How to get Sponsors

Our latest toy from our friends over at Sea Eagle Kayaks!

We recently announced our newest sponsor, Sea Eagle Kayaks on our Facebook page, which brought in a slew of email inquiries as to how to go about getting sponsors.  I will write more on our latest sponsor soon (insert happy dance!!), but for now I'll focus on sponsorship and how we go about getting it...

While we are not experts on "sponsorship packages", this notion of getting "sponsors" has saved us thousands and thousands of dollars in the past year, not to mention gotten us some super cool products and services.  I must admit, when Scott first broached the subject of getting sponsors to me I laughed and thought, "yeah, whatever..." but now, anytime we want/need anything for the boat - we write a company that has that particular product or service, and ask for it.  Which brings me to my first rule:  ASK.  The worst they can do is say no!

BUT...and this is a big 'but': you must have a blog/website that gets seen.  What makes us attractive to sponsors is the fact that we get over 1,000 people visiting this blog every single day, and over 100,000 page views a month.  That's not huge in the blog world, but those numbers are not to shabby in the sailing blog world.  The fact that we are and/or have been featured in Cruising World Magazine Online, North American Sailor, Women and Cruising and a whole slew of other online sailing publications doesn't hurt either.  In addition, lots of potential sponsors like the fact that we have about 4,500 targeted "fans" on our very interactive Facebook Page, which is also pretty impressive for a personal blog (if you have lots of fans but no interaction, these are not quality fans, the key is interactive).  Segway to rule number two for sponsorship:  HAVE TRAFFIC.  If you don't have the stats and the followers, the sponsors are less likely to bite.

In return for sponsorship, we agree to write a post about the company, an honest review of the product, inclusion on our static Sponsor Page, as well as Tweet and Facebook about that product or service.  Which is rule number three:  GIVE THEM SOMETHING IN RETURN.

That's our formula, and it has worked very well for us thus far.  In addition to asking outright for sponsors, we are also approached by companies, but have found that more often than not we don't really use what they offer and it is not in our interest to plug products we don't use or need.  We've found it much more beneficial to approach those companies who do offer something we need.  It should be known that we get turned down as well, but you can't win them all, right?  It's a numbers game and if someone says 'no', just move on to the next one!

Good luck!