I've been running a small startup for over 2 years and it has progressively grown to over 5000+ members, 160 paying subscribers, an offline product, receives over a million page views/month, and receives over 70K visitors/month all on a shoestring budget with little to no marketing efforts.<p>What I'd like to do is kick it up to the next level as the numbers seem to support a lucrative expansion (50 - 100 fold). My first thought was to approach corporations that occupy the same space but do not have a community based following and offer them the opportunity to sponsor our project. Studies have shown that sponsorship creates a stronger relationship with a target customer than pure advertising.<p>In contrast to pure advertising here is an article that defines the distinction: http://www.suite101.com/blog/ekennen/sponsorship_versus_advertising<p>I'd like to ask HN if anyone has attempted this type of funding, if it panned out, and how it was achieved (ie email pitch, direct contact).
I poked around your site, you seem to not have any advertising? Not even in your magazine? I'd say build on any of those relationships but you don't seem to have any?<p>What about within your community? Putting out the word through your community that you are looking for sponsorship?