Costs can vary from as little as $5 for a single-day Text Under ISP ad right up to "the sky's the limit" for extended, multi-content campaigns. We are willing to work with your budget, however, and can be fairly flexible, especially to ISPs who have never advertised with us before. This simply makes sense: We're willing to give you a break the first time around, in order for you to see just how effective promotion on CanadianISP is in the hopes that you will come back at regular contract rates :)

This depends on the service offered: Services like MustSeeISP, Text Under ISP and paid ranking may be purchased on a daily basis for ISPs who wish to promote within very narrow windows (Just prior to holidays or back-to-school, for example). Banner campaigns are sold on a monthly basis. Email campaigns are on a per-email basis.

Depends what you're looking to trade :) To save us all time, however: I don't need any kind of connectivity, since my office is in NRTCO territory and it has a monopoly on DSL around here. I don't need any hosting, since I am the server administrator for a few clients with more spare bandwidth and server space than you could shake a small planet at. Computer hardware I'm sort of interested in, but keep in mind that I am a Perl/MySQL programmer: My computer is beefy because I'm a gamer, not because of my work, so my interests do not really lie in routers, wireless LAN cards, etc - no need for em. Non-computer stuff, I'm open for discussion (Large shop tools, etc, always wake me up :) If you've got a helicopter as contra, I'll be your best friend :) :) :)
Please keep in mind, however, that contra deals are fairly rare: Usually it's cash for services. When they do occur, however, this is the deal:

• Contra is exchanged on a retail value for retail value (I.e. if what you are offering is brand new and has a retail value of $5,000, then it's $5,000 worth of advertising).
• Your contra items/service must be received first and verified to be what was claimed
• If it is a service, the advertising credits will be spread out over the length of the service, with the final third to the final half of the credit, depending on the nature of the deal, being available at the END of the service period.
• Just because a service was traded for contra one time does not necessarily guarantee it will be renewed for the same deal.

This depends on the product or service :) Given the time demands of running CanadianISP and my other projects, there are a few rules on product and service reviews:

• If it is a product, it will be sent to me for review and kept, permanently. I.e. you will gift/donate it in exchange for the review.
• If it is a service, you will provide one year of the service at no charge.
• Reviews will be posted in the Forums section of the web site (A new "Product and Service Reviews" section of the web site may or may not appear in the future)
• The review will be sent to you prior to posting and you may choose to have it posted or not - Regardless, the year of service or gifted product remains with me :)
• You may make suggestions for style of the review, but not editorial content.

Most of the advertising services are geared towards ISPs. However, the ad serving software has been modified in the past to serve non-ISP promoters. That being said, however, we want to keep all content on CanadianISP.com relevant to our readers. Ads for adult, gambling, money-making schemes, etc, are banned outright. Ads for completely unrelated products and services are also unlikely to find a place within CanadianISP (Besides, there are a lot better places to advertise cars, power tools, etc than here :) As always, the final decision as to what is permitted on CanadianISP.com resides with me, Marc Bissonnette.

This depends on what you are trying to do. Here are a few guidelines, though:

