:05:44
@Maili:
If it were me (and, yes, I know it’s not lol) I’d play with something along the following lines:
Keep the basic format of Jane’s post here. I like the text with the ad visual because it’s the visual that I’m going to remember not the title, author or publisher.
BTW: I don’t know if anyone else is having this problem but the gravatars are loading very very slow.
I’d have the ad index box say a one-line header box February Ad Index above or below the sponsor blocks that clicks into the February thank you advertisers post.
On the post, I’d probably change just a couple of things. At the bottom (using February as an example), I’d add January sponsors link, March sponsors link and a master index link in the middle that pops open a list of months which in turn pops open the thank you sponsor post for that month.
In addition, I’d also like to see a link box to the dear author review (if one is available) and buy links like those that are available in the reviews for each book listed using a logo icon and the Dear Author affiliate codes.
So right now there are essentially two columns of sponsor ads. Instead I’d use four columns. Two full-sized sponsor ad columns as now and two smaller width colums (one to the right of each ad) with icons (icons work better in my opinion because you can control size for spacing). Actually looking at the page, the sponsor image within the thank you post would probably need to be a tiny smaller to fit the additional info.
For the publisher’s you’d need to work with them to see if perhaps they’d want to include specific book links for the books promoted within the ad.
Example:
First row:
Column 1
Courtney Milan Unveiled
Column 2
Icon Dear Author Review
Icon for GoodReads
Icon for Kindle
Icon for Amazon
Icon for nook
etc.
Column 3
Image for Nalini Singh’s Archangel consort
Column 4
Repeat links as indicated above in column 2 but for Nalini’s book
Row 2
The Carina Press ad example
Here the links could either be to the individual books appearing in the ad at Carina Press and/or links to the normal Dear Author list as long as the number of icons doesn’t exceed the height of the sponsor image. If the size of that image is decreased by approx 25% maybe a little less, I’m guessing that there could be 8 icons to the right of each image.
Yes, it’s a little more work for DA but the payback is the additional affiliate link percentage and for the sponsors placing the ad, it makes it even more convenient for the reader to actually buy the product.
I hope that makes sense. I also like the icons better than the text for book buying links because it’s more of a glance thing than reading through text on the order of the share line in the posts.
Twitter, Digg, Deli.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etc. Easily to use an icon than read the list.
Sorry, this isn’t clearer but I gotta run out and would rather post now than forget about it.
Feb 06, 2011 @ 13:35:49
What if Jane created an “Advertisers” category and provided a link to the category page either from the sidebar or one of the pulldown menus?
Feb 06, 2011 @ 14:57:17
I’ve been moderated. Probably because I used too many links in my small example.
Feb 06, 2011 @ 16:07:13
I hope the advertisers are paying attention. How many blogs can they advertise on where the readers say “Tell me more!” “Give me a permanent link!” ?
As far as how to do it, could it be as simple being able to search for “sponsors” and getting this post and the future monthly ones as a result? Or just a link to take you directly to the search results.
Feb 06, 2011 @ 17:17:20
@whome Thanks for the suggestions. I definitely want to make things easier for readers. I do think a buy button also makes sense but would have to see how I could put that all together. Will give it some thought.