OT: Geting your name out without been a spamer?

[Sims]

Hi,

Assuming someone has a great idea for a website and, given his limited
knowledge in HTML, publishes a website that looks ok.
By ok i mean it is not awful but it is clearly not a professional site.

What is the next step?

1) Assume that the website is so great people will find it?, using search
engines?
2) Re-mortgage the house and pay for advertising?
3) Post on relevant newsgroups with the site as a signature?
4) ...

How would you guys do it?

PS: The site is not a real money maker but it does rely heavily on
interaction with many visitors so re-mortgaging the house would be wasted
money as there would hardly be a return.

Sims

 

[Lauri Raittila]

Hi,

Assuming someone has a great idea for a website and, given his limited
knowledge in HTML, publishes a website that looks ok.
By ok i mean it is not awful but it is clearly not a professional site.

What is the next step?

1) Assume that the website is so great people will find it?, using search
engines?
Yes.

2) Re-mortgage the house and pay for advertising?

Well, much better use 1% of that money to fix the site first. Skip this.

3) Post on relevant newsgroups with the site as a signature?

If you have something to say. I once noticed that it put my site number
one on google with most likely keyword (it was "userstylesheets"). Of
course, there was not that much on web about userstyles then, and others
used word pair "user stylesheets" ;-)

Skip this.

4) ...

Make your site better. BTW, you can use #3, when you ask what to do to it
in alt.html.critique etc.

PS: The site is not a real money maker but it does rely heavily on
interaction with many visitors so re-mortgaging the house would be wasted
money as there would hardly be a return.

How about calling it hobby, and giving everything out free? That makes it
have 1000% more potential big success.

Problem is that big sugges can become so expencive you need to re-
mortgage the house (if you get as popular as google, for example - it was
quite good thing google was invented in university and not on garage - it
would have died very soon for lack of bandwith on garage)

 

[Mark Reed]

define the demographics of your visitors and target them via any method
possible.

Check out google adwords too.

Get as many reciprical links on other sites as possible.

put your website addy on everything in the physical world.


--
------------
Mark M. Reed ([email protected])
FusionMagic - building better designs...pixel by pixel

sign up for your free Fusion newsletter!
http://www.fusionmagic.com/maillist/maillist.php

 

[Foofy (formerly known as Spaghetti)]

What is the next step?

Just some things that I've learned about getting sites noticed (from
observing or trying to get evil clients to implement!).

* A site that is clean and usable is great, but have a bit of eye candy
because humans are superficial and judge alot of things on appearance and
"cool" factor (i.e. sex appeal!).
* Have a gimmick, something cool or silly that people will talk about.
"Oh, have you seen blahblah.com, they have the funniest suchasuch!" Gets
you kudos in the blogosphere too.
* Make it easy for users being dropped into a subpage to see the other
cool thing your site has to offer.
* Make your site feel alive. Sites often feel dead and unmaintained. Post
new stuff on the page at least once every few days, just so users feel
they need to come back to see what else is up.
* Have a community. I don't mean a forum buried in a pile of stuff.
Comments on your content are great, and make sure you let users make
profiles or have their own avatars. It makes them feel they "belong" to
the site, and keeps them coming back. If you have a forum, don't overdo it
with 305 different sections that are already on half a million other
sites. Keep it specific, people come to your site to see or discuss
particular things, not everything and anything.
* RSS and email updates help too, but use sparingly. Don't do the whole
"email newsletter" shebang, and don't bog your feeds down with entire
article contents (else why would they visit your site anyway?)
* If you're not having fun working on a site, nobody will have fun
visiting it. Kinda like if the host of the party is having a miserable
time, everyone else suffers. So don't overshoot, keep it small and
"dedicated" and something you will enjoy doing. When it turns into a
chore, you lose more than you know.

 

[Lauri Raittila]

Just some things that I've learned about getting sites noticed (from
observing or trying to get evil clients to implement!).

* Make your site feel alive. Sites often feel dead and unmaintained. Post
new stuff on the page at least once every few days, just so users feel
they need to come back to see what else is up.

This is good.

* Have a community. I don't mean a forum buried in a pile of stuff.
Comments on your content are great, and make sure you let users make
profiles or have their own avatars. It makes them feel they "belong" to
the site, and keeps them coming back. If you have a forum, don't overdo it
with 305 different sections that are already on half a million other
sites. Keep it specific, people come to your site to see or discuss
particular things, not everything and anything.

