Advertising Enquiry

As well as this blog, I own many other websites too. A few of them are on the right hand side of this blog, under the heading “My Other Sites.” I often get emails sent to my Eat The Treat site, offering me cheap advertising.

Now, Eat The Treat makes me no money. It isn’t a shop, I don’t sell anything, it isn’t heavily bogged down with adverts, I don’t get affiliate payments… it just wasn’t designed to make money. It was designed solely for the purpose of me writing reviews of chocolate that I have eaten.

So when I receive emails from marketing companies offering me the chance to advertise my site on other sites or in magazines, it has no benefit to me. I get no return at all. I will, no doubt, get more visitors for the duration of the advert, but I’d just be paying to have more visitors to read my reviews, with no chance of making any money back.

So as more visitors would be of no benefit to me, but advertising would provide more readers, I’d prefer any advertising I get to be free.

From: Web Windows
Sent: 24 September 2011
To: Eat The Treat
Subject: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Hello Eatthetreat

You might think that advertising Eatthetreat on such a massive site as the Guardian would be cost-prohibitive… But you’d be wrong!

Web Windows has an on-going contract with the Guardian which enables us to offer (first time) online advertisers a truly affordable package: For an all-in rate of £425 + VAT we’ll design your animated banner ad, deliver it 10,000 times throughout the Guardian site and then provide extensive post-campaign reports so that you can see how well you’ve done. If you’ve ever thought about running a banner ad on a quality news website, this is the perfect time to give it a try!

The details are as follows:

Website: Guardian
Approximate campaign period: 3rd October – 31st October (approx 28 days)
Location: Top of page guaranteed
Banner size: Leaderboard
Guaranteed ad deliveries (impressions): 10,000 minimum
Special offer price: £425 + VAT (rate card £1500 + VAT)
Banner production: Included in price

Kind regards,

Charlotte
www.webwindows.co.uk

P.S. I’ve tried to be as jargon free as possible, but if you’d like to have a “back to basics” conversation and get straight answers to simple questions please feel free to give me a call!

From: Craig
To: Charlotte
Subject: Re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Hi Charlotte.

Thanks for emailing me. The idea of advertising is an incredibly interesting one to me, however £425 is a little too dear.

So I believe it is traditional, in circumstances such as these, to haggle.

Now, I am a complete amateur to the world of haggling, but my understanding is that we both start at opposite ends of the price that we are willing to agree on, increase and decrease our haggles proportionally, and meet in the middle.

As your opening bid is £425, my opening bid is -£425.

Your move, Charlotte!

Craig.
www.EatTheTreat.co.uk

From: Charlotte
To: Craig
Subject: Re: re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Hi Craig,

I like your thought process! To save us a bit of time 🙂 – here is my best offer for you…

I will take the price down to £400 (not a lot but every little helps!) AND I will double the amount of impressions I was previously offering. So, you will get a massive 20,000 impressions for just £400.

Shall we get you booked in?

Charlie

From: Craig
To: Charlotte
Subject: Re: re: re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Hi Charlie.

This is fun! I’ve only haggled once and I’ve already got £25 off! You’re a great teacher!

I’m glad you like my thought process. I too am quite pleased with it. I use it daily with much success. Without it I’d probably be in a far worse position in most things, be not as likely to comprehend everyday stuff and be, well, probably dead.

Hang fire on the “booking me in” thing, as I have a counter-haggle to rival yours; it seems only fair as you were so willing to lower your price that I too come a step nearer, hopefully helping to bring this one step closer to a conclusion.

I’ll take my offer up to -£400 and not a penny more. (if you know what I mean 😉 )

I know we still have quite a way to go, but I’m finding haggling incredibly exhilarating!

Craig
www.eatthetreat.co.uk

From: Charlotte
To: Craig
Subject: Re: re: re: re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Morning Craig,

£400 for 20,000 would be my best offers I’m afraid 🙂 so no more haggling!

I do have a “cheaper” offer for a banner ad on the Independent website for a month for £100 if that was more affordable.

Kind Regards

Charlie

From: Craig
To: Charlotte
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Hi Charlie

Purely out of interest, what would the cheaper £100 offer include?

Craig.

From: Charlotte
To: Craig
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Hi Craig,

It is still a leader board banner (long horizontal ad running across the top of the page) and still delivered at random throughout the site, but this time there are no guaranteed impressions as the banner is shown on rotation with up to 14 other advertisers. Therefore the amount of impressions will depend on the traffic to the site (currently 7 million approx). Clients have clocked anything from a couple of hundred to a few thousand impressions.

Charlie

From: Craig
To: Charlotte
Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

Hi Charlie.

Hmmm…

I’ll offer you -£100 for that.

Craig

From: Charlotte
To: Craig

Subject: Re: re: re: re: re: re: re: A Eatthetreat banner ad on Guardian website… 28 days £425

No Deal >:-(