Advertising A Site

[Jperson]

Hi, I was just wandering, I've got two sites, I want to advertise, one for young writers and one for out tinite production company, any of you wise dudes out there know how to do this succesfully (and for very VERY little prices, or none at all). Thanks.

[OutcastJiob]

Word of mouth. Tell friends who would be interested in the site about it, and ask them to tell other friends. Find message boards that are relevant to the sites and join them--mention your site in passing on those boards (but don't join and spam advertisements for your sites!). Post announcements on your blog, if people read it (lol). Prepare banners for people to use as their signatures on message boards, and make those banners available on your site. Tag your sites on del.icio.us and StumbleUpon . If applicable, submit the sites to digg--but be careful about how you do it or it will be reported as spam.

Contact people important in the field your site is relevant to, or at least, the people who are important on the internet--writers that have blogs read by many people, for example, that's who you should contact about your young writer's site. If they like the site, it's quite possible that they'll drop a link to it in a blog post. But don't ask them flat-out, hey, can you link to my site in a blog entry--they'll write you off as a spammer in all probability. Just ask them to, if they have the time, take a look at your site.

There's a few suggestions, and the best part is they're all free!

[Jperson]

Why thanks!! I've contacted Michael Morprurgo (big big writer in UK - childrens) and local schools. Bu thanks for the advice, and could I have links to some of those sites, please? Word of mouth is hard, my friends always forget, message boards, myspace I was going to look at aswell. Banners - yes that's an idea, I'll start a topic in Social and CHatting on this site to start with, asking people to check it out and I'll make some banners / bookmarks and accesories for them to use and link from. Plus I'll put them on my site - OnstoryLine and tinite. I haven't heard of the delicious thing with many a '.' and I haven't heard of StumbleUpon, but that is me being naive and many other things...

Thanks, I was also going to put bookmarks in the local libraries (They said they would take them) and possibly leaflet the local area, walk around with a bunch of leaflets and deliver them. Hopefully all will work.

And again thanks that was usefull...

[OutcastJiob]

My bad, I should have defined. Del.icio.us is social bookmarking -- you bookmark a site, other people can find it through the site, etc. Here's the URL. http://del.icio.us/ . StumbleUpon is basically another form of social bookmarking: http://www.stumbleupon.com/.

I'm actually in the process of looking for good, online writing communities myself, so I'm afraid I can't help you much there. They're out there, I know that much, so if you look, you'll find 'em. http://www.fictionpress.com is as good a place as any to start.

Leafleting and bookmarks are a great idea, as is using MySpace.

As long as you don't expect the sites to get huge overnight, you should be fine with what you're doing now.

EDIT: Oh! Check out LiveJournal as well. Yes, I know it's got the reputation of being for all the emo kids, but a lot of writers hang out there as well. http://www.livejournal.com

[Jperson]

Thanks again, do you like the banners?

Hod do you put links in them though?