Advice on promoting my website

[Walter]

Hiya,

I've been considering different ways to promote my site, and need help
brainstorming. So far, I've been using fairly traditional methods:

1) registering the site with search engines
2) engaging in link-exchanges
3) posting adverts when appropriate
4) adding the URL to my mail signature
5) pestering friends and family to use and promote the site, and
6) posting the URL in dubious usenet questions like "Advice on
promoting my website"

The main problem I see with promoting it is that it is a service
targeted at people who probably don't know they need it, or that
something like it even exists (it's a URL shortening service). Thus,
getting good positioning on search engines doesn't help much.

Would it be worthwhile paying for ads, say via Google AdSense? Or are
there other avenues I'm missing? How patient should I be? Four weeks
in, and visits to the site are tepid, at best.

Anyway, thanks in advance for your input,

Walter
______________________________________________________
http://linkfrog.net
URL Shortening
Free and easy, small and green.
Walter

 

[Antigravity]

You can always try mailings, make sure that they are not spam.
Affiliation to another company.
Newsletters.
Traditional advertising in mags or newspapers.
One that i like the thought of but am still thinking of an idea is some
publicity stunt. You could always hang yourself upside down from the
local town hall and invite the local media. Make sure you are wearing
something with your site URL ;-)

 

[Travis Newbury]

You can always try mailings, make sure that they are not spam.

Wouldn't any unsolicited email you sent out promoting your website have
the appearance of spam?

 

[dsa2kja0f9laj]

What if they were *nice* e-mails? Say, with lots of smiley faces?

Walter Gildersleeve
Freiburg, Germany

______________________________________________________
http://linkfrog.net
URL Shortening
Free and easy, small and green.

 

[Matt Probert]

The main problem I see with promoting it is that it is a service
targeted at people who probably don't know they need it, or that
something like it even exists (it's a URL shortening service). Thus,
getting good positioning on search engines doesn't help much.

May I be brutal?

URL shortening is as much use to me as an ash try mounted upon a
motorbike. I see no purpose for such a site, a complete waste of time
and effort.

Sometimes in business we have bad ideas, ask Sir Clive Sinclair about
his electric bicycle, and just have to shrug our shoulders and move
on.

Matt

 

[Matt Probert]

Wouldn't any unsolicited email you sent out promoting your website have
the appearance of spam?

Not if you use physical mail and attach them to tins of sardines.
Though true the recipients would still find them a bit fishy....

Matt

 

[Walter]

May I be brutal?

No.

URL shortening is as much use to me as an ash try mounted upon a
motorbike. I see no purpose for such a site, a complete waste of time
and effort.

Okay, since you're going to be brutal anyway...

I've certainly seriously considered what you're saying, and in the end,
the site may prove a flop. But a quick quote may help here:

Making long URLs useable! ... Over 220 million hits/month.

From http://tinyurl.com, the best and one of the first URL shortening

services. If I could cash in on a bit of this--say, 1mil hits + 10,000
actual page views per month, I would be a happy camper.

As for purpose, do you belong to any mailing groups? I'm a member of a
few Yahoo groups, which still eclusively send text-based mails. Links
that're too long break.

So thanks for your 2 bits, it was tough love, I know. But I think I'll
continue promoting the site nonetheless.

Walter
______________________________________________________
http://linkfrog.net
URL Shortening
Free and easy, small and green.

 

[William Tasso]

Writing in news:alt.www.webmaster,alt.html
From the safety of the http://groups.google.com cafeteria

Hiya,

How do yuo do?

I've been considering different ways to promote my site, and need help
brainstorming...

don't forget the "no-news is news" angle.

Solid Performance for Firefox Download Site:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/11/30/solid_performance_for_firefox_download_site.html

No news there - but still a news item "suddenly today, nothing happened"

 

[Antigravity]

Well the keyword is unsolicited. You really want to avoid getting in a
wrangle with one of the self appointed Spam Cops as it can be a
nightmare (or at least it was a couple of years ago). However, you can
buy mailing lists pretty cheaply these days and as long as the targets
are relevant and have legitimately signed up for the mailings you
should be ok. Another option is to place an add on a popular newsletter
in a relavant field.

 

[Martin Harran]

The main problem I see with promoting it is that it is a service
targeted at people who probably don't know they need it, or that
something like it even exists (it's a URL shortening service).

What are you going to offer that these don't?

www.tinyurl.com
www.notlong.com
www.snipur1.com
www.metamark.net
www.shorl.com
www.makeashorterlink.com

 

[Auggie]

Hiya,

I've been considering different ways to promote my site, and need help
brainstorming. So far, I've been using fairly traditional methods:

1) registering the site with search engines
2) engaging in link-exchanges
3) posting adverts when appropriate
4) adding the URL to my mail signature
5) pestering friends and family to use and promote the site, and
6) posting the URL in dubious usenet questions like "Advice on
promoting my website"

The main problem I see with promoting it is that it is a service
targeted at people who probably don't know they need it, or that
something like it even exists (it's a URL shortening service). Thus,
getting good positioning on search engines doesn't help much.

Would it be worthwhile paying for ads, say via Google AdSense? Or are
there other avenues I'm missing? How patient should I be? Four weeks
in, and visits to the site are tepid, at best.

First off... A month in is a pretty limited time frame. Definitly going to
need abit more time for word to spread and search engines to index and place
your site.

