We've been blogging here for more than three years. During the first 2.5 years, the site  was password-protected and available only to Online Banking Report subscribers. While that model worked fine, it didn't bring the kind of traffic that grows your business. Since we eliminated password protection, our site traffic has grown more than 100-fold.

But site traffic only increases your website hosting bill unless you have a way of garnering some revenues. And we have elected to use what we call the "value-added sponsor model." That means we seek out and offer space to highly relevant companies with products of great value to our core audience, banking and technology execs working in the financial-services sector. 

Our first sponsor* is San Anselmo, CA-based Market Rates Insight. If you are a large bank, you probably already use their popular deposit- or loan-rate feeds. But the company is also in the product-tracking business, a great service I was unaware of until I had coffee with CEO Rick Barham this spring.

Since then, we've been discussing ways to work together since we are both banking product guys. Our first effort is a special offer to NetBanker readers, a one-year free subscription to its Rate Move Alert and/or its Heard on the Streets product-tracking service, a $500 value.

To take advantage of the offer, click on one or both of the banners (right), complete the brief registration form, and you're set. 

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* Full disclaimer: Market Rates Insight is a sponsor but they had no control over this post. We're excited to have them as a sponsor because of the quality of their products and the special offers they've created just for you. In the future, we may thank other sponsors for their support, but we'll always let you know when we have a sponsorship relationship with them.