I think that article is great but I would ad that your approach depends on who you are pitching too.
If you're pitching a larger company, you'll need to find out the right person to send pitched too or it gets lost in the abyss, use IAB units for your prices, most companies still don't use 125 squares like so many bloggers so be sure to give them standard sizes and pricing.
I think my biggest tip is what's in it for them. The pitch should always be centered on what the advertiser gets out of working with you. What unique audience do you have, what unique service will you provide that they can't get elsewhere. Maybe even tailor a cool giveaway or put together an idea of how to integrate their product into your site for the duration of a campaign.
Companies see tons of pitches and standing out always helps. Also, if you've been interacting with the company on twitter, starting there is great. This person is often a social media manager or the like and they can give you names of people within the company to email. They may often recommend you if they have had a lot of positive interactions.
When doing your pricing give the company options. People naturally gravitate towards the middle so it's important to have a variety of ad packages available to buy.
On pricing, this really depends on that unique selling point you have. If you are right in the perfect market for a company and your audience are people that usually buy this sort of product, then your ad space is super valuable. Regardless of pagerank (most advertisers love high pagerank!) My suggestion is to set your prices and then pay attention to feedback to adjust them up or down.
Also, if something is priced too low, it gives the advertiser the impression that it's not worth much, so why bother. Pricing is an art for sure but don't undervalue your hard work!
Wow that was long, sorry about that, good luck!
