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Signing up to an ad exchange is not the only way to run ads. I think Penny Arcade was a good example, though they're currently not ad supported. They used to h

Signing up to an ad exchange is not the only way to run ads. I think Penny Arcade was a good example, though they're currently not ad supported. They used to have a small number of banner ads on rotation that were curated by the authors to be unintrusive and for products they happily endorsed. I often clicked on these ads as they represented good-reviews by implication. It may be simple enough to reserve a rectangle on your site with some text along the lines of "advertise here, x views a month on average, specialised crowd, $y per month", then you could sort it out directly with a product vendor of your choice. If life's not that simple then someone on here should set up a middleman business that would be a specialised ad exchange for linking products (small, and specialised, lowe marketing spend) with blogs (small and specialised, expert readers, blog owner must approve of the product and ad).

minimaxir 12y ago
> I think Penny Arcade was a good example, though they're currently not ad supported. More information behind this: Penny Arcade ran a Kickstarter to remove ads on their site which was incredibly successful (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade-sells-out https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcad...) This method wouldn't work for normal developers because a) Penny Arcade has a massive fanbase and b) Penny Arcade makes most of their money off of merchandise. Although, would a Patreon for a developer work? It would be a hard sell, though.
- AndrewOMartin 12y ago
  This is all true, and another interesting alternative to signing up to an ad exchange. I specifically used past tense as their current setup is inapplicable to the blog in the article, though I'd be interested if anyone could reference other sites that are currently using PA's previous approach.

minimaxir 12y ago

> I think Penny Arcade was a good example, though they're currently not ad supported. More information behind this: Penny Arcade ran a Kickstarter to remove ads on their site which was incredibly successful (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade-sells-out https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcad...) This method wouldn't work for normal developers because a) Penny Arcade has a massive fanbase and b) Penny Arcade makes most of their money off of merchandise. Although, would a Patreon for a developer work? It would be a hard sell, though.

AndrewOMartin 12y ago
This is all true, and another interesting alternative to signing up to an ad exchange. I specifically used past tense as their current setup is inapplicable to the blog in the article, though I'd be interested if anyone could reference other sites that are currently using PA's previous approach.