For the service you are offering this is probably going to be one of those
things where the best marketing of the service will be through its actual
use by the end users.

In thinking about the other services out there... TinyURL, MakeAShorterLink,
etc... I've seen them and I've used them, but I've never Googled for such a
service and I've never seen an ad marketing such a service.

I think if I was trying to push and promote a service like this what I might
do is subscribe to a bunch of usenet groups where there is alot of
discussion and links being exchanged and then look for posts like:

"
Hey, here is the link to that information you wanted:
http://www.google.com/search?source...:2005-28,GGLG:en&q=how+to+make+a+shorter+link
"

and then maybe follow up with them using your service with something like:
"

Hey, here is the link to that information you wanted:

http://www.google.com/search?source...:2005-28,GGLG:en&q=how+to+make+a+shorter+link

If you couldn't get the above link to work, try:
http://linkfrog.net/daax
"

The big thing here is that you want to have your posts be actually helpful,
not just an excuse to get your link out there and you probably shouldn't be
following it up with a .sig thats pushing the URL as well.


A Note:
To do the above example I used your site to shorten the google search to the
http://linkfrog.net/daax

A problem I found was that after I got the shortened link above, I wanted to
copy and paste it into this usenet posting and because of how your page is
setup I couldn't. I could CLICK on the link, but I couldn't just highlight
the text and then right click the mouse to COPY it.

So in order to put the above example in, I had to paste the URL into your
text box... create the link... then I had to actually type out the whole:
http://linkfrog.net/ and then enter the code "daax" myself.

For that I would say look at how MakeAShorterLink.com does it... it creates
a link but you can still highlight it. Because you put the link in a box (I
didn't check if it was a DIV or a table cell or what) I can't get the mouse
in there, or if I do it copies the entire contents of the page from the link
to the bottom of the page.


A Second Note:
For a service like this, or for a service where you want people to try and
remember the name on their own or spready through word of mouth and usage,
you should seriously consider getting a .com domain name.

Even myself, after reading your signature and wanting to use your service in
the above example, I remembered already that your service name was
"linkfrog" and when I went to IE I keyed in "linkfrog.com" and when I got a
dead link I had to come back and check your email to see that you had a .net
domain name.

You probably want something short, but even looking at
www.makeashorterlink.com that isn't very short and its not just one or two
words (its 4 words long), but it is easy to remember and its a .com

 

[Walter]

Hey Auggie,

Thanks for the great feedback. I hadn't really thought about
highlighting the new link--figured people could simply right-click and
copy it. And I've the problem that I develop using Firefox, which
handles that sort of thing better. Not that I don't test with IE, but
obviously not enough. I'll have to see how I can best do it so that
both are possible.

Unfortunately, linkfrog.com was already taken. The fact of the matter
is, I got the URL first and thought of the idea later. Kinda liked the
connection between leap-frog --> linkfrog and linking. It may be
worthwhile finding a more appropriate URL, though.

Anyway, thanks again for the response.

Walter

______________________________________________________
http://linkfrog.net
URL Shortening
Free and easy, small and green.

 

[rf]

Well the keyword is unsolicited. You really want to avoid getting in a
wrangle with one of the self appointed Spam Cops as it can be a
nightmare (or at least it was a couple of years ago). However, you can
buy mailing lists pretty cheaply these days and as long as the targets
are relevant and have legitimately signed up for the mailings you
should be ok.

In Australia that would be totally illegal. One cannot *buy* mailing lists
here.

 

[Toby Inkster]

From http://tinyurl.com, the best and one of the first URL shortening
services.

fly.to has been around for about eight years; tinyurl.com roughly three.
TinyURL.com was different from its predecessors though, in that it was
targetted at *visitors* rather than authors.

fly.to (and various other domains owned by the same company, which got
bought up by V3, which got bought up by FortuneCity) allowed website
authors to create a more memorable (and usually shorter) permanent URL for
their site, back when most people were using ISP space, Geocities,
Angelfire and the like.

http://fly.to/me -> http://users.myisp.com/~me/pages/

tinyurl.com creates some very short URLs, but they're not necessarily any
more memorable:

http://tinyurl.com/5nd7w -> http://www.jrhartley.com/books/flyfishing/

Such URLs are not usually used by the website author, but by website
visitors to send long URLs by e-mail, or to cloak the real address behind
a link.

Your site combines the best of both. Use that as your selling point.

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, Antigravity quothed:

You can always try mailings, make sure that they are not spam.
Affiliation to another company.
Newsletters.
Traditional advertising in mags or newspapers.
One that i like the thought of but am still thinking of an idea is some
publicity stunt. You could always hang yourself upside down from the
local town hall and invite the local media. Make sure you are wearing
something with your site URL ;-)

Uh, that would be less-than impressive for an antigravitic person.

 

[Carol W]

Hey Auggie,

Thanks for the great feedback. I hadn't really thought about
highlighting the new link--figured people could simply right-click and
copy it. And I've the problem that I develop using Firefox, which
handles that sort of thing better. Not that I don't test with IE, but
obviously not enough. I'll have to see how I can best do it so that
both are possible.

Unfortunately, linkfrog.com was already taken. The fact of the matter
is, I got the URL first and thought of the idea later. Kinda liked the
connection between leap-frog --> linkfrog and linking. It may be
worthwhile finding a more appropriate URL, though.

May consider places that will register the .com version for you
if/when it comes available. Then you could point the .com variant ot
the .net (already promoted) site.


Carol