I've been on the web for around the past eight years. I have had several sites, one that has been around almost as long as I have. That one gets around 1000 hits per month. But it took 8 years to achieve this.
I've just recently opened another, and have racked my brain trying to figure a way to really effectively promote it.
Mailing Lists: most you have to be referred to. On top of that you need a friendly ISP mine will not let you use their SMPT.
Search Engines: easy to get listed, problem no one ever searches for anything outside of MP3's, and Porn.
Posting on like forums: and dropping your url, it doesn't work believe me.
Posting: and dropping your url anywhere does not work.
You cant get your friends to join, there to wrapped up in their own agendas.
Your relatives tend to stop coming around when you ask them.
Even strangers will walk on the other side of the street to avoid being asked.
Bottom Line: just how do you promote a website. 
demonhale posted this at 00:49 — 9th June 2005.
He has: 3,301 posts
Joined: May 2005
Hiya Steve! Thats a problem I think of all webmasters, but if you paid for a host and a domain, you must be able to pay for your sites Ads too, lets try google adsense, pay them and any keyword you put in example like "flower" every instance of that beinf searched, there woul be blue space indicating ads sponsored by google and there you would be at the very top, increasing your chances of being discovered.
Most of the time, paying for a rapid search engine submission as well as resubmission would greatly help, the search giants usually cleans up their databases and re crawl web sites, But dont ever, ever try the multiple site links, links hoarding of some sort, search engines would ban you for this like a pouplar web template site which innocently put their back links on their themes where the users would gladly put up with, they got popular and google thought they are links hoarding, they got banned...
What else???
Visit my New Blog Gee, Please... | Designer Graphics 9
steve40 posted this at 01:31 — 9th June 2005.
He has: 495 posts
Joined: May 2005
I have a little small problem with google. Their programmers cannot, or do not care, but they don`t write valid code. Now you know if you have gone to the trouble to get a site to validate, you don't want to stick some non valid code on it. I used to think it did not matter, after all it's in the add. Unfortunately robot spiders don't know the difference in your page or an add.
demonhale posted this at 02:26 — 9th June 2005.
He has: 3,301 posts
Joined: May 2005
Thats why you pay so that their programmers will care...
Dirty_Dawg posted this at 13:11 — 9th June 2005.
He has: 64 posts
Joined: Aug 2004
Steve40,
First of all you have a nice site, and very nice photos.
I would suggest to promote your site you get listed with "art" directories rather than try to draw traffic to your site as a stand alone. A small example buytexas.com features a few "Texas" Artists and their work.
Do a search in your State and area for sites, like the one I mentioned, and ask them to review your site.. more likely than not they will appreciate your work and give you a good listing.
The web is going in a direction of more "localized" searches, and yours fits well.
Also are you listed in the "yellow pages", this is another area that is growing strong. If you do not have a business listing in your area you can create one, and include a link to your website, and email contact.. "free"
Only an opinion, but I think you would be pleased with the results it can not hurt.
Lastly "word of mouth" self directed traffic is good. My site is considered small, but it gets an average of over 12,000 "unique" visitors per day.
I hope my comments help, and I wish you the best of success.
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steve40 posted this at 16:12 — 9th June 2005.
He has: 495 posts
Joined: May 2005
Thanks for the comment, and info. Most of the photos are old stuff, I used just to get the albums working. I lost a lot of good un-backed up work in a recent hard drive crash.
I already have a listing in the West Carolina art directory. All the yellow pages seem to be geared toward buisness though. I agree you have to appeal to a specific group or be related to one, the days of independent web sites doing very well are gone.
There are probably over a million photo related web sites, that means if you get one hit on the open market you have done well.
techniner posted this at 00:01 — 14th June 2005.
They have: 26 posts
Joined: May 2005
Steve,
Be very careful how you spend your advertising dollar as it can consume your wallet FAST.
Conentrate on qaulity and not quantity.
Increase your traffic
Mrlinux posted this at 21:07 — 1st July 2005.
They have: 11 posts
Joined: Feb 2005
That's true what techniner said, Not quantity but Quality.
Apply in your site some tips for SEO
hotcardbox posted this at 11:04 — 2nd July 2005.
They have: 1 posts
Joined: Jul 2005
Try google ppc, overture or goclick. Create a huge list of key words based on your content. Keep your CPC as low as possible. With the large list of key words, you should be getting a good amount of traffic.
DirectWebTools - Webmaster Tools and ResourcesGargen posted this at 03:12 — 7th July 2005.
They have: 18 posts
Joined: Jul 2005
steve the best way to get listed on google is to first set a keyword that you would like to apear under on my site i choose C++ game programming use this to choose somehting specific http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
next optimize your site using this keyword/phrase, by this i mean use it a couple time on each of your pages
once you have done this go one ebay and search "link" in business/industial and for about 25 buck you can get somthing like this "PR5 HOMEPAGE AND 9,200+ PR4+ PR3 SUBPAGES TEXT LINK" which will get you a little traffic and will also get you on google and get a you a page rank around 4/5 (never actually submit to search engines this can only hurt you let them find you) put google adsense on your page so you can make a few bucks to pay for the site cause 8 years to get 1000 unique visitors a month sucks big time i just put my new site up a week and a half ago and i get about 50-100 a day and thats unique IP's not including myself
your site is pretty nice but you havent decided to go big time yet and like a said just go on ebay it will only cosr you $20-$30 and you only need it for one month also submit your site to dmoz and make sure you setup your information with alexa.com
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