Partner

Chicago Art Magazine has an advertising division:

Chicago Arts & Culture Online Advertising Network (CA-COAN)

These are the problems we’ve found:

1. Bloggers and small arts and culture sites don’t want to have to sell ads
2. Local businesses/advertisers don’t want to deal with dozens of small, niche websites
3. Many local websites don’t individually drive enough traffic to support an online campaign.

Based on the model of Culture Pundits    *, the Chicago Arts & Culture Online Advertising Network (CA-COAN) is a central entity that will find advertisers, partner with other local arts and culture websites, get the weekly web advertisement loaded up on all the partner websites, and share advertiser revenue with their peers.

The first site to join is Neoteric Art  a blog kept by seasoned art veterans and commentators who, according to Kathryn, “don’t have a sales and marketing bone in their body. They just want to write staggeringly great articles.” Kathryn Born is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Chicago Art Magazine, and the person who sells most of the ads. “We’re willing to go into art venues and work out advertising deals. It’s a job we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. But since we’re there, agressively pestering people anyway, we might as well be the designated pests for a larger group of art publishers.”

Born believes that partnering with similar local blogs will raise the value of the advertisement by increasing its visibility. “They write one check, and their online ad will be seen all over town.”

The technology is simple. Each member of the CA-COAN network puts a plugin on their site. Each week, new code, which generates a new slideshow, is sent to each member of the network.

CA-COAN is looking forward to adding more blogs and sites to the network. Currently, there is no requirement for traffic, but the blog should be related to arts and culture, be a Chicago-based blog, and be actively posting. Right now, until we figure out the math, all partners get $20/mo. If you are interested, please contact chicagoartmagazine at  gmail dot com.