This post could also operate under the title “how that Ad Guy Josh ran up my credit card bill.”

Every once in a while around the internet you will see one of these pictures.

It’s usually in the right column of one of my favorite mom blogs. I’ll pay for blogads because they are a great way to remind people that I am around. I have always recovered my cost. But sometimes you just want to go all out with advertising. Make it big. Someone emailed me the other day and suggested I go print advertising in a baby magazine. I emailed her back with a copy of the media kit that said a 2 inch by 2 inch ad running once in a baby magazine costs $60,000.

$60,000.

Explain to me who is operating with that kind of budget? Clearly a lot of people because baby magazines are filled with advertisements. OK, so apparently there is a whole world of much cheaper “remnant ads” available when they have space to fill at the last minute, but we are still talking thousands.

I’m a one woman show. Well, two women, if you count Susie Sunshine as Chief Correspondent Girl. “Thousands” is not a word that fits in my budget. But I do have this funky little undisclosed political t-shirt side business with my friend Melissa that needed a little advertising. I contacted Big Ad Agency about doing online advertising on a news website that gets traffic that makes Dooce’s traffic look like my traffic at Mommy Needs a Cocktail.

Josh is a salesman. Josh must be working on commission. I should know this. But I fell for his sexy voice.

J: We do CPM. This will be perfect for your t-shirts.

He explained the complex formula used so that people like my husband who refresh the page 9,000 times every day won’t be using up all my clicks. I called everyone I knew and told them they had to stay off the website for the next 3 days because I didn’t want to be wasting my 2 million clicks on someone who isn’t going to buy a shirt. My partner in crime in this endeavor called me to say she hadn’t seen the ad yet. I called Josh to make sure it was up and running.

J: I can see it right now.
K: Thanks, Josh. Can you get off the site? I want my click back.

He laughed.

I sat back and waited for the money to roll in. And waited. And waited. And waited. With three orders after 18 hours, I could only describe my mental state as horrified and panicked.

Josh wasn’t feeling my panic. Probably because my credit card payment had cleared.

J: Well, you can only figure out these things by trial and error.

Um, that trial and error is a mortgage payment, you loser. Let’s try to make me feel a little better about this. I swapped out my photo and raised my frequency.

And the orders started flying into my inbox. At the end of my 72 hours, I had made my money back plus some more to fund our next advertising scheme.

But the 10 years of my life I lost from worrying that we had thrown the money down the toilet? I’d like that back. Lucky or brilliant? I’m not sure. You have to know your audience, realize that it may fall flat and identify your goals. So I didn’t make millions but Would I do it again? Someday I’ll tell you about that time I rolled an eight six times in a row at the craps table in Vegas…

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