A Note About Our Sponsored Posts
Starting next week, you’ll see certain posts on Muni Diaries, such as our Fashion Friday posts, that are marked with this little “Sponsored Post” red icon: 
These posts are supported by our local sponsors, such as Secession Art and Design and Mobile Spinach. In the 2.5 years that we have been running Muni Diaries, you haven’t seen any advertisements, but we’re starting to experiment with sponsored posts and possibly some advertisements on the sidebar of our site in the near future.
Having ads and sponsored posts might be standard fare for most of the sites that you read. But because Muni Diaries is built on your stories and our common love for our city, we thought it is only appropriate that we invite your opinion:
What do you think of advertisements on Muni Diaries, and what is your threshold on seeing ads on the site?
Earlier this year, I talked to some journalism students at San Francisco State University about how we started Muni Diaries. One of the first questions from the students was this: “Who is your staff, and where does the money come from?” This was funny to us because the short answer was that there was no money that came from anywhere…yet.
Muni Diaries is run by two humble people from our living rooms when we get home from our 9-5. Our website is generously hosted by Laughing Squid, and graphic and site design donated thus far by Suzanne Lagasa and Yen Pai. But we would like to pay our designers, hire a part time web administrator, and invest in other site features that make Muni Diaries a welcome place to share your transit stories. And we’d like to enlist local sponsors to help us with expenses as small as printing event programs and as large as hiring a website designer and beyond.
With sponsored posts and advertisements, we intend to bring you the same level of fun, entertaining content that you’ve seen on Muni Diaries so far, keeping all our content relevant to you and life on Muni. So if you’ve got something to say — whether it’s about sponsored posts, the business of online media, or our favorite: that hilarious thing that happened to you on the bus today — tell us in the comments or email us any time.
I’m all for it. Content is king here and a little bit of advertising (for me) is not going to change that.
I’d say that my personal threshold are sponsored posts where there is no content. 100% ad posts. But ones such as you suggest are no problem. Good luck.
Thanks, JC!
I love this site and had no idea it was run out of your living room. You rock. And, hey, if you can get some people to pay you some money for space and time, take it, take it. You deserve it for the great job you do here.
*blush* thanks!