I own SiteMF.com which is an online Marketplace and I really need some forum sponsors (for prizes and such).

I have really thought about this a lot and I'm not quite sure what I need to do. Should I privately email businesses and online service providers asking them to sponsor the forums in some way shape or form? I am pretty much completely clueless.

Thank you,
Matthew

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Getting Back into the Business

Your best bet is to probably just email the company in question. It helps if you look for a relatively new company. That way you can offer them some publicity (which they would direly need) in exchange.

To find new companies, or at least companies who want/need some extra publicity, just look in the advertisements section

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I'm currently running a forum for forum admins, staffers and users and the only sponsored prizes I've got are the ones offered to me by certain businesses. I think that if you're running a forum it's highly important to fund and offer as many prizes in competitions off of your own back, otherwise what's to stop your users interest flagging and them looking elsewhere for rewards (as its apparant they can be reaped elsewhere)

Keeping it as private label as possible will help you in the long run. Expensive, yes....but worth it, definitley!

Forums are high risk high reward.