What do you guys do to get your sites noticed?

[Anthony]

...short of all-out spamming. I tried on a few relevant message boards, etc...no dice. Any tips?

It's starting to get a little frustrating, although in between learning php and mysql (thanks to those who replkied in the other forum btw, its getting there!) i've been getting some unique hits. Albeit I only started a week and a half ago...still, I don't think I have much patience

[Jonathan]

Well, personally I happened to have a good domain name.
The title of the game, add a .COM seems to do wonders

Well, til the publisher buys it from you.
Anyways, what about any sort of advertisment program?

If its related to linux, try LinuxISO.org
$20 for a good few impressions

[Frank Hagan]

One thing to think about is search engine placement. You can pay for it, or try to include enough content on your site that Google will include it in their search results.

Depends on the type of site, but I have a couple that rate very high on Google's search results because I have a lot of valuable content.

[www]

Link placement is also important. This means how many links are pointing to your site and how many links from your site to related websites. I read someplace on the Google website that Google does not like black holes or closets that don’t go anywhere (the wording may have been different).

[Pedja]

Patience is important. Site does not get promoted overnight.

First, take care of keywords and other site promotion important isues you have to do on your site. Chek Google's isntructions for webmasters.

Sumit your url to DMoz.org, yahoo, MSN and few other search engines, check for related sites and ask them for link exchange.

Posting to forums is also ok if you do not spam.

Try to get to news on some sites.

If you are willing to pay, checkout Google AdWords. I think that is very valuable service. It let's you pay how much you want.

After that you have to sit and wait for some time, possibly month or two, to see results.

[Anthony]

Thanks for all the tips guys.

I guess I'm going to have to learn to expand my patience to a few months' time

[rcohen]

DigiChum

Three + Years ago I had the same question... while trying to promote my photo restoration service. I could not afford traditional means of advertising (at least not for effective options) so I decided to experiment. I coded a simple application that was nothing more than a collection of URL's for Genealogists (since those were my marketing targets). http://www.town-local.net/genfinder/index.html

This almost stupid simple exe downloaded more than 50,000 copies and more than quadrupled my traffic in it's first six months and continues to download daily almost four years later. It has been written about in dozens of mags around the world and included in a great many ROM compilations. The point is... it was just a collection of links, and here it is generating traffic for my web site going on four years later.

Freeware can be effectively used just like the premium give-away products (pens, cups, refridgerator magnets, etc) that businesses give away. Just make the freeware specific to your market and spend some time populating the freeware / shareware archives. And the cool part is, once your finished coding and promoting it, your users take the job from you and pass it along to THEIR friends ;-) Just be sure your link back to your site stays "in their face"....

Cheers

rcohen

[Jonathan]

Wow; never thought about that... interesting.
One could always do simular with PHP, MySQL, etc.

[rcohen]

While you COULD do this on line with a standard links setup, that won't get you listed in the software archives nor will it give users the ability to GIVE away your work (and digichum) to others. Somehow, packaging all of that up into an EXE is where the magic hides...

rcohen

[Jonathan]

While you COULD do this on line with a standard links setup, that won't get you listed in the software archives nor will it give users the ability to GIVE away your work (and digichum) to others. Somehow, packaging all of that up into an EXE is where the magic hides...

rcohen

So I distro it in a auto-unzipping EXE file?