I’ve recently introduced a new advertising option to my media kit called “Sponsored Posts”. These are posts that will be written by an advertiser and is meant to promote their brand, services, products, whatever. They’re advertorials. Why have I decided to introduce this?
1) I need to make more money, lattes don’t grow on trees and they aren’t cheap
2) Lots of brands have a lot to say and sometimes they can’t say it all with a simple banner
3) It will make my life easier since anytime a brand contacts me now to write about them, I can just say sure and then send them my media kit
Now like you, I check my blog daily and whatever kind of advertising I introduce, it needs to be something that I personally don’t find annoying. This is why you’ll never find pop up ads on the blog or any of these super annoying banners that expand and take over the whole page. I don’t think these sponsored posts will be annoying, right now I am limiting them to just one a week although thinking about it, if I can publish a sponsored post every day that’s like KD15,000 a month which would be pretty sweet actually. But until that happens, it’s just once a week.
The sponsored posts will also always be clearly marked as sponsored in the title and they will also have different colored backdrops instead of the usual white. So those posts will in no way be misleading and in no way be mistaken for a post written by me. A few minutes ago I published the first sponsored post which you can check below to get an idea of how sponsored posts will look like.
33 replies on “Introducing Sponsored Posts”
“if I can publish a sponsored post every day that’s like KD15,000 a month which would be pretty sweet” — PRETTY SWEET… R U SERIOUS…. IT WILL BE AWESOMEEEEEEEEEEEE…. (infinite Eeeessss..)
fuck lattes i’ll be able to open my own coffee shop! lol
hahaha… yea for SURE… Best of Luck
You should do it. Just compensate with other actual material.
It looks nice and professional. Congratulations on this new endeavor.
Love the idea of the blue backdrop. I was hoping you could do something similar for those “onion” posts as well to differentiate between real and fake news. Thanks.
Well the onion posts are marked with Al Busal in the subject as well as a little note at the end saying they’re fake. Plus they’re absurd so that should be a hint as well 😉
Good luck !
Mark, South Park made an episode about you > https://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/054/342/48b.png
Haha I watched that episode
One prominent blogger in my place capitalized on the political mess.
Got tired of “advertising” gimmicks, so she wrote a BOOK.
And every now and then, she’d feed her trolls snippets from the book.
So I think you should write one.
I must say, I appreciate the honestly! This is exactly why I check your blog on a daily basis!
Thank God you are nothing like those Instagram “fashionaistas”!
thank you. I think fashionistas or instagrammers in general should just hashtag their paid posts with #sponsored. But its not just local instagrammers that arent transparent, even popular international blogs like gizmodo for example aren’t very transparent
As Amna said above, I like your honesty. Another thing, why not make a poll to see whether people agree on having sponsored ads everyday or once per week? That way it’d be fair for you and for us, from my pov, I do agree on having sponsored ads everyday, your blog has come a long way since its founding and you deserve to get a special treat after all those years!
For now its just going to be once a week, I mean I post only 2 to 3 times a day anyway so to have 1/2 or a 1/3 of the posts be sponsored a day is pretty extreme.
It’s a good idea to learn about what’s available in Kuwait. Thanks for your honesty and transparency.
Do they write their own copy and simply hand it to you with some pictures or you write and edit as part of the service?
They write their own copy and hand it to me with the pictures.
Really love your honesty…..
Should we expect junk mails from the sponsers now or in near future?
Will u sell our id to them?
nope, other than the fact thats such a late 90s thing to do, as i mentioned in the post, i would only do things that i wouldn’t mind on myself and i mind spam so you’re not going to get spammed.
Good for you, whatever helps keep the blog running.
Will I be able to troll the sponsor?
As long as you keep it clean yeah you can
Also, will you still be promoting certain brands without charge if you like them? or if there’s a new thing on the scene (startup, shop, etc)?
Yeah of course, I’ll continue to blog normally, these sponsored posts won’t change anything.
15000 Per month if posted daily – so at this rate, you still make 2142.858 monthly – Awesome 🙂 🙂
Now imagine how much Fashionistas make when you consider they charge for 10 seconds.
The content on your site is valuable. As someone new to Kuwait, 248 pops up for many of my inquiries about things to do, stuff I need to buy, etc. I struggled to locate a dirtbike dealership, 248 to the rescue. I needed to find a place to ride one, 248 and Mark again helped me out. Many other example I could share. Anyhow, It takes time and effort to make quality things, so of course you should be compensated if this is to continue. The blue background and marking the content as advetorial is honorable. Advise to the advertisers, keep you advertising content valuable like this site and people will read it. Advise to Mark – insure the advertisements meet the quality standards your readership expects and all will be good. Good luck! One suggestion, it would be nice if the home page required less scrolling. A thumbnail photo, title, and first few lines of the article may improve the browsing experience. I sometimes read an article at home and then show it to someone at work during a conversation. After a few days, the posts sometimes sink below the new ones, making it cumbersome to get to the one desired.
Hey, just my personal opinion on your last request “thumbnail photo, title and first few lines”. I don’t like that option because it would require readers to take an extra step to reading the article, an extra step I personally wouldn’t like. On sites where I need to click on the post to see the whole post, I tend not to make the extra effort and click on it and end up reading just the summary. Although having people click on posts to read the full article is beneficial to me cuz it generates more banner impressions for my advertisers, I don’t think it’s very user friendly.
Galleries are the worst.
https://www.expatexplorer.hsbc.com/survey/country/kuwait/switzerland/chart:histogram
Here’s 1) an updated report on Kuwait vs. #1 2) it clearly demarcates the economics vs. Liveability 3) It’s as credible a source as it gets -HSBC.
The verdict- the place sucks in the neighbourhood even
what are you talking about?
Impressive moved Mark… just keep the blog alive! 🙂