As most people who read WinExtra know I am not a big fan of the Google AdSense method of advertising sales especially for small independent blogs like this one. The only reason I have stuck with them is because even thought the pay-outs are few and far between there is at least a little bit of income coming in. So while they still take up their place in my sidebars I have always been on the look out for better ways to replace them.

What I have always wanted is ads that really benefited the reader and even more importantly the advertiser. Under the current style of supposed contextual style advertising the only one who really wins is Google and that isn’t good enough for me. As many know from previous posts and conversations I am a big proponent of sponsorship style offerings as I believe this method is a win win situation for all involved.

So effective immediately I have put in place a fact sheet on what the costs are currently for purchasing a sponsorship spot here on WinExtra. Those spots will occupy the prime ad areas above what is termed the fold and come in two flavors. The first is a single 468 x 60 banner type spot right at the top of the two sidebars to the right. The second is a set of three (the fourth is part of another deal explained further down) 125 x 125 graphic spots below the 486 x 60 banner but at the top in each of the two sidebars to the right.

Additionally to this I have also made available the option to sponsor the RSS feed with a single text style ad with links included. This style will go out with every post via WinExtra’s RSS feed which given the current numbers would be equal to 45,000 pageviews per month. As an added bonus to this there will also be a 125 x 125 sponsorship ad spot with the other three 125 x 125 spots.

If you are interested in either the default weekly run period for these sponsorship spots or would like to discuss longer term sponsorship deals just contact me using the email address available on the Sponsoring Page which you will find linked to by the menu item just under the logo area.

Now one other thing that I am really interesting into adding to WinExtra is the occasional videocast that will run along side the return podcasts here at WinExtra. The problem is – well the two problems are the fact that I will need to scrounge up the needed money to buy one and that I have no idea of what would be a good Windows based webcam that I could use for this sort of thing. So if you have any ideas or suggestions please add the info to a comment on this post.

Well that pretty well wraps up this bit of site news and I look forward to hearing form folks on both things mentioned.