Find companies who already spend money advertising to readers of your particular niche. This will usually be tradeshow sponsors, industry magazines, other websi

Find companies who already spend money advertising to readers of your particular niche. This will usually be tradeshow sponsors, industry magazines, other websites, podcasts, etc. It is much easier to get them to give you a small portion of their existing budget than to create a budget exclusively for you. It is a good idea to not have the mindset that you somehow deserve their money or thinking that your site is only $X of their huge budget. It is their job to get the best return on their expenditures and it is your job to deliver that to them. Also since you seem to have a privacy conscious site, it will be important to make the case that since you don’t track users directly, users target your content because it is such a specific niche that only people interested in it (and the potential advertisers’ products) read and visit your site. Having sold a lot of ads directly, it is really important to be a trustworthy person that advertisers enjoy dealing with so they have every reason to keep you in their budget every year.