Tips on promoting sites?

[Embermage]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for promoting sites. I've tried search engines, signatures, etc. and all to no avail. I know it's hard to promote sites that consist mostly of forums, but there must be a successful way. Any advice?

Thanks!

[googolplex]

This is a hard thing to do, I know I've tried many times. I had luck with some friends on a site called Bizcents (dont look at it now its way out of date because we are switching servers). It is a site about business for youth. We had a fair bit of press in 3 sources - We were the second biggest story in one issue of Canadian Business Magazine (big here in canada), we were on CBC radio, and in this toronto business newspaper that really sucks (they got our names wrong ). This was in the middle of the dotcom craze, but I think the same techniques still apply.

Contact people in the press. We contacted tons of people telling them about our site, most people probably deleted the emails, but Canadian Business didn't. That was the breaking point. A big picture of the four of us was on the first page of the magazine. The media looks at what everyone else is writing about. CBC and the Toronto business times saw the canadian business article and they contacted us. I'm currently working on two new sites and these may prove to be more difficult to advertise.

Just remember. Be proactive!

[fryke]

If you want to know more about promoting websites (and understand some German) go to http://story.ch where I write several columns.

You'll notice that http://story.ch also has a very nice design. It's a platform for several writers who present their work there.

[bighairydog]

Also, you can't underestimate the effect of a good name - the kind of name that people will guess without having seen the website advertised.

Take this site for example - how many of us do you think stumbled across it by wondering what was at macosx.com?

If you have a base of people who genuinely want to partake in a forum for discussing a particular topic, then they will seek you out, and you just have to make it easy for them to find you. If you don't have that people base, then the site will probably fail however much effort you put into advertising.

Bernie :o)