As you may have noticed, Decatur Metro now sports a new section in the right sidebar that features local sponsors/advertisers.

That’s right!  Decatur Metro is now offering advertising opportunities to businesses looking to gain exposure to a local Decatur/Atlanta audience.  If you’re a business interested in learning more about advertising on DM, stop by DM’s new “Advertise” page or shoot me an email at [email protected] and I will be happy to forward along our ad-rate sheet.

This has been a huge undertaking and I want to thank my first advertisers, the DDA, Little Shop of Stories, Decatur First Bank, Heliotrope and The Wren’s Nest, along with my wife and the great folks at Lampe-Farley Communications, who helped get this months-long effort off the ground.  There is a real desire among many local businesses for an outlet to advertise to their target audience at a reasonable price.  Decatur Metro hopes to fill that niche and develop a sustainable business model for itself in the process.

Now, just a couple of housekeeping items.  With the addition of this new section in the sidebar, I’ve had to make a few adjustments on the site.

First off, to make room for our new and potential advertisers, the businesses, restaurants and merchants links have been moved off the main page and onto a secondary page under “Decatur Links & Tips”.  If you put your mouse over that page in the toolbar above you’ll see a page “Business Links” beneath it, which will give you the same list of Decatur businesses that previously lived in the right sidebar.

Also the “DM Recommends” section, which has been slowly gaining in popularity over the past couple months and the blogs/news/non-profit links are now located below the local ads and will remain there for the time being.  If they need to be moved to the left sidebar some time in the future because they’ve been pushed too far down the page, I will let you know.

Finally, thanks to all the readers, contributors and commenters out there who make DM a real community effort.  Your eyeballs, tips, humor, scathing critiques and insightful analysis are what it’s all about.  Cheers!