first off, Let me say great site to the site adminstrator and all the members of this site. I started 6 months ago knowing absolutely nothing about web design except some html. I can now after reading this site. build a decent site. I think this is where this post should go sorry if it isn't. I just created a free dating site with the free membership having all the free goodies of it's gold membership status. I want to get my site seen(duh). I am unsure about how to market the site. I added it to a few directories, but I have no faith in that bringing a single person to my site. Is there anyone that can give me ideas that will bring 10 interested people a day? I am working on a budget at the moment. I don't want to spend more than $30 a month for the first 3 months, so I can see if the site will take off.
http://www.free-christian-dating.mobstop.com I put it on some free hosting for the moment. I want to know if it's worth developing before I invest money. ps. I will drop the "christian" part after I decide if I want to pursue this site.
The layout looks nice. I'd spring the $36 to get a basic hosting package from http://www.1and1.com because even if you don't get any members you should be able to pull $36 a year in adsense revenue. Once you have it set up on a real host, start getting directory listing. Get Directory Expert from http://www.backlinkboys.com (for $14.95/yr) and also use the directory announcements thread here at DP and the free seo friendly list at http://info.vilesilencer.com to find even more directories to list in. Next, write some articles. Write about the social acceptance of online dating, or the history of online dating (which actually dates back ti the telegraph!), or something vaguely related. Submit them to every known article directory in existence. You can check a site I am currently building, http://www.dyartts.com, for a good list of article directories. Start a MySpace blog and make as many friends as possible. They can help you get other people to your site. If you can't or don't want to deal with myspace, pay someone to write about your site. Don't overlook forums for singles people either. Once you finish that, you should have several hundred backlinks i not thousands. By then you should hopefully be making enough that adwords becomes a decent option. If you're not quite at the adwords stage yet, consider buying some banner placements on singles sites. Hope that helps and good luck! (oh, and if you decide to go with 1&1 for hosting and you thought my advice was helpful, maybe you'd consider using my affiliate link to sign up: http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=8173351 It would be appreciated, but certainly not required!)
You make me blush! Yeah, I have 2 sites using Joomla (dyartts.com and customdj.us), and I am working on a 3rd (byrequest.dj/index.php). I can't take credit for the templates though. To see the template creators, check the footer. I have modified each template a bit, but most of the design work was already done. My fourth joomla site will use an all original template. It just doesn't pay to hand code most sites these days, although I will have to do a considerable amount of coding to get jombok to interface with my music database search on teh byrequest site. but I digress...
do you use this tools also : jsas, joomla dreamweaver extension?? worth for you to check, if you not yet using it, i prefer to design my own, even it's not as pretty as those expert do, but you can fix it time to time..
When I first discovered content management systems, I favored e107 due to its preinstalled features. However JSAS swayed me to the Joomla camp. I do have the dreamweaver extensions, but I've never liked Dreamweaver. I can see that it may be worth my time to learn it for making Joomla templates though. Grrr... I know its easy to use, but my first "web development suite" was notepad (but now I've upgraded to textpad!). I guess I'm just a stodgey old bastard that doesn't want to give up his horse and buggy.
I'm actually stuck at the beginning, but now i did understand part of it, not all since i'm newbie, but everyone have their own style to work out
I'm betting your confused by Sections and Categories. The thing that helped me the most in understanding these was to think of you site like a Walmart. Wlmart has several Sections (they call them departments actually) like Men's wear, health and beauty, sportamotive, etc. In each section are various categories like pants, shirts, ccombs, asprin, oil, wiper blades, etc. Each of those categories has Items like blue denim Levi 501's, or Mobil Oil, or Bayer aspirin. When you're shopping, you don't think so much about the sections, you think about the categories. 'What am I herte to buy? Oh yeah, some pants.' Then you go to that category and browse through the items you want until you find what you like: Dicky work dungarees.
You don't have to spend a single penny if you don't want to. Remember, time is money too! There are thousands (literally) of directories that you can submit to for FREE. All it will take is time and it does get tedious after a while. Start with mine .... in my signature! You will always find enough directories to submit to. Just go to the directories solicitations forum on DP and you will see heaps of posts for directories. Start with directories above PR6: 1. DMOZ 2. Yahoo etc. Then, PR5 directories: 1. Like mine and so on.... Also, download Roboform and install it if you are going to be following my advice. In Roboform, you can create an "identity" for your dating site with your email address and name. Then, in custom fields create three fields called: "URL", "Anchor text", "description". This will make your directory submission experience very smooth and Roboform works for almost all directories. And, the free version allows up to 3 identities with up to 3 custom fields each. That's all you need for now. Regards, dfsweb
Which is exactly why I recommend Directory Expert. Its not as cheap as roboform, but this morning I submitted about 65 links in about 45 minutes (but it was my first time using it). It was slick. I expect the next set of 60 links to be finished in less than 30 minutes.
Directory Expert is available at http://www.backlinkboys.com/ on a subscription basis. A subscription is $14.95 per year. It is similar to roboform, but it is specifically tailored for directories and has a submission list of 117 directories built in but you can also add your own. I am not affiliated with Directory Expert, just a big fan after one use. It is owned and maintained by another DPer (Carlito I think?). Even though I could submit to all these directories by hand or by using roboform, having a nice affordable product that is specifically designed for the purpose is very handy. I highly recommend it.
Download mozilla browser and get the "In form Filler" extension. It's free and takes about 10 seconds to submit info. I can get in about 3-4 a minute if I'm quick. That's about 200 an hour. But don't tell anyone, cause people make money by submitting sites to directories for others.
It works well, but it involves lots of button clicking. InFormFiller places a little icon next to each form field on the page. Clicking that icon produces a drop down menu that has various bits of information on it (all of them user defineable). Clicking an item in that menu will fill that field with that bit of info. Thus filling out a standard phpLD submission form requires 10 extra clicks. This isn't quite as good as the autofill options in directory expert in my opinion, but I did see directory expert miss a few fields in the 65 submissions I did yesterday. These fields had to manually typed in. The tabbed browsing feature of Firefox gives this method a distinct advantage over C&Ping with IE since you can have one tab opened to a list of directory links (like those at info.vilesilencer.com) and have links open in the second tab as you click them. Directory Expert on the other hand has a list of directories, and as you finish submitting to one, you can be be automagically taken to the next one on the list. As the list grows, this will become a greater advantage for it because one won't have to flick through different tabs (or worse yet different windows) to find the next directory url. InFormFiller is good, and if you aren't wanting (or able) to spend $15 a year on a tool to aide directory submission, I would highly recommend it. I also have to give you kudos rubenmajor. You obviously have a highly advanced clicking finger. Maybe its my age or maybe its because this was my first use, but I was only averaging about one submission per minute. My first attempt with InFormFiller was slightly slower than yesterdays first attempt with Directory Expert.