Publicising a site

Zedicus

I'm planning to write a site that will assist in the use of ebay (I won't say what to avoid any suggestion of spamming).

What I can't work out are any legitimate ways of promoting the site.

I absolutely don't want to do anything that could possibly be considered spamming, but on the other hand I can't think of anything other than submitting the site to search engines which is not, apparantly, very effective since the established sites have far more inbound links and a new site is likely to appear several pages away from the first.

Does anyone have any legitimate ideas?

cosmokramer2004

Create some free weblogs and write articles/entries about your site on the weblogs including links to different pages. Include plenty of meta data in your own site too and relevant keywords. Download a free search engine submission tool to ease the pain.

Personally I feel that as long as your site is relevant and helpful to the topic of conversation I wouldn't consider linking to it in a thread as spamming, as long as you make clear that it is your own site (and it's not choc-a-bloc with get a free ipod links/pop ups/referrals).

Moglex

I agree that mentioning a site on an ebay forum, provided the site is truly useful and not an excuse to place adwords, popups or similar isn't really spamming.

You could join every single ebay site you can find, spend the time your are writing and testing the software getting known by being useful and answering questions (I assume you must be fairly expert on eBay).

Then, when your software is ready for launch, you can quite reasonably mention it, and since you are a known, useful, poster, people will probably treat the announcement seriously.

It means doing some work (apart from on your site) but it could pay off.

soolin

I can't think though of any ebay sites that are any good that allow advertising?

Even the unofficial ones have rules and will pull anything deemed an advert, just as would happen if anything was posted here. There are alt newsgroups for ebay ads, but of course no one actually reads those as they are full of....ads.

Anywhere that allowed ads, even subtle ones will probably not attract the kind of people that would be interested. How many other sites apart from MSE do any of us read about ebay? I read some of the google groups (none of which allow adverts) but that's about it.

If you have a seriously unique idea, and not something that's been done already like mis spelled items, or last minute bidding etc, then you could try asking the mod team here if you could post it on the referral board. You would need permission though as even on the referral board promoting your own site is not allowed.

If you want to talk to the team click on the red triangle on any posts, and you'll get an email box.

Soo

Moglex

soolin wrote:

I can't think though of any ebay sites that are any good that allow advertising?

Even the unofficial ones have rules and will pull anything deemed an advert, just as would happen if anything was posted here.

I've seen people mention there sites here (and elsewhere) and the threads haven't been pulled.

They may have mentioned the name rather than placed a link, though.

Not allowing that just encourages people to be underhand and and make posts along the lines of "has anyone seen x, it does y, is it any good?".

And if you ban that sort of a mention you seriously undermine the utility of this site. It was someone mentioning a snipe site here that actually got me using one and it's saved my hours of sitting over the computer waiting until an auction ends.

I also heard about fat fingers et al here although I've yet to use one of those.

pennylane99

you can mention sites here, yes...but not blatantly advertise your own website...

soolin

Moglex wrote:

Not allowing that just encourages people to be underhand and and make posts along the lines of "has anyone seen x, it does y, is it any good?"..

When spotted as advertising they will be removed. usually we board guides get PMs from people telling us that someone is advertising, we rarely have to find them ourselves. Obviously some do slip through, but only because the thread dies a natural death (so the advert doesn't therefore work).

Moglex wrote:

And if you ban that sort of a mention you seriously undermine the utility of this site. It was someone mentioning a snipe site here that actually got me using one and it's saved my hours of sitting over the computer waiting until an auction ends.

I also heard about fat fingers et al here although I've yet to use one of those.

Fat fingers has permission to show here, and if you look at the official blue bar on the ebay forum it is linked to directly from there with Martin's permission. Hence me suggesting that the mod team be approached.

As for adverts generally, I do not think that banning them in common with most other sites does any harm at all. MSE is ad free, if everyone could advertise here the site would be unusuable with the amount of junk posted. On some days a considerable amount of spam is removed before anyone gets to see it, having to choose between 'allowed' and 'disallowed' adverts would be a nightmare and neither the volunteer BGs or the Mod team could possibly spend enough time sifting it. Therefore it seems entirely logical to me to ban alla dverts, unless authorised by Martin and the team.

cosmokramer2004

I'd absolutely agree with what Soolin just wrote re: advertising/spamming. However, imagine the scenario where a thread is created titled "How useful is cheese at reinforcing keystones in arch bridges?" and I just happen to have a website of my own called https://www.usingcheeseinbridgebuilding.com. Would it be against the rules to link to my own site in that thread - even if the site relied on referrals to sustain itself? Again, if it's useful, relevant and overall beneficial to the thread I don't see what it matters who owns/wrote/earns from the site linked to?

As Soolin says it's difficult to police and to do so with 100% accuracy would probably require banning all external links. So I'd suggest letting common sense prevail

Moglex

cosmokramer2004 wrote:

I'd absolutely agree with what Soolin just wrote re: advertising/spamming. However, imagine the scenario where a thread is created titled "How useful is cheese at reinforcing keystones in arch bridges?" and I just happen to have a website of my own called https://www.usingcheeseinbridgebuilding.com. Would it be against the rules to link to my own site in that thread - even if the site relied on referrals to sustain itself? Again, if it's useful, relevant and overall beneficial to the thread I don't see what it matters who owns/wrote/earns from the site linked to?

As Soolin says it's difficult to police and to do so with 100% accuracy would probably require banning all external links. So I'd suggest letting common sense prevail

That was really the point I was trying to make.

I completely agree with Soolin that outright advertising should be banned, but even if every snipe and 'fatfingers' site had been announced here [/b]once[/b] it would barely have been noticable but would have alerted regulars to a possibly interesting site.

All that happens when you have a complete ban on people mentioning their own site is that they'll register two user names and get one to ask "anyone know a good site for X" to which the other can reply.

I dare say that commonsense rules here, and if someone mentioned a site that was genuinely novel and useful, the thread would remain. I'm sure there was one a few weeks ago that was visible on the first page for several days.

ormus

the best system is to let the members police it and decide.
most of us can spot the obvious spam, as opposed to a members helpful site/link.
and of course if a member complains about spam, its easy enough for a mod to remove it if required.
far better than trying to monitor every thread/post.