Friday, September 29, 2006

Interesting feature to add to your site

ClustrMaps

"See at a glance where your site's visitors are located: instantaneously, even when the numbers are enormous! Visitors don't need to click on anything: just viewing your page is sufficient."

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Creating a million dollar idea

I received this note the other day:
    i read thru the Robot Nation series back in 2003 and found it very compelling. you elaborate on themes that Asimov touched on in the robot series. anyway, i am quite fond of your work and was recently inspired to launch my own $1,000,000 idea. the concept is pretty simple.

    www.dailyvitamint.com

    please check out my site. i'd welcome your feedback.
I did check it out, and I really like it. It is visually appealing, it is easy to figure out what the site is about, and the name is clever.

Will it work? There is no way to know -- the only way to know if something will resonate is to build a site and see if it resonates.

What do you think? Look at it, and see what you like and dislike about it. Does it give you ideas for your own site?

If nothing else, it shows that a person can get an idea and carry it to fruition. It's a very nice, very credible attempt at creating a resonant web site.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Getting links to your site

One question that frequently comes up, especially for people who are creating their very first web site, is this: "how do I get links to my new site"? If you have already created a couple of your own sites, and if you have friends with their own sites, this problem is easier to solve -- you and your friends can all link to the new site immediately.

Once you have done that, your next step is to try related forums and submission sites. Places like Fark.com, Digg.com, Slashdot.com, Reddit.com, etc. let people submit links. Then either an editor or the audience decides whether the link is interesting or not. If your site is interesting, it gets a lot of exposure.

There are thousands of smaller forums as well. Many of them will allow you to register and then submit links. Joining a forum to submit your one link (and then leaving, never to be heard from again) is called "spamming the forum". Spamming is frowned upon, for obvious reasons. Besides, that approach will not accomplish anything because either: a) people will ignore your post, or b) a moderator will delete your post.

Your goal should be to:
  1. Find forums that are closely related to the topic of your new site,
  2. then join these forums,
  3. then participate for awhile both to understand the forum and to let people know who you are, and
  4. then submit a link to your site so that you can get meaningful feedback from forum mmbers.
That is an excellent way both to tell people about your new site and to get ideas for improving it.

Another possibility that is now available is Wikis. Wikipedia.com is the best example of this genre, but there are thousands of Wikis out there on every imaginable topic. You can find related articles in Wikis and, if they allow it, add links to your site. A big site like Wikipedia can often be quite selective in the links that are allowed in articles. Again, it can be helpful to join the wiki, participate for awhile and then add your link.

One wiki that you might consider trying is called:If your site can be considered to be in some way "helpful" to people, you can create an article and add your link there. Helpation.com is not a huge wiki, but it is easy to add articles and the site has good Pagerank on Google. It will not hurt to add your link there.