The Problems with Promoting non-profit web sites...

[Arcana]

As you all know, I plug a web site in my signature. Oh my, I did it again!

Maybe eight or nine years ago, the face of the web was dramatically different. There weren't any internet forums like this. There were many, many tiny web sites across the world. Little fan pages, set up by teenagers who got a quick guide to HTML. People used Usenet (newsgroups) a lot, even people who were 12. IRC was big then too. File transfers were negligible - in fact, MP3 was barely a blip on the radar screen.

If you started a site back then, the best way to promote it was to contact as many webmasters as you could and get your site listed on their links page. Since there were so many sites, you could getyour link spread around pretty quickly. Of course, it required manual intervention, but that was okay. You could also submit your site to search engines - Yahoo! and Altavista were the known sites at that time.

Fast forward three years. Forums were becoming commonplace, and sites were beginning to consolidate. You began seeing sites with two-and-three column formats, and now, sites with tons of animated gifs were considered done by dishonest hackers who didn't know anything about professional presentation. Sites in fandom were beginning to merge into large single sites - gaming sites also took away much of the fire of the little independent writers. There were a few fan-run big sites, though. You could post in forums and talk about a new site you wanted to promote. IN fact, a lot of people liked this and often visited the site to see what new things you might have brought to the table.

Jump to today. Every forum now has a "no advertising clause" on it. Even large fandoms only have a few "big-name" web sites - the little guy's web site barely exists anymore. Instead of that, people are now posting blogs. Link exchange has died off, and people don't bother adding people to their links anymore. Sites are now indexed automatically, so you can post a site on the Internet and two days, it'll show up on Google if you type a bunch of obscure search terms. If you post advertisements for your new web site on a forum, you get flamed, the topic gets locked and deleted, and your username gets banned.

The independent web publisher, nowadays, has a heck of a difficult time getting their link spread. If I have a site with an agenda, it takes TV media and a Slashdot article to get it looked at. You have to have something remarkably special to get people to look. Your backend is a content management system - pages where you actually have to edit HTML files are totally old-hat.

How am I, as an independent web publisher, supposed to advertise their web site?

I run a non-profit web site for a nonexistent organization that I don't make any money on and I'm finding that it's extremely difficult to tell people about my web site. No forums allow you to make forum posts saying, "I made a web site about ____. Check it out!" They tell you to put it into your signature instead, where you hope that someone ends up checking it out. Links exchange is difficult because every site is huge and run by a big staff, and/or don't have "room" for you in their layout. Everyone's web site is a blog and so you maybe can attract ten people if you can get your site posted in someone's new blog.

Posting in forums, if they would permit it, attracts more hits per hour than you can do if you post a lot in a forum with a signature. I posted a link on a site's Unmoderated Forum, and in a few hours had six or seven hits. In another site's "Advertising Thread", I got 6 hits in a few days. I posted in a Livejournal community, and that has the largest single source of hits now. This is unlike signature hits, where I can get, if I'm lucky, two or three hits in a day, provided I post maybe 4 or 5 or more times a day. In most of these places, you'll post your site link, and then people will *thank* you for posting it saying, "This is a cool site, it's exactly what I was looking for."

So, how is a small guy who's too cheap to pay for a domain name supposed to advertise a web site? Maybe they have a site loaned from a friend, or got space from Geocities. They want to make a gaming site about their favourite game and meet fans. How do they end up promoting such a thing if no where he goes tolerates advertisements?


This is a combination of a rant and a request for advice. :) Thanks~!
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Aurelien]

[Sophita]

I have to admit, I don't own a website and the closest thing to it I do have is an lj, so I'm completely talking in the hypothetical; these are things I believe is a reader.

I think the key to getting your website passed around is participation in that fandom's community. No one is going to go to (for example) a Suikoden site if they don't know who you are; if you're no one in the community, it stands that no one in the community will be interested in your site. So start posting on the big name forums, get a livejournal and join communities, make friends, and eventually ask some of the bigger name sites if they'd participate in a link swap with you. A lot of webmasters are nice and really don't mind the attention. Don't tread on very many toes in the fandom unless you want a lot of quick hits...but only from fandom wankers.

I find that the brief ad in the sig is really effective, but it has to be specific. For example, I love your signature because it gives me a nice teaser about your website: I know that I'll be going somewhere Suikoden related, with an e-mail based RPG. I'm interested in RPGs, so I go ahead and click it. "Visit my website!" doesn't do much for me, because I don't know what it's about. And the less spelled properly an ad is (eg "ViSiT My KoOl SiGhT"), the less likely I am to click on it. I have better things to do with my time than try to translate someone's poor english.

