The Big Banner Swap Meet

As I’m sure most of our regular readers will have noticed, the Spartanburg Spark‘s layout has been going through some major changes recently. While there have been some visual improvements, the updating is actually more than a cosmetic fix. The retooling of the site has allowed me to do something I’ve been putting off for months: Creating a more room for content while allowing for a reasonable amount of ad space.

But why should you care about my ads? Believe it or not, you might just have a pretty good reason. I’m giving some of the ad space to you.

That’s right. See that “banner” in the header box next to the Spark logo? That 468-by-60-pixel box of prime real estate is going to be donated — at least some of the time — to local bloggers and websites as a community service. The page is loaded about 1,500 times a week, a number that will only grow as the Spark grows.

So what’s the catch? There’s not one, actually. But there are a few conditions:

• Your blog or website but be non-commercial in nature (although it may have ads), based in Spartanburg County and be accessible to all readers.
• You must to submit one Reader Soapbox about some local topic. It doesn’t have to be particularly long — a few paragraphs or so is fine — and all I ask is that the topic be one personally interesting to you.
• In exchange for the banner, I’d like to see the Spark added to your blogroll. If you have the ability to post ads (linked images) on your site, I’d really appreciate you posting a link back to us. I can provide an image and the HTML code for almost any available space, and even a small button ad would be excellent.
• You’ll have to keep your expectations low, or do the ad layout yourself. I’m a middling ad designer with a limited amount of time, so my layouts tend to be basic. I’ll work with you to a reasonable degree, but just keep in mind that this is a free banner ad largely done as a community service. If you are handy with image-editing, however, we’ll accept almost anything that fits these criteria: 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high; GIF or JPEG format; GIFs can be animated, but total file size for either format needs to be under 10k; nothing visually annoying (wildly flashing ads are out).
• Ads will run for a period of one month, but they can be renewed for another month by the submission of yet another Reader Soapbox.

And that’s pretty much it. If you have questions, by all means ask them in the comments section. If you’d like the participate, e-mail me at publisher@spartanburgspark.com. If you’d like to snag one of the fancy “big” ads (the box on the right, or the leaderboard in the footer), feel free to e-mail me and we can work out some kind of exchange, as I’m always looking for writers and other help, and don’t mind bartering. If this proves wildly popular, I may eventually need to limit the number of ad-slots available to a reasonable amount, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.