Daily Kos + Andrew Sullivan > Boston.com. When Will Bloggers Start to Be Media Sponsors for Fundraising Events?

Steve Rubel of MicroPersuasion pointed to a post by David Sifry of Technorati which shows which websites most influence bloggers. This was measured by the incoming links from blogs to these sites among the bloggers that technorati tracks.

I noticed that DailyKos.com and AndrewSullivan.com were on the list AND they also sell ads via blogads. They were both below Boston.com, but together they more than trump it. In fact, they also trump foxnews.com, reuters.com or usatoday.com when the two bloggers incoming links are combined.   

So, this may not be news to the bloggers reading this. But, walk into a non-profit and tell them that there are one person news organizations that could provide more advertising exposure for your fundraiser than the Boston Globe, Fox News or Reuters, and they'll tell you, "you are crazy". (Yes, I've been told I am crazy.)

So... given my keen interest in blogads of late, I checked out the prices for placing blogads on these two blogs. I was all ready to place an ad on of their sites via blogads for Hubbub!, until I realized that it was a bit out of range of my personal disposable income. To advertise in the first, second or third slots on DailyKos, the price tags are $3000, $1000 and $625 respectively. To place an ad on AndrewSullivan.com, the price tags were $800 and $400 for the first and second level spots.

But, as I mentioned before, non-profits generally don't pay for advertising for their fundraising events. They get it for free from media organizations in exchange for being media sponsors. Generally, anyone can sponsor an event if they can provide something of value to the event, in exchange for the publicity that the event provides to the sponsoring organization. Now, the Boston Center for the Arts isn't going to accept sponsorship from fleshbot, but they might take it from boingboing.
 

So, lets put AndrewSullivan and DailyKos's blogad ad rates in perspective to sponsorship levels:  If DailyKos provided Hubbub! with 1 week's worth  ($3,000) of advertising, DailyKos  would qualify as a Gold sponsor.   DailyKos would receive a full page ad in the programme booklet, the opportunity to provide some kind of DailyKos tchotchke in a gift bag for all of the guests, as well as 6 free tickets to the event. Plus, the goodwill that comes with being an Arts Patron. Did I mention that mayor Menino will be there and some of the World Champion Patriot and Red Sox players. (And me.) All in all, it is a pretty good deal.

And if there are bloggers out there that would like to contribute to this sort of thing, I can certainly help make that happen. Anyone?

Some more conversations about blogger's influence for the non-bloggers reading this:
Check the links at Technorati or explore these...
"A-List" Bloggers Market Share
Sifry's State of the Blogosphere
Decline of WSJ.com
Technorati: mainstream media vs weblogs
State of the Blogosphere 2...part 3...
Musing about The Long Tail
The Long Tail
Sifry's Alerts: State of the Blogosphere March 2005, Part 3: The A-List and the Long Tail
Blogspot Blogs Outrank NYTimes.com in Traffic
Blogspot has more traffic than NY Times? How about the $$?