And an ad topic in a forum is a good idea, if the forum allows it.

I disagree with Bugg that a domain name is all that matters. I've seen plenty of geocities/angelfire/etc sites that were more than helpful. I don't think the name is that important in fan sites, because, well, I certainly wouldn't pay more if I were going to run a fan site. I think the real place where it is telling if you use a domain name or not is on a business site - if you're going to try to sell me something, I'd like to see that you have more invested in your business than a geocities page and a yahoo account.

I would say that the things that are critical to keeping an audience are:

1 - Regular Updates - People like to see that a website has been updated, and preferably is updated recently. If I see a site that says it was last updated June 02, then I'll visit it and look for info, but I'll likely not come back, because I've seen everthing I want to see. Always make sure the updates are visible, and with a date attached - because seeing that there's been 3 updates, but without a date attached, really doesn't tell me anything.

Make sure you have content before your advertise - I know it's tempting to advertise the moment you get your site up, but I advise to wait until you have some actual content. Previews mean relatively nothing (though they're always nice to have). If I see a site that says "there's nothing here but there will be" well, I might bookmark it, but I might not check back - if there's nothing that keeps the sight in mind, why would I?

A clean design - I refuse to read any site that thinks a black backround with charcoal grey text is a good thing. Contrast is your friend.

A clear purpose - What is the site about? Is it all about Suikoden - and what exactly about Suikoden? If it's a Flik site, then you shouldn't have more information on Neclord than you do on Flik. If it's a fanart site, then have at least a little bit of fanart up. Know your purpose and stick with it.
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[Elc]

I think the toughest part about advertising in signatures on this board is it only shows up once per page, so if someone clicked the "View posts since last visit" link and came across one of your posts which was maybe the second or third post on the page, they wouldn't see your signature and your site wouldn't come to mind. But, that's just the way these boards are run.

However, you've got a good chance of attracting visitors here, since the theme is similar to that of the board, unlike something advertising a "Spongebob Squarepants" site with a bit of "That 70's Show" on the side. (No, I don't watch "Spongebob Squarepants" though I do catch "That 70's Show" from time to time :wink:)It's been a while since I had a real site of my own, ever since the downfall of the free web hosting at Spaceports, but the writing was on the wall once they had to severely slash the daily and monthly bandwidth allotment for non-subscription users. If I may go off in another direction for a moment, I should say that their service is actually pretty good, which is why it's a shame they had to discontinue their free service. Their only real condition was the language of the site had to be primarily English, and the only problem I found with the service was if you went over your daily bandwidth allotment, you had to email them the next day to reactivate your account. It wasn't automatic.

I can understand why advertising isn't permitted here, as it could become difficult to find Suikoden-related topics if suddenly a plethora of site ad topics appeared, but if the admins are receptive to the idea, a forum for advertising sites (and subsequent feedback) could be created which would serve to get the word out on smaller sites, as well as keep the discussion forums organized. Unfortunately, I have doubts that it would happen, since there seem to be quite a few people who don't take the time to read the rules and just jump in to start posting right away. The thing with Suikoden IV related discussion is a prime example, when it shows up in any forum except the Suikoden IV forum, which is very clearly marked on the index.

It also doesn't hurt to try utilizing the old method of a link exchange with other webmasters with the same interest. Perhaps the best way to go about this is to great a button image which the webmaster could use and integrate it into their layout.
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"You make me smash the clock and feel, I'd rather die behind the wheel.
Time was never on my side, So on I wait my whole lifetime."

[Vextor]

Original content is the only way you're gonna attract anyone to visit your site. Advertisements will only work to get people to your site once; unless there is a hook on the other end, ads won't help a bit.

With the plethora of sites I have run in the past, the only form of advertisement I have used is my signature link. Otherwise, if anyone wanted to use any of my content, I have required them to include a link to my site. I also kept being extremely active in other communities, answering questions and helping people out. That sort of thing ends up promoting your site.

However, again, unless you have original or interesting content that meets the demands, your site is going to fail and no amount of advertisements will help.

I have seen many sites flop because they advertized too fast before they had any real content. Once you fail to catch the initial wave of visitors, you're pretty much toast.

Suikosource and Suikox are both successful Suikoden sites I started. Both of them had ample content before it was made public to people. Otherwise, these sites would have met the same fate as the myriads of other Suikoden sites.

