Finding Your SiteLets examine the first question:How do people find my project and my site? If you are following my advice, people are going to find your project's home on your domain. So, when people find your project they also find your domain. So, the question is, "How do I get people to my website?" This question is going to be answered on a case by case basis. Yet, I'll tell you how it works for DSL.In the beginning there were three websites that were a very big help to us: Distrowatch.com Freshmeat.net Icewalkers.com Every time we'd do a new release of DSL we'd submit an update to these sites, and they were a great source of exposure for our project. After these sites posted their announcements, there was always a back wave of blogs and forum posts throughout the Internet which also did a lot to get the word out. All these sites are still very good sources of traffic today. In fact, Distrowatch is our #2 source of direct referrals right behind Google! Now that DSL is relatively established, we also get traffic from sites such as linuxlinks.com and wikipedia.org. There are also (sometimes huge) surges of traffic from news and collaborative bookmark sites such as:Slashdot.org Digg.com Stumbleupon.com Del.icio.us OSnews.com If your project makes it to one of these sites, you will get a nice boost of traffic and a good follow-through of links from smaller community base sites as an after effect. Some of my references are Linux specific above, but you know your space. If you have a BSD project, ask the BSD news sites to make an announcement. If your bag is KDE then likewise consult the KDE community. Basically, you know your space so take advantage of it to gain some exposure. The following is very important: Don't be afraid to ask for a mention. Your project is a good one, right? And the world will benefit from knowing about it? So, it is your duty to make sure it does. Once your project gets established your site will probably get most of its traffic from search engines. That brings us to our second question... |