You wouldn’t believe it, except that you have been here the entire time. OilersNation has somehow turned into a big ol’ website and real companies want to talk to us to get to talk to you. It’s a good thing your ol’ pal Wanye was voted “most likely to fall ass backwards into mild success” back in Grade 4.

We have been preparing for this day ever since.

It would seem that Edmontonians have read OilersNation.com a total of 3.4 million times since the site launched back in November 2007. It would also seem that this is of particular note to companies that are in the business of talking to folks online.

Of particular note, we have been having interesting chats with the Edmonton Journal and Post Media about working together. 

At first it was mostly about your ol’ pal Wanye working in the Edmonton Journal paper recycling centre. “Wanye” they began, “you seem to be familiar with scrounging for cans and bottles and what not. How about giving it a go on a commercial level?”

This turned into talks about what the Nation is all about, what we are trying to do and how long we plan on taking to get there. Despite the notable disadvantages of “not having any money” and “not having anyone in charge” we have managed to “trick the biggest names in Edmonton sports media into writing for the site” and stayed afloat for three long years.

Keeping the lights on involves selling ads. Selling advertising is one of the hardest parts of working for the Nation. You have to bang on every door in sight and most companies want to see “proposals” and “numbers” written on “paper.”

Despite having none of these, Brownlee, Gregor, Willis and the venerable Lowetide have written enough solid gold articles to warrant advertising dollars from some of the larger names around. Nearly a dozen companies have honoured us with their business despite the fact we are nobody and no business had ever heard of us.

But we have hit a wall in the growth of the Nation Network. OilersNation clearly floats the boat for the bills of the rest of the sites but we haven’t seen the same success in other cities. Yet.

If we want to start swinging our tiny internet wang around in the other Canadian markets it is going to take money. Much more money than we could ever lay our greasy hands on through selling ads.

The Edmonton Journal cauteously asked us what we would do with increased revenues. “Buy a rocket launcher and blow Oilers offices to Kingdom Come! Then buy all of the Jordan Eberle hair on Ebay!” came our shouted replies.

After several weeks of talks, they convinced us that dealing with a major media company could come to help our secondary goal of destroying workplace productivity in all six Canadian NHL cities with bigger and better Nations.

 

“Will you tell us what to say and do and force us to write that the Octane is God’s gift to mankind?” we mused aloud at a meeting. ‘In fact quite the opposite’ the Journal Brass replied.

‘We think that what all of you guys have collectively done is a very interesting website. We don’t want to tell you what to say, far from it. Instead we want to help you get further along your plan.’

Would a website that is being told what to do post this "the craziest video on YouTube?"

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Ironically our advertising partnership with the Journal starts tomorrow. Assuming this wasn’t a cruel April fools prank planned months in advance, new advertisers will be appearing on site shortly.

There will be an ‘advertise with us’ link and any interested parties can contact the professionals over at the Journal about getting involved. Nothing changes for the existing advertisers whom we value more than they could ever imagine.

We would like to thank the Edmonton Journal for putting this partnership together. They are clearly so far above us on the food chain it isn’t even funny. The fact they took time out of their day to negotiate with the likes of us speaks to their vision for the future.

Hit it Bieber.