Your Ad For Free!

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In line with our public service commitment all local organisations are currently entitled to one free display advert on bedlington.co.uk on a continuing basis. There are a few common-sense restrictions but generally if you have the enterprise to ask the facility is there for the asking.

The real point to make here - and it's a difficult one to get though to many people - is that we really don't care if you are a commercial organisation or not! If you are in Bedlington you are part of our community and your business success is our town's success!

Technical Details

Display ads must be no wider than 250 pixels (at 96 dpi) and ideally a maximum of 320 pixels deep. The depth of 320 pixels is simply a maximum size and anything below this figure is fine. File size should generally be less than 30KB (though exceptions may be made if the artwork demands it). File format should be .gif .jpg or .png. Generally we won't make free changes to artwork to ensure compliance, but the editors may on occasions do this subject to the availability of free time; so, in order to ensure that your artwork gets accepted, re-read the above specifications carefully!

Upload your ad using your existing bedlington.co.uk membership account, and then alert a moderator or admin by Personal Messaging (see your member control panel). In case of difficulties ask for help, and be please be patient!

Submissions of ads for events must specify a cut-off date (if it's not already very obvious from the ad itself) - we don't/won't run stale ads here! Optionally you can specify a start date for your ad if you don't want it showing immediately.

If you've already submitted a genuine news article to the bedlington.co.uk news pages we will set your ad to click-through to that - for more information on your organisation or what it's currently up to. If you haven't your ad will simply click through to the bedlington.co.uk homepage.

T&C

Your organisation must be based Bedlington or the immediate surrounding area, and the editor('s') decision on borderline cases is final! Ads may also be rejected if they are deemed detrimental to the town or to the bedlington.co.uk website e.g for services which are

!

The primary purpose of free display ads must be to directly promote a local event, firm, or organisation, and not to garner web traffic, or leech on our hard-won top search engine positioning. i.e. Come Buy from Fred's Shop is fine Visit the Fred Shop Website is not! We'll make an exception to this and link to charity or small start-up's social networking pages, but such organisations are encouraged to talk to bedlington.co.uk directly about how we can provide them with free web help.

Otherwise our sponsors have exclusive rights to redirections to their own websites, and local company MyURL.co.uk (who currently provide bedlington.co.uk's superb web facilities for no fee whatsoever) certainly aren't here to give their competitors free promotion! If your organisation wants to become a bedlington.co.uk commercial sponsor and so have this restriction lifted then we will be be delighted to hear from you - it costs so very little (£100 for a whole year including your own FTP account to deploy your own pages). Full sponsorship will earn your organisation massive brownie points in our local community by being seen to be supporting it directly.

 

Political Party Advertising

 

Bedlington.co.uk is entirely apolitical.  That doesn't mean that adverts for local political parties aren't permitted, it simply means that all legitimate political parties have a right to equal voice. If your political party isn't represented then complain to them about their failing to submit a free advert, and not to the moderators and administrators!  Innuendo from local politicos about bias needs to be treated with the contempt it deserves - basically they are saying: we can't be bothered, but we resent the efforts of other parties who are more capable and more motivated than we are.

 

Artwork

If you don't have the skills or contacts to do your own artwork we will produce a simple ad for you for only £10 per file. Or £25 for three - to be run sequentially. You'll need to send us the exact text(s) and optionally photo(s) or line drawing(s). You'll need a PayPal account to pay for this, and your funds will be donated to the website development fund. The copyright of such advert(s) will rest with you - so you can use them elsewhere too.

The Bottom Line

Where else can you get valuable, narrowly-targeted, local publicity for free? The only limit on how many exposures your ad gets is the size of the display queue, so first come gets the best positioning.

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If you are reading this text from hardcopy then please see bedlington.co.uk/community/topic/4415-your-ad-for-free/#entry47143 for a fully up-to-date version - the on-line version is the authoritative one.