Learn about the great benefits for sponsoring the Cichlid Room Companion

Updated on 2009-12-31.

Since 1996, the Cichlid Room Companion has, and continues to, provide a constantly increasing amount of information about cichlids supplied by top experts and skilled aquarists, photographers and writers. Day after day, the traffic of requested material has been steadily increasing, adding up to millions of files and tens of thousands of gigabytes of valuable information every month. The Cichlid Room Companion's goal is to provide quality information, images and videos for all cichlid species. Presently the site is being hosted by a top commercial Internet Service Provider, and hundreds of hours of development and new material are put into it every month. The amount of information about cichlids is endless, and we constantly need to search for different approaches to meet the goals of the Cichlid Room Companion.

Support the Cichlid Room Companion and benefit from its huge popularity! To pursue this site mission, we have devised a plan based on sponsorship and advertising, with many benefits to our supporters.

Sponsorship is customized for three different types of sponsors;

1. Individuals: Individuals can sponsor a cichlid species for a year term and in return they get:
   
1. The full species profile open for every visitor to see (no subscription necessary), including all available species pictures (in larger format) and videos.
2. A web banner (468x60 pixels) placed in the page of the cichlid species (and all picture and video pages for that species) they sponsor for the length of their sponsorship. The banner can contain a link to the sponsor's personal home page.
3. Individuals get credited US $20.00 for pay per read PDF documents in the Cichlid Room Companion.
4. Individuals optionally can get a sponsor's personal page within the Cichlid Room Companion with their picture and information about their involvement in the aquarium hobby.
5. Individuals get listed as Cichlid Room Companion sponsors.
6. Optionally, sponsors can get a cichlidae.com e-mail account.


2. Clubs: Clubs can sponsor a cichlid species for a year term and in return they get:
   
1. The full species profile open for every visitor to see (no subscription necessary), including all available species pictures (in larger format) and videos.
2. A web banner (468x60 pixels) placed in the page of the cichlid species (and all picture and video pages for that species) for the length of their sponsorship period. The banner can contain a link to a URL the donor provides.
3. For each cichlid species sponsored, clubs get 20,000 additional printings of their banner in random Cichlid Room Companion index pages, distributed during the term of their sponsorship, a geographical target can be set for their banners (e.g. Banner are just shown in the US).
4. Clubs get listed as Cichlid Room Companion sponsors.


3. Companies: can sponsor a cichlid species for a year term and in return they get:
   
1. The full species profile open for every visitor to see (no subscription necessary), including all available species pictures (in larger format) and videos.
2. A web banner (468x60 pixels) placed in the page of the cichlid species (and all picture and video pages for that species) for the length of their sponsorship period. The banner can contain a link to a URL the donor provides.
3. For each cichlid species sponsored, companies get 20,000 additional printings of their banner in random Cichlid Room Companion index pages, distributed during the term of their sponsorship, a geographical target can be set for their banners (e.g. Banner are just shown in the US).
4. Companies get listed as Cichlid Room Companion sponsors.

The price of sponsoring a cichlid species for a year term is $100.00 US for clubs and companies and $50.00 US for individuals, The available cichlid species to be sponsored are found in the Cichlid Room Companion cichlid catalogue, with a sign on the top of the page that indicates it is available for sponsorship. Payments can be done by PayPal through this page.

Advertisement comes in three different ways.

1. Banners: Web banners (468 x 60 pixels) are offered to be printed in random index pages in the cichlid room companion (In their upper 500 pixels). A third party provider (http://www.adbutler.com) will administer them and the following services are provided: Geographical targeting so ads can be seen in the countries selected by the advertiser. Day capping so just a certain amount of banners are printed each day. Banner sets, so several different banners can be used in the campaign and campaign administration, where a personal account is provided so the advertisers can monitor the performance of their campaigns. Many other features are also available for campaign managing.


2. Buttons: Similar to banners but smaller, normally 120 x 60 pixels but custom banners are also supported. they appear only in index pages and several can appear per page on the lower part of the lateral menu bar. Same features as banners.


3. Breeders: Tropheus or other cichlid breeders can also advertise as such for a small yearly quote, a fixed button with a description provided is included in a breeder's dedicated page. The Tropheus section of the Cichlid Room Companion will have it's dedicated breeder page.