Seeking a Sponsor for 2005

(Sponsor: Ted Shelton) -- Here at IP Inferno world headquarters, the editorial staff has been spending time between holiday parties reflecting on what a great year 2004 was and contemplating what 2005 will bring. It was certainly terrific to be listed as one of Jeff Pulver's picks for Top VoIP Bloggers of 2004. But let's face it. The stakes are going up.

The question we have been batting around has been, what will it take to be one of Pulver's Top VoIP Bloggers of 2005?

At the core of this question is another - what will blogging look like a year from now?

If I knew exactly the outcome I might get rich starting exactly the right blogging company. But like everyone else, I am just wandering in the wilderness, trying to find my way through. I have been impressed with the efforts of folks like Tony Perkins with his AlwaysOn Network. And with Jason Calcanis' Weblogs Inc. The answer in both cases is - more bloggers on a specific topic, working together to provide both broader coverage and deeper introspection on those topics.

To do that requires resources. Resources in a publishing model means advertising support...

Back in the old times of radio, commercials sounded quite a bit different from what we hear today. There was a natural evolution from no advertising, to sponsorship, to infomercials, and finally to what we have today (micro-entertainment?). Well, these are the equivalent "old times" for the web and for blogging. So why should blogging be any different?

I am not convinced that the right model is to rush right into an advertising sales force and duplicate the traditional media model. Instead, here at IP Inferno we are going to experiment with sponsored programming. The idea is that with such a specialized focus and readership, there should be some company out there interested in promoting our existence. And while I am intrigued with Marc Cantor's Marqui experiment, I have decided to try something a little bit different.

I am looking for a single sponsor for a three month period (January - March, 2005). The cost is a minimum of $500 per month ($1500) although we are willing to accept more, based on the level of interest expressed. In exchange the sponsor will receive the following:

1. A permanent link on top of the right panel thanking the sponsor for supporting IP Inferno.

2. A "dateline" tag, like the one you see at the top of this entry - that means that the sponsors link will be in every posting and will appear on the RSS feed for the site.

3. In our new editorial model, there will be a weekly post which is not about the news but is a "publisher's letter." The topic will change from week to week (according to the publisher's whim) but will always include a thank you to the sponsor and a sentence or two on what the sponsor's business is or some latest news about the sponsor.

This is an experiment, so we expect to work together with the right sponsor to fine tune this approach. And we expect that it will evolve and look somewhat different by April. We hope that there is an intrepid company willing to try us out, and learn with us about the evolving blogosphere.

And it should generate traffic -- in addition to being ranked by Pulver as one of the top VoIP blogs in 2004, we also are ranked by PubSub as 16,121 amongst all blogs (don't ask me what this means, but it is good). Admittedly we had a huge surge when Pulver's list came out, but we also expect to use some of the sponsor's dollars for promoting ourselves. So our sponsor can expect to reach a sizeable audience.

If you are interested, please contact me directly at tshelton@ipinferno.com

Happy holidays,

Ted