Advertizing on threads inside forums, from my observation, tends to backfire especially here. Many members simply don't want to see ads for other sites, and those who post such an ad would probably be scored by lay-members. Gone are the early days of the internet, and now you have to build up credibility from the ground up, and uit is no easy task.

[Arcana]

In my specific example, I don't pay money for my site, but it's far from a "free server" in the typical sense. It's not run on a Geocities/Angelfire/etc. type of connection with a similar irrelevant hostname, but it IS not a fully registered domain name that I control. It's one of the "free domain name services", hence the domain "mine.nu". It's hosted on a good connection though, so bandwidth should NOT be a problem.

Now, it's funny about the "preparation before advertising" advice works, because when I stated my previous site (which has now gone down because the hardware that hosted it broke), I mentioned the idea idly in my journal (as most ideas start) and people thought it was a good idea. I spent the next three months building the site, putting up all of the content, and building the game.

Three months after I started it up, I declared the game officially dead, bceause I couldn't attract more than a few members, despite sig-advertising, posting in advertisement sections for forums, plugging it in my journal, and even getting tons and tons of hits from Google searches (Google really liked my site for some reason and I'd be on the first or second page for certain search terms). But overall, it just didn't work out. I'm now in the process of giving the game away to an interested group of people who contacted me after they found out my game had gone down. I couldn't make it work, but maybe they can.

I think the reason for doing that was simply a lack of opportunity. In between the random idle thought and the actual production, people just... lost interest. My friends wouldn't even visit my site and consider the game - it was that pathetically timed. So perhaps the next idea I make should be a SUPER SECRET IDEA that I don't mention AT ALL.

Unfortunately, if I do that, I'm just as likely to end up with a really crappy idea without any unique content.

So I don't know how well I've been spreading "goodwill". I've stepped on toes, because, by nature, I'm an aggressive (but not confrontational) person. It hasn't even been a month and I've had a topic locked on me. It's hard to evaluate how well people like you, and you'd be mocked for asking. Whether or not that's a real issue, though, remains to be seen. I hardly suspect anyone out there says, "Hey, that Arcana's pretty cool, let's check out his web site." I personally find it difficult to be able to directly translate credibility into interested hits, and especially more to generate truly interested parties.

When I "scouted" the potential, I figured that if I got about 10 or so interested replies on my LJ, I'd go through with the idea, with the belief that of those 10, maybe 5 would register, and of those 5, one would be extremely enthusiastic. So I got the one person and so far it's worked out. I've seen other people manage to get a game from inception to activity in the span of a week, whereas I put up a basic forum maybe two and a half weeks ago (and got 15 registered people), and about a week ago put up a REAL web site (and have since gotten two more).

I'm starting to straddle a line between pissing off the existing community members for not starting the game, and waiting it out to try to get that "critical mass" of people to keep the game reasonably self-sufficient.

Okay, so I won't try keeping it any secret anymore (and I again reiterate that I hope this topic doesn't get locked). I want everyone to consider this thing I'm doing. :) But in all honesty promotion is something I find extremely difficult, and with the modern internet, especially time-consuming. Annoyingly time consuming, in fact, since that means I have to keep up with forums, post a TON, and generally spend much more time than I'm used to to keep my signature everywhere, building a reputation, and so forth.

I suppose one can suggest that if I'm not WILLING to do the above things, then my site doesn't deserve to be popular, but truly... I'm not 16 anymore - there's too many things to do to do the "5 posts a day" thing (although honestly I'm doing a good job over here on this forum).

And yes, I can understand the advertising clause. It would cause a flood of junk if it wasn't there, with people advertising blogs and random persnal sites and moneymaking schemes. But is there a line that can be drawn between what members could potentially be interested in, and what is advertising? Many general discussion forums often feature things like "funny links" or what-not... a good example might be "Weebl's Stuff". I'm sure if I posted a link to a funny Flash comic or something, people wouldn't care. Would that be considered advertising, as opposed to "sharing"? I had a similar question for sites that hosted fanfiction. If I say, "Check out my fanfic? It's here on the front page -> http://suikoden.mine.nu/", is that considered advertising as well, or sharing fanfics?

I can probably predict that the best answer to that depends on the forum, which again goes back to learning the audience, promoting credibility in yourself, and then adapting what you're posting to what is commonplace in the forum's everyday postings. A board like this actually doesn't feature that many random silly links to comics and weird stuff, so an advertising thread would be raped, whereas a site like OCRemix's UnModerated community just wouldn't care (they'd probably trash your thread with sarcasm and bad pictures).

