Need visitors for my new site

You're looking at kind of a catch-22 here. In other words, it's hard to get people to join the site without many pictures already up there, but it's hard to get pictures up there without people joining the site.

My advice: Email your friends again, and offer some sort of incentive. Even if you just do a drawing for a gift certificate to somewhere, it's a lot more likely to get people to sign up than nothing is. I didn't sign up just now when I visited, but if you were doing some sort of giveaway like that, I probably would have.

Just an idea.

The concept is nice but you need some more people in there. Ask your friends to join and upload their pictures. Tim's idea of offering some sort of incentive might just do the trick for you. You can also start a contest where a person whose picture gets the most no. of good ratings get a reward.

Thanks very much for the good input! I've been away due to tied up and busy with other projects. Well, I guess probably I have to offer free IPod If i wanna get 1000 to join, then I have to offer 1000 IPods ?.. that will cost me a lot from my pocket , well anyone here can have suggestion what I should offer to get people to join ?

Does anyone here have any idea how MySpace, FriendSter started out? I remember for friendster, I received an invitation from friends and they already had more than thousands over users at that time

Besides, what r the recommended companies that do pay per action adverts out there and how effective they are?

Thankx very much

No, definitely don't offer one iPod per member. If you use iPods, just buy one, and every member is entered for a chance to win that one iPod.

Wow! if you offer a free iPod to every member for the first thousand, that would get a traffic swarm to your site, plus it would cost a lot from your pocket. Starting a contest where a few lucky winners get an iPod would be a good idea.

My experience with friends, is they all get hard to find when you open a new web-site.

Mention you won lotto first and things would be different

Hi all;

Thankx very much for all the comments Well, I plan to have a little contest for this site in May/June, which I'd give out 5 top prizes, which the 1st prize could be an IPod , the rest would be the following items

1)
-Video Ipod

2)
- Canon PowerShot A410 digital camera

3) - ALTEC LANSING ATP-3 MM SPEAKER

4) - Kingston Data Traveller 512MB

5) - USB PC Camera

I only have a budget around USD700.00, I guess those that I can offer, while at the mean time I'm working to reengineer the site to go web2.0
, AJAX based, which I likely to complete by May ..... that's the initial plan

Now just make sure you promote the heck out of the contest. Of course, make sure in any forum you post it in that you're complying with the rules. If you don't, you'll get the wrong reaction, and people will start to dislike your site, regardless of the actual content.

Hi all;

I'm not to promote my site here I just laid out the above prizes, some brainstorming, well, this is a personal site, as only run by me, share and have fun with friends Anyway thanks very much for all the input, just to apologize if I have gone too far have fun ......

Oh, you haven't gone too far. I wasn't trying to imply that at all. The thread here is fine, no problems.

Just giving you friendly advice about posting in other forums.

Hi all;

Once again thanks for your input. I was away again ... umm currently busy with setting up an ajax-based search engine , askalexia.com .... still in its very beta version, only web and image searches are available .... more search features such as news,video will be added in a week time .... since it's a BETA, search result shows only 1st page, will be rectified soon . Gentlemen, have a feel on askalexia.com

askalexia.com VS live.com

I like your site, I personally have never run a site quite like it and I'm not really sure how the industry works or where most of your traffic would normally come from an industry like picture rating. Either way I had a look at your site and it looks like it has a reasonable amount of SEO, but I thought I'd suggest you read a guide I wrote awhile back about general web site promotion:

Web Site Promotion

Good Luck.

ketyung wrote: Dear all;

I have just setup a picture rating site 2 days ago,
ratea2z.com . The purpose of this site is to gather some of my lost-in-touch friends and also getting to know more friends. Thanks to the script of destiney, which let me have a very quick setup of the site for just few hours.

I've emailed out the site to some friends of mine. Besides, I wish to get more friends to join here, as it's fun, you can upload your picture there and get rated and rate others, well and make more friends or find a match for your future life partner or business partner.

Besides, I seek for advice from all the experts here on how to promote or get visitors for such a picture-rating website ?

Finally, all of you here are welcome very much to join and give me your comments

Thanks very much in advance

I have been in a similar situation before & what I suggest is -
-Get your friends and relatives and people who know you to participate
-Host competitions at regular intervals
- Give the visitors a reason to join
- Keep your visitors updated about the website by sending them periodical updates about your website
These tips can help for sure

Like one of the other members said, try your best to get the word out there.

I have ran contests and failed as I always forget to get the word out

Or, you can get a few flash games on there. Most of the internet people love challenging others in games, even flash games. Just give someone recognition on the front page when they are the 1337 pwner with their medal talley. Make it gold, silver, and bronze. and let everyone comment on each game they play so you can keep the communication up and not let things get too boring.

Try set that up so people will be on there a while at least. Try get the site name drummed into their heads so they dont ever forget it. And make sure to always put new things on there, nearly everyday, or second day. Otheriwse, even the games arent going to save you.

Try and link to some major forums, tutorial sites, photoshop and graphix sites, then get them to exchange.

Have you tried using Google Adwords? It give great results (assuming you have the budget for it). You can even hire a professional to design and optimize your campaign for you.

Hi everyone;

Thanks all for the valued comments, btw I have 1 question here, has anyone here ever used the service of http://www.qualitytrafficsupply.com/ ? Are they scam or they really provide real traffic. This site was added to the topsites service, http://topsites.thepixelweb.com operated by myself, it seems like the site is getting 100 over unique visitors a day ? Sounds q real ? I'm thinking of buying traffic from them if they r real, but I'm just afraid that they could be another scam ??????