Attracting and maintaining advertisers

What are your methods and techniques for attracting private advertisers to advertise on your forum? Do you have to do any "work", or do they all come to you?

Once you have advertisers, how do you keep them interested? Do you have an advertiser program that offers perks and benefits to the advertiser?

 

We keep them coming back with loyalty discounts and sales every now and then, that has worked for us so far. I think for now we do put in work gaining their attention but of course someday there will be less and less work needed as word gets out

 

They all come to me. They come back every month for me because our community keeps on growing. The price remains the same and they get a good deal $40/month.

 

I've created areas on the site where advertisers can share with each other hidden from view of the general membership.

One thing I feel is very important is providing more than just a banner ad. Keeping the advertisers in contact with the members is important. It helps to build a level of trust when the vendor is engaged in the community. We feel so strongly about this interaction that we coded a section into one of our products that allows the vendor to setup keywords. Daily this tool sends the vendor an email with a link to the thread or post where a keyword is used.

I also work with a lot of site owners and we share ideas on how to communicate with our vendors.