Finally... I have yet to see more than a few independent Suikoden sites. :) I don't think I'd be able to convince anyone to get a link exchange with me here, despite the fact that I already put all the forums I visit on my front page? ;)

Are people also more apathetic than they were before? Are they more reluctant to join new communities and instead wish to stick with the ones that they know?

Edit: If anyone has specific advice they can give about my site, then feel free to message me, as well. I'd normally suggest it go in this topic but it's probably not the best place for it.
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Vextor]

Hmm, I think it is generally wrong to place game on external factors, such as other sites not wanting to host a link, or users being apathetic. Typically, the problem lies with the site or the people running it. In your case, if your side did have original content (which you seem to claim, but others may not have seen it as original), then it is likely due to personality. No offense to you because I don't know you very well, but you can't just be anybody and expect people to come to your site. There would have to be something about you that people find interesting or curious. I am sure plenty of people find me to be a curious specimen--both in good and bad ways.

Another factor with content is, is the content what people are looking for. You can make a site about names and features of craters on Mars with detailed data, which can take months to make, but you'll only geta few visitors every day because very few people are interested in Martian craters. Likewise, your site may only whet the appetite of a select few.

[KoRnholio]

There used to be a lot more Suikoden sites. I used to keep a 'portal' page up at early versions of Suikosource, which kept getting smaller and smaller. In the days of Suikoden I and II, everybody and their pet gopher had their own Geocities Suikoden fansite, with two pieces of fanart, a Stars of Destiny listing, and a guestbook.

On my first 'search engine crawl' for sites to list in....very early 2001 (if not late 2000), I scoured all the major search engines for Suikoden sites, and traversed the links pages on all the sites I found in the search engines, in a process that probably took the better part of a day. I ended up with probably 125 sites on my list. Of course, that list got whittled down as sites went offline, to the point when the site list itself ended up being taken offline, there were probably less than 30 sites on it, and most of the ones on there were inactive.

Yeah, there's been consolidation, but why? Well, the main reason to me is that nobody has any new ideas any more. As SARSadmin said, its all about original content, and original thought. The internet is still the place where any old kook can spout his or her crazy ideas to the world. Problem is, nobody has crazy ideas anymore.

[Arcana]

I don't mean to imply that, "OMG forums won't let me advertise therefore my site went kaboom and no one visited". A site failing is almost always dependent on the amount of effort placed into it. Then again, by that respect, I would have presumed that so many of my sites would be a success. I lost sleep for a week trying to build a site to make it look good, and then spend time promoting it.

The real question, for me, is what I can do to reach as many interested parties as I possibly can with the least cost to me. Instead of "I want n hits", it's more like, "I want n hits/unit of effort".

I suspect that my idea isn't crazy by any means, but I'm hoping that it'll be at least interesting enough that I can reach my threshold of ten interested people. Maybe I'm being a bit too impatient and wanting results too soon, too.

Still, I look back to the days of 1998 and 1999, where, with two weeks of effort, I could get 50 people subscribed to a mailing list. :) As KoRnholio has stated, there's been a ton of consolidation.

I'm still wondering how much apathy might play into the equation. I don't know wha the age group distribution is of those who play Suikoden games, but I would presume that many of them would have started with the first game, and then grew with the series. Not sure about those figures, though.

I also have to point out that the presence of the "supergamesite" seems more and more prevalent as well. It used to be that RPGamer was the premiere collection of tons of RPG data on the net. Now, there are thousands of sites that serve a similar purpose to RPGamer and feature dozens of games, with media, screenshots, reviews, and so forth. That might also contribute to the death of little indepdendent site - they no longer have a way to provide exclusive content because huge press site would be able to get out this information sooner, faster, and more efficiently.

This might also be why blogs have grown so large as well - people believe that they're each individual and unique, so certainly talking about topics on a blog must make your blog unique as well. If you can't make a site about something, since it's been done, then why not yourself?

I am tempted to ask, "So why does everyone hate blogs? Why do LJ users hate bloggers, and boggers hate LJ users, and everyone else hate both?" but that's best reserved for another thread when this list of huge controversial threads calms down. :)
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Vextor]

Actually, what you say is probably right. Suikox and Suikosource have survived because both sites tend to get information faster than the "mega gamesites" such as IGN or RPGfan, and our info tend to be a lot more accurate. This is possible because of Japanese staff members--which not many sites can have.

[Elc]

[kuwaizair]

if you need orginal content, you need lists like "you know you play to much/are a fan when" lists.

or fun things. projects, like fan comics and media.
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few runes short of a set of 27