Ask HN: How to promote a good site without 1+MM budget?

[jerryblack]

whenever I release a site the biggest challenge is to find a way to promote it so that other people notice it. the product is excellent focused to help make other peoples' lives easier but without a $1+MM budget it is nearly impossible to get it of the ground. what to do?

[sushi]

0. Guest blogging.

1. Create an infographic and promote it. Not the spammy kind.

2. Link from Wikipedia if it's very relevant to some article there. If the Wiki authors find it not relevant they will remove it and you should then move on.

3. Promote it here. You could have gotten few visits just now had you mentioned this website which apparently "help make other peoples' lives easier".

4. Contact the bloggers to write about it. If it's "really useful" they will write about it.

5. Do some active promotion on twitter, facebook and stumbleupon. That's no brainer.

6. Make sure your site is coded well, good tags and all that jazz. It helps in SEO.

Just few of the ways you can start promoting.

[jerryblack]

Sorry, I just did not want to sound like i am using my original question to promote the site. But you are write, here is the link

http://www.spotli.com

And just to let you know that posting the site on sites like Twitter, FB, etc.. only gets you a few users the first day the post is up and then everything dies out. No disrespect, