Intelligent (i.e. working) blog advertisements?

May 10, 2006 11:02 AM

I'm looking for a intelligent (i.e. successful) way to advertise a new blog about baseball. We just started up and I want to increase readership but want to avoid scammy blog ad techniques that don't work.
posted by xmutex to technology (6 comments total)

One place to start is right here on MetaFilter Projects.
posted by Dub at 11:40 AM on May 10, 2006

Drop a line to David Pinto at Baseball Musings. He's very widely read, and very generous at mentioning new baseball bloggers. Also try e-mailing the other bloggers whose stuff you read, just to offer them an FYI. Good luck!
posted by shallowcenter at 12:31 PM on May 10, 2006

Print a faux-baseball card featuring the blog and it's statistics, and leave them at various baseball hotspots. Make it look nice and put some in plastic protectors :)
posted by -harlequin- at 12:41 PM on May 10, 2006

Have you emailed people who write other baseball blogs? Commenting on other baseball blogs is also a good strategy (assuming you have something to contribute). WFY (who I know) writes about the Washington Nationals and likely would mention your blog if it's remotely of interest to him from that standpoint.

As far as paying for things I've seen a number of claims from bloggers that buying google ads or blogads to run on other blogs is a successful technique for ad click generation and it's a reasonable argument I think - the kind of people who will click blog ads to come to you are maybe predisposed to click blogads on your site...
posted by phearlez at 12:54 PM on May 10, 2006

If you're good you'll be linked by other established, respected sports blogs. Good luck, the competition is pretty fierce.
posted by justgary at 1:11 PM on May 10, 2006

First: Just start blogging. Start writing the best entries that you can.

Second: Update reasonably frequently, so that people who -do- come to your blog see that you are active.

Third: Once you've found your rhythm and decided that this is something that you're definitely going to stick with, pitch one of your posts to another baseball blogger. This is how I got my political blog linked to from other political bloggers. The approach goes something like this:

"Hey there! I enjoy your blog and I can see that lots of other people do as well. I've got a baseball blog of my own at http://blahblah.com and I posted something today that you and your readers might find interesting. The direct link to the post is http://blahblah.com/article, and I've included the full text of it below for your convenience. I hope you find it worth a link. Thanks for your time!"

People who maintain popular blogs get "post pitches" all the time, so be up-front about what it is you're looking for ( a link ). Be concise, include a link to your blog and to the specific post. When I was blogging, I always included the full text of the post as a courtesy to the person I was pitching.

I found this approach to be well-received, and it got me a fair number of links from bloggers I respect.

Good luck to you!
posted by DWRoelands at 1:51 PM on May 10, 2006