Getting more hits?

[INoodleClock]

My new website has been up and running a couple of weeks now, meta/alt tags all over the place, submissions to major search engines..

http://www.google.com/addurl/
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
http://bblmedia.com/addurl.html
http://webnet77.com/webstuff/tips.html

And a blog with an RSS feed (if anyone wants help putting one together let me know, took me some time to find a way which works well). Sadly I'm only getting about 10 hits a day, can anyone think of other ways to get a better hit rate? Are Link Directories, Usenet groups (such as Google Groups) any good?

[DWARFINATORclock]

There are about one billion products available that will teach you how to get more hits.

[INoodleClock]

Yeah, there's an awful lot of crap to trawl through though. Love your avvy btw, have you seen the guys other photos? http://cosfrog.deviantart.com/gallery/

[RenegadeClock]

Buy some ad banners at Clockcrew.cc! Only $500 a month.

[DWARFINATORclock]

Yeah, there's an awful lot of crap to trawl through though. Love your avvy btw, have you seen the guys other photos? http://cosfrog.deviantart.com/gallery/

Was my avatar made by that guy? I don't see my avatar in his gallery (maybe it's there and I'm a blind dumb bat).

John Reese is one of the most acclaimed traffic generating gurus that I can think of at the moment, so you might want to check some of his stuff out.

[INoodleClock]

http://cosfrog.deviantart.com/art/Female-Canvas-I-26280056?q=boost%3Apopular+nude+tattoo+female&qo=0

And thanks, I'll give him a look.

[SageClock]

I like what you've done with it. Looks a lot more professional now.

Small nitpick, on your homepage, where you have the three links to Newgrounds, Youtube, and DeviantArt, the entire line of text should be the link, not just the website names. People might not catch that they are links if they hover over the beginning of the sentence, and you should make it clear by making the whole thing a link.

As for getting hits, well, you need to start whoring it out. Adding to directories is pretty much useless. All the major websites automatically crawl the web for new sites, and if you're doing what you should by posting the link to your site everywhere (within reason, not too spammy), then the robots will catch it quick enough.

Best thing to do is start writing articles to help people, in such a way that Google is likely to pick up on it, link to other people's blogs (in the way that they pick it up via trackbacks), post those articles on social networking sites like reddit and digg, and start building relationships with other people in your field (responding to their blogs, etc). Since this site is basically about selling you, you need to get out there. See what you can do to get noticed by art/website design communities. Or just make some graphics that are fun/silly (not hurtful or controversial though, since you want to get people's website dollars) and post them with watermark links to your site on social news sites (and maybe your own website so people know where to find them again, although this one's more iffy).

And if you're spefically looking for work, identify your audience and go after it. If its older businesses, you might want to keep an eye on classifieds or look for companies that could use better websites, or maybe consider buying some Google Adwords. If its local, you should print up some business cards and talk with some of the (smaller) businesses in the area, maybe post some fliers at your local coffeeshops.

[SpongeClock SquarePants]

also Adwords

[INoodleClock]

Small nitpick, on your homepage, where you have the three links to Newgrounds, Youtube, and DeviantArt, the entire line of text should be the link, not just the website names. People might not catch that they are links if they hover over the beginning of the sentence, and you should make it clear by making the whole thing a link.

Each line being a link (so in bold) does not look as nice, I shall leave it for now - since bringing it to my attention, if ONE person says about it it willll be amended.

As for getting hits, well, you need to start whoring it out. Adding to directories is pretty much useless. All the major websites automatically crawl the web for new sites, and if you're doing what you should by posting the link to your site everywhere (within reason, not too spammy), then the robots will catch it quick enough.

The Facebook group has brought a bit of traffic, not having much luck in getting people to exchange links but that takes time I guess (btw CC, hint, hint, winkey-face). Got cards printed now, so been handing those out as well.

Best thing to do is start writing articles to help people, in such a way that Google is likely to pick up on it, link to other people's blogs (in the way that they pick it up via trackbacks), post those articles on social networking sites like reddit and digg, and start building relationships with other people in your field (responding to their blogs, etc). Since this site is basically about selling you, you need to get out there. See what you can do to get noticed by art/website design communities.

All the blog entries link to sources or further information, hopefully this will help. I've getting more active on places like ConceptArt.org as well. Are you aware of any good communities you can point me in the direction of?

And if you're spefically looking for work, identify your audience and go after it. If its older businesses, you might want to keep an eye on classifieds or look for companies that could use better websites, or maybe consider buying some Google Adwords. If its local, you should print up some business cards and talk with some of the (smaller) businesses in the area, maybe post some fliers at your local coffeeshops.

Well the thing is I already work for a company doing webdesign, the aim of this site is just to attract a small ammount of private work for extra pennies. Fliers is a grand idea, email shots have gone out to about 10,000 address' now so fliers is the next step.

Thank you for your feedback Sage.

[INoodleClock]

Are there any useful interactive elements that I could add, like comments boxes, rating stars, polls? Not sure how practical these kind of things will be to improve return rates.

Also new PS painting added.