Marketing guide for small businesses (plus: how Springwise pays the rent)

For a change, let's turn the spotlight on our own business model. As you may have guessed from the banner ads on our pages, we rely on advertising to pay the bills. That's what enables us to reward Springspotters for their invaluable tips, pay our editorial team for their excellent work, and send out weekly newsletters to over 100,000 subscribers.

While we mostly run display ads, our advertising partner—Federated Media—recently contacted us to help create a Small Business Marketing Guide. The guide, which focuses on "DIY brand marketing strategies to help you grow your business" is sponsored by Hewlett-Packard, and features articles by bloggers like Duct Tape Marketing's John Jantsch, NOTCOT's Jean Aw and Guy Kawaski. It's an example of Federated Media's innovative approach to marketing in the blogosphere—helping advertisers engage people by working with authors to create fun and useful content. (Note that HP pays us for participating, but doesn't require us to promote their products. That's a big deal for us: we don't accept any type of compensation for writing about brands, products or services on Springwise.)

Since a marketing guide seems like a helpful tool for all of our entrepreneurial readers—and those who'd like to start their own business—we're happy to contribute. Our first piece talks about using storytelling to build a brand, and upcoming posts will focus on hands-on topics like direct marketing and creating marketing materials.