But, don't let forum replce content. I have seen far too many sites that
require going trought those ugly forums to find anything. Sometimes
people make up their own sites, where they tell things they learned from
your product from your forum, and they come very popular. Have you made
your reply real content, users would find it on your page...

 

[Augustus]

Hi,

Assuming someone has a great idea for a website and, given his limited
knowledge in HTML, publishes a website that looks ok.
By ok i mean it is not awful but it is clearly not a professional site.

If the site doesn't look professional it might put people off. But
Remember: A site doesn't need razzle dazzle and all the bells and whistles
to be professional... a good clean and easy to use site with good layout and
content can be professional even if it doesn't have any images.

1) Assume that the website is so great people will find it?, using search
engines?

If its something people would search for then you definitly want to optimize
it for search engines. You can get some good help and free evaluations of
your site in the alt.internet.search-engines group... either way, this is
pretty much a free thing so it should be an obvious "to do"

2) Re-mortgage the house and pay for advertising?

Why would you have to mortgage the house?

If you want to advertise on the net then yes there are some really high end
sites or ad programs you can go with... but at the same time you can also
find some mid level sites and pay for banner advertising on them
If you want to do print advertising, thats the same idea: a 1 day quarter
page ad in usa today might cost you $10,000... or you could advertise in a
yellow pages for as low $15 a month... or a business card sized ad in a
community paper might go 4 issues for $50... a 3 line spot in the
classifieds of a major paper might be only $5-15
(as for the yellow pages, community papers and major papers... remember: you
don't have to limit yourself to just the ones in your area)

3) Post on relevant newsgroups with the site as a signature?

Not just newsgroups, but forums on related websites as well... you can
probably find a Yahoo or MSN group for pretty much anything as well as a few
websites with forums and such

Anyhow, on top of that you can:
- Include the URL in all your signatures (usenet, forums and email)
- Include the URL on business cards and give them out. If you go bulk you
can get cards printed up cheap. If its not your main income or line of
business you can always put it on the back of your card with additional info
- Set up an affiliate program if you can spare any profit... pay people if
they refer a sale to you
- Check Google adwords
- Post ads on bulliten boards (most grocery stores, community centers,
cultural centers, churches, libraries, etc have bulliten boards you can post
on)

 

[Mark Parnell]

- Include the URL on business cards and give them out. If you go bulk you
can get cards printed up cheap.

http://www.vistaprint.com/vp/ns/bcfree.aspx

Free (you just have to pay postage) as long as you don't mind their logo
etc on the back.

 

[Inger Helene Falch-Jacobsen]

Hi,

Assuming someone has a great idea for a website and, given his limited
knowledge in HTML, publishes a website that looks ok.
By ok i mean it is not awful but it is clearly not a professional
site.

What is the next step?

1) Assume that the website is so great people will find it?, using
search engines?
2) Re-mortgage the house and pay for advertising?
3) Post on relevant newsgroups with the site as a signature?
4) ...

How would you guys do it?

Writing relevant comments in guestbooks that have a field for homepage URL
is nice...
Optimize the pages for search engines, as in using relevant words and
phrases in the body.
And get more knowledge of HTML and CSS, of course.

 

[Mabden]

Writing relevant comments in guestbooks that have a field for homepage URL
is nice...
Optimize the pages for search engines, as in using relevant words and
phrases in the body.
And get more knowledge of HTML and CSS, of course.

Some search engines only add you if other web sites link to you. I think
Google works this way. So go to other sites that have similar content and
try to get them to link to you (you may have to link back to them) and you
may get noticed better.

<plug>
I found my Shark Statue page http://sharks.sitenook.com/index.asp?Cols=2 got
more notice after it was linked to by this site
http://www.jr.co.il/hotsites/pictures.htm
</plug>

he he he shameless plugs on newsgroups sometimes work too!

 

[Leslie]

Not just newsgroups, but forums on related websites as well... you can
probably find a Yahoo or MSN group for pretty much anything as well as a few
websites with forums and such

- Include the URL on business cards and give them out. If you go bulk you
can get cards printed up cheap. If its not your main income or line of
business you can always put it on the back of your card with additional info

Printing up business cards has proved very beneficial to me. I print
them at home, nothing fancy, and inexpensive to produce. I pass them
out to as many people as possible.

You might also consider printing up some poster type things to display
in local stores, restaurants, convenience stores, etc. Either attach
some biz cards to them, or make those "fringe" things at the bottom
with your URL that people can tear off and take with them.

Both suggestions are very low tech, cost little and can be very
effective.

Good luck!

Leslie

"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."