New advertising service available on This French Life

FOR some time now I have been keen to offer an advertising service that allows business owners the chance to promote their products to readers of This French Life, which is simple, transparent and not too expensive.

So as you will see in the right hand column there is now the option to create your own text adverts featuring a short headline and paragraph describing your product or service, which appears on more than 3,000 pages across the whole site.

To try out the service just click on one of the Advertise Here buttons and register as an advertiser, the minimum payment required is £10 and as you can see you pay a minimum of 50p per 1,000 page views.

So if you just stick with the initial £10 then your advert will be displayed 20,000 times to readers wherever they land on This French Life.

But to appear higher up the advert strip you would have to outbid other advertisers, then again if you are happy just appearing on the strip and there are enough slots available at the minimum price then your advert will still be displayed.

And you also have complete control over the advert text featured, so you could start by offering a special deal and once that offer has run its course, go back into your account, edit your text advert to promote a new message and it will update in a matter of seconds.

From your advertiser account you can see how many times your advert has been displayed and the number of times it has been clicked, this would let you test different headlines and blocks of text to see which combinations appeal to readers, as well as how much you've actually spent.

There are a couple of rules to stick to, such as the title of your ad is limited to 25 characters and the body of text describing your service is set at a maximum of 85 characters, but this should provide you with enough opportunity to get your message across.

When you click on the Advertise Here link you will see the minimum price being charged as well as an indication of how busy the site is, at the moment the views per week is low because I only added the advertising code last night (September 29), but over the next couple of weeks this will better reflect the number of page views the site enjoys.

And remember those who read the site are people exactly like you, they have an interest in French life, its language, leisure pursuits, property options and more, readers are not likely to be interested in the latest computer games or mobile phone ringtones.

If you have any worries about the system as a publisher I get to see the advert before it goes live on the site, so I can double-check spelling or offer a pointer or two if required, let's face it working together benefits the both of us.

But I hope that as the advertising service is clear, simple to navigate and puts you in control, you will have more time to concentrate on handling enquiries from interested readers who click through from This French Life.

If you have any questions please feel free to send me an email.

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[Arnie Martin]

I note a plasterer is needed in the Ariege area. I am available from 17 October 2008. You can telephone me on: 00 33 6 85 51 26