How am I promoting my site to advertisers? Well, there is a link to the media kit on the bottom of every page. Nearly all pages also have a 728x90 banner on them which advertise our mediakit. I also have an AdWords ad group which goes directly to my mediakit. In addition, when I browse a nice looking site, and I see advertisements on it, I contact the webmaster to inquire about purchasing advertising without there having to be an explicit message "we sell advertising" - it seems sorta obvious
Second question ... After further investigation, I realized that the way that these smaller sites get the big advertisers is because they use Advertising Networks such as FastClick, Burst!Media, and ValueClick. I don't use those, I sell directly. Which seems to therefore answer my question for me