• For ISPs, the Purchased Rankings work best: Why ? Because they guarantee your ISP will be displayed in the top screen of every search in which you would turn up. This is critical in heavily served urban areas where the results list may be several screens in length.
• The Side Banners (Skyscrapers) are the next most effective method, simply because they are right beside the data that the users are looking at. Skyscrapers give you more space to deliver a bigger message in a more colorful and eye-catching format.
• Top banners are best used in the long term where name recognition and brand awareness are more important than the immediacy of clickthroughs. (This is why top banners were lowered in price to half that of skyscrapers)
• Must See ISP allows you to change the background colour of your listing in the search results page. This is a great option when your budget does not allow for purchased ranking but you still want to stand out in the results list. Given that the display order is random, your ISP listing still has a random chance of appearing in the first screen, where it will stand out (And for users who scroll through the whole list, it stands out equally well against all the others)
• Text Under ISP is a great tool for making your ISP not only stand out a little from the rest of the pack, but allows you to deliver a short text message to entice a user to click on your ISP over your competitors right away (Ex, "$19.95 DSL special during the summer" could appear right below your ISP name in the results list)
• Provincial Entry Page Banner is a good tool for the advertiser who wants to appear before a user goes to the results page.
• Email campaigns are available on a very limited/restricted basis to be broadcast to the ISPs on CanadianISP.com. Generally, information must be relevant to an ISP owner in order for it to be accepted. In addition, we limit mail broadcasts to ISPs to no more than 6 per month. If you are the seventh mail broadcaster, your broadcast will have to wait until the following month to be sent. Email broadcasts to the ISPs must be paid up front, the email may be text-only and final approval rests with me. No, we do not do email broadcasts for commission or contra: Payment up front only. We will do our best to let you know if we think you have a chance of getting a response to your campaign: If you sell a widget that all ISP really would like to have, but it costs $5,000 and doesn't generate sales or save massive amounts of time or money, we'll tell you that you are likely wasting your time and ad money. Under no circumstances to we release contact names or email addresses to email advertisers. You will receive a list of ISP names and their URLs that the email broadcast was sent to. ISPs will respond to you directly, if they choose to respond at all. If these conditions are not acceptable to your firm, email marketing through CanadianISP is not an option for you.
• Posting in the forums costs nothing and is a great way to generate goodwill with potential customers, as well as to display your expertise, thus building confidence in your product or service.

Top Banners: 452 x 58 Gif or JPG - Animated gifs are acceptable (see below)
Skyscrapers: 120 x 500 Gif or JPG - Animated gifs are acceptable (see below)

Your banner content is up to you. Yes, the sizes are custom to CanadianISP, but I want the site to remain unique and thus so should the advertisements :) While we do not generally restrict content on the banners, we do ask that the colour scheme not clash too badly with CanadianISP.com. Animated gifs are okay, but don't do anything stupid like making a banner that flashes red, orange and yellow at 15 cycles a second. I'll just delete it :) Quality of image is important, but so are decent download times - please optimize your ads!

No. We do not make available any names or direct contact information given to CanadianISP.com. Don't ask, 'cuz the answer will still be no.

Nope :) Hey, I'm human - some of the ad services are automated, some of them are manual - if I've forgotten to turn off your campaign after a paid run, then that extra time is yours, free (I'll learn, one of these days :)

The short answer: Maybe.
The long answer: Here is how it works: CanadianISP is very thankful to our regular advertisers: It is in no small part to you that CanadianISP has continued to expand and improve. Obviously, CanadianISP is a business, however: Not only do we wish to operate at a profit, but we wish to remain fair in our service offerings to all ISPs, so the following is the policy should an already occupied spot in the guaranteed ranking be desireable to another ISP:

Most repeat advertisers gain at least two discounts: 10% for being a repeat advertiser and the long-term discount, which varies per product. ISPs with more than one advertising product also gain an additional 10% multi-product discount.

For this example, assume ISP A has a long-term contract for position #5, paying $5400 per year (1 year discount rate plus 10% repeat advertiser discount). ISP B wishes to have that spot, as ISP A has occupied it for some time. The following options are available:

ISP A would be notified than another ISP wishes their spot: ISP A may choose to retain the same spot, but forfeit any discount except the year-long discount rate. In this example, ISP A may keep rank 5, but renew their current term at a price of $6,000.

ISP A may move to the next lowest rank with an additional 10% discount while ISP B takes the new rank with no discounts other than the year long rate

If ISP B accepts the new rank, payment is due immediately, no matter how many months are left in ISP A's contract.

If ISP B changes their mind, only 50 % is refunded: ISP A then resumes their original rank with an additional 10% discount for the inconvenience and run-around.

We feel this is a fair approach to long-term, highly-desirable spots in the guaranteed ranking system.