How I increase visibility

idratherbewriting.com is one of the most popular sites where technical writers go to stay updated with the latest technical writing news, trends, and information in the industry. Because of this, I can help increase your product or service’s visibility more than any other technical writing site online.

I help increase visibility of your product primarily through ad impressions. An impression occurs when someone loads a page where your ad is visible. In 2017, idratherbewriting.com had an average of 845,000 page views, or 2,300 page views a day. Impressions are tracked through Google Analytics.

If you think about it, 2,300 is more people per day than people who attend a tech comm conference. The average page view time is 1:32 minutes.

Ad space options and costs

Different ad spaces are more visible than others. You can select from several different spaces or services:

• Sidebar ad space
• Horizontal inline ad space
• Top banner ad
• Newsletter space
• Product review posts

The cost for each ad space is as follows:

CPM. Here’s a breakdown of ad costs in CPM (costs per mille). Assuming 845,000 page views per year, the CPM rate for the sidebar graphic comes out to $1.06 CPM, for the horizontal inline view $2.13 CPM, and for the top banner ad space, $7.10 CPM (cpm = ad cost divided by hits/1,000). These costs align with the average CPM rates for 2014.

For billing, I usually send you an invoice through Paypal. Billing is done prior to any advertising efforts. Although the transaction is through PayPal, you can use either your credit card or PayPal account to submit payment. You can also mail me a check if you prefer.

Sidebar ad space

Sidebar ads (125 x 125px) appear in the left sidebar and randomly rotate positions each time the page refreshes — this helps refocus the reader’s attention on the ads. There is no specific hierarchy to ads in the sidebar.

Your ad can be any image type (JPG, GIF, PNG, or SVG) and color; the dimensions must be 125 x 125 pixels in size. Slow-looping animated GIFs are allowed, but not Flash. You can switch the ad at any time by sending me a new graphic.

The cost for sidebar ads is $900 per year.

Horizontal Inline Ad Space

The Horizontal Inline space (728 x 90px) appears below each post, right above the comments, in the single post view. This highly visible space is inline with the reader’s eye and provides a natural click-point after a reader finishes reading a post.

Horizontal Inline ads can be JPG, GIF, PNG, or SVG. Animated GIF is also allowed. The positions also rotate randomly with each page refresh.

The cost for inline horizontal ads is $1,800 per year.

Top Banner Ad Space

The top banner ad space (400 x 60px) refers to the top section of the site, in the upper-right corner.

The top banner ad is placed in one of the most visually dominant places on the site. Horizontal Inline ads can be JPG, GIF, PNG, or SVG. Animated GIFs aren’t allowed. There is only one ad in the Top Banner ad space, but it can rotate depending on the number of ads you want to put in this space.

The cost for top banner ads is $6,000 per year.

Newsletter Space

I send out approximately 3 newsletters a month to all my email subscribers (4,500+). These newsletters contain links and excerpts to the latest posts. Usually, each link in the newsletter gets around 300 clicks (which I track through Bitly). Below the links is the newsletter advertising space. You can add a 600 x 70px graphic here. Here’s an example:

The image format can be any standard image format (JPG, PNG, GIF), but not animated. The cost for advertising in the newsletter space is $1,200 per year for inclusion of the banner with each newsletter (3 times per month). For inclusion of the banner just once per month (over the course of 12 months), the cost is $500.

You can see the newsletter archive here.

Product review posts

I also offer product review posts to help with visibility. To write this post, I usually have a 20-30 minute phone call with you to find out what message you want to share. Here are some sample product reviews I wrote previously:

• MadCap Central – a first look at MadCap’s new cloud-based collaboration and publishing solution (1,560 page views in 2017)
• The Story of Paligo: A new browser-based CCMS with all the features you’d ever want (1,250 page views in 2017)
• Simplified Technical English and HyperSTE (2260 page views in 2017)
• Evaluating Adobe FrameMaker’s responsive HTML5 output (810 page views in 2017)
• Adobe FrameMaker 2017 – time, tools, and the tech writer’s focus on content (1,170 page views in 2017)

Product review posts are typically 800-1,000 words long and ideally focus on features in a new release. (Having something newsworthy to write about helps establish the article as relevant.)

These review posts aren’t merely marketing material converted into a blog post. I try to put a personal spin on posts to connect with my audience. A product review post typically takes 3-4 hours to write.

If possible, I’ll download and explore your product before writing about it. But I don’t have unlimited time to ramp up to an expert level on your product. I try to draw upon my industry insight and perspective to make insightful points. You’ll also probably supply me with the information and messages you want to communicate.

Each product review post costs $500 per post. I always review these posts with you and, when published, I identify them as being sponsored posts. If desired, you can also write the post.

Product review posts have powerful results with search results. If you search google for Xeditor, HyperSTE, Paligo, or Madcap Central, you’ll see that my product review posts appear on the first page of search results. This is because my site has a high page rank and influence.

I also infuse the posts with SEO techniques when I write them. Almost no one else in the tech comm industry has as much online influence as I do with idratherbewriting.com.

Number of impressions per year

From Jan 1, 2017 to Dec 31, 2017, idratherbewriting.com had about 845,000 page views. Here’s a chart from Google Analytics.

(There was a slight dip mid-year because I split out the API doc site into a separate Jekyll project and didn’t have analytics configured correctly for a while.)

Here’s another slice of analytics focusing more on audience:

The following table shows a little more detail from Google Analytics (date range is Jan 1 2017 to Dec 31, 2017). These metrics aren’t all shown from the above screenshots:

Audience demographics

Google Analytics indicates the following about audience demographics for 2017:

• 74% of readers read US English language, 10% read Great Britain English
• 42% of readers originate from US, 12% from India, 6% from UK, 5% from Canada, 3% from Germany, 2% from Australia
• Top US cities are New York, Boston, San Francisco
• Top non-US cities are Bengaluru, Toronto, London, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai
• Top browsers are Chrome (67%), Safari (11%), Firefox (10%), Internet Explorer (7%)
• Top operating systems are Windows (60%), Mac (19%), iOS (8%), Android (8%)
• 34% of readers are male, 66% are female
• 18% of readers are 18-24 yrs old, 40% of readers are 25-34 yrs old, 25% are 35-44
• Most readers are technophiles, shutterbugs, business professionals, movie lovers, and value shoppers (based on Google’s “affinity categories”)

Quality of impressions

The quality of impressions depends on the influence of the site. Impressions from a highly influential site carry more weight than impressions from a less influential site. MindTouch regularly ranks the most influential people in tech comm. They have consistently named in their top influencers lists since they started publishing reports.

See the following links for more details:

• Top 25 Content Experience Influencer 2017
• Top 25 Content Strategist Influencer 2016
• Most Valuable Professional #2014, Indigo Byte Systems.
• #3 Influencer in #techcomm in 2014
• #1 Influencer in #techcomm 2013
• #1 Influencer in #techcomm 2012
• Most innovative tech comm blogger of 2011
• #2 Influencer in #techcomm 2010

If you have questions, contact me.

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