Despite it’s massive popularity and user base, Twitter still hasn’t got a real business model, and still relies heavily on the VC money it raised — and it raised a lot of it.

But according to new rumors, Twitter is set to launch its ad platform as early as next month, but there’s little concrete details, whether it will be regular banner/link advertising, or if it’ll be in-tweet ads.

Reply.com, a local advertising marketplace, has filed an IPO where the company plans to raise $60 million in capital in an initial public offering.

Reply.com offers a cost-per-click marketplace that’s heavily localized, in contrast to Google’s Adwords, among others. The company had revenues of $32.6 million in 2009, and profits of $2.5 million during the same year.

BlueKai, the online data exchange startup has announced that they’ve raised another $21 million in VC funding, from GGV Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Battery Ventures, bringing to total raised capital to $35 million.

Launched in 2008, BlueKai gathers data from shopping sites online, and then sells them to the highest bidder on an auction — the bidders are usually marketers and ad-networks.

Now I KNOW I got you guys right there!

That’s got to make most everyone sit up and take notice, but I assure you, it is possible for most anyone to get FREE ADVERTISING at absolutely any point.

How do you do it?  It’s a simple plan, but it’s tough to execute.  What you’re going to do to get free advertising is to do something newsworthy. See?  Yeah, tough, all right.  But you’re going to figure out something to do that will get attention, and you’ll go out and do it.  Just consider what you normally write about, and think about what you can do in that arena to make something that’s newsworthy.

Consider things that involve words like “biggest”, “longest”, “widest” or “most”.  Pretty much anything that actually involves an “est” will do.  And once you’ve done it, or are in the process of doing it, now you can hawk it.  Not you–no, not yet–rather the event.  You can slip in a few interesting asides about your site in the process, and of course a link back to you in the press releases works.

And with that, you should be looking at plenty of free advertising as the papers spread the word for you.

I know, it’s amazing that you can distill the thought of building your readership down to just three simple questions, but that’s what we do every day here at Slyvisions–we do the amazing.

So what are those three questions?

1. Why?  Yeah, that’s pretty simple.  But it’s a good question, WHY do you want more readers?  And no, “I wanna make more money” doesn’t count–you’ll have to be specific here.  Do you want to sell more merchandise?  Increase your advertising revenue?  Or do you just want to be regarded as a pundit so you can get a foot in the door with publishers?  Each approach requires a different strategy–know what yours is.

2. Who?  Again, simple–but who are these readers that you want to come to your site?  Are you looking for experts who’ll fire a community up with high-level chatter about the minutiae of your topic?  Do you want to make something warm and welcoming for the noobs?  Do you want ad-clickers, or stuff-buyers, or just more readers?  Again, different strategy for each.

3. How?  This is the grandest question of all.  But once you’ve figured out the why and the who, then the how will be a lot smoother.  If you want to get the stuff buyers, then offer discounts or new and interesting stuff.  If you want the ad clickers, make sure your ads draw sufficient attention that they’ll be practically begging to click.  And so on.

With these strategies in mind, you’re likely to put a serious fire under your readership numbers.

Now that caught your eye, didn’t it?  Sure it did.  And why wouldn’t it?  I mean, I just handed you your dream concept on a silver plate, didn’t I? Your blog, literally everywhere.

So how do you achieve this concept?  Well, it’s an idea you may want to consider.  You’re going to use two basic principles to take a shot at huge name recognition.  Those principles:

1. People love free stuff.

2. Cafepress will put your name and logo on ANYTHING.

And that’s the idea.  Put your name and logo on some stuff and give it away.  Now, I understand that not everybody’s got the kind of cash required for such a venture, but the good part about this plan is that it’s scalable.  You can start small or you can go huge, and you have loads of options.

For instance, let’s take a look at this idea:  Create fifty bumper stickers for about a hundred bucks.  Put them in envelopes and mail them out at random.  Announce to your local newspaper that fifty lucky people will be receiving free bumper stickers as part of your (insert random celebratory event here) celebration.

With any luck, you’ll get a newspaper ad for your blog for less than a hundred and fifty bucks if I’ve done the math right.  Plus, fifty people will hear about your blog, and if they actually USE the bumper stickers, you’ve got plenty of word of mouth advertising gratis.  Got fifteen hundred bucks to blow?  Up that to five HUNDRED bumper stickers.

Think outside the box, and who knows how far you’ll get?

A recent survey by AdWeekMedia and Harris Interactive revealed that most people using the internet ignore banner ads. Those ads that they do read are not that influential in their purchasing decision. The one demographic that does take notice of ads is the younger generation, especially those interested in technology, gaming and gadgets.

As a blogger considering advertising what does this tell you? Does it mean that having banner ads is not worth it, does it mean that ads overall won’t earn you money?

I would say the answer to these questions is no and no. Its important to tailor your ads, its important to make sure that  you put your readers primary interest, which is quality content first.  I would recommend thinking about who sees ads on your site. Showing them only to Search engine visitors is perhaps one way to control this.

Managing direct purchase ads can be very time consuming and if you are not setup properly can cause you real problems.  If you want to be able to offer your advertisers a seamless process, allowing them to select the type of ad, pay for it and submit their content without too much intervention from you then OIOpublisher is the way to go.

This WordPress plugin really does do almost all the work for you. It costs $47 but if you are realistically thinking of selling ads on your site then you will recoup this cost very quickly, if nothing else in time you don’t spend trying to manage your ads.

I definitely recommend you taking the demo at the OIO website to see all the things that this plugin will do for your blog site.