MFW: The next steps (and for the business owners out there, an offer of a freebie ad)

The more eagle-eyed of you will have noticed a new advert appearing on MyFootballWriter.

Gone is the Christmas ad for Mick Dennis’ latest ‘Tales From The City’ tome, Gurgles Baby Shop now adorns the headerboard at the top of the site, as well as one of the square panels down the side.

This is all part of our efforts to make MFW financially self-sustaining going forward – as well as to offer local, small businesses the chance to advertise simply to a local online audience as the appeal of a newspaper advert begins to seriously wane.

That’s what that ‘Advertise Here’ button is all about.

An opportunity for smart-minded businesses to get their advert in front of up to 17,000 largely local punters who religiously read the site for up to four minutes every visit – three minutes 52 seconds in the case of May.

To do this, we have spent the last ten years working on our very own little advertising technology platform, something called Addiply

The idea being that advertising on a local website like MFW should be as easy as placing a postcard in the window of your local Post Office.

You shouldn’t need a PhD in Computer Science to place your ‘Message’ in front of a local audience – and nor should that Message have to go to California and back to reach that audience.

Be it via Google or Facebook, there must be a simpler way to do this.

One that rewards the publisher with an 85% revenue return – and doesn’t steal your individual browsing history to sell to the highest bidder en route. Something that the current General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is looking to outlaw.

So think of it as Addiply versus Googliath. Simple versus complex; local versus global; bottom up versus top down.

But to make this vision come alive, we need your help.

To test the system out. To iron out any flaws in the platform before we take it to other small, local publishers in the hope that it might help them make money too.

Do we need more data in the reporting suite? Are people happy for their ad to rotate with another? Is the size and prominence of the advert right for the money? Am I seeing a return on my investment? All these questions and more need answering in a proper field test.

So, we’re looking for volunteers. To join Gurgles Baby Shop and advertise on MyFoootballWriter.

Maybe you run your own small business; maybe you work for a local marketing agency; maybe you have an event to promote locally or a service to sell.

Anyone and everyone is welcome to trial Addiply.

And because you will be doing us a favour, we will return it and offer a first month’s advertising for FREE.

That’s right FREE. To get your message in front of up to 17,000 monthly unique readers engaging with the platform for up to four minutes at a time.

All that we need is a pre-built ad – either 850 x 200 pixels for the big headerboard ad or 320 x 320 pixels for the square MPU offering down the side.

After that we will do the rest.

Just drop me a line at rickwaghorn@aol.com and lets talk – let’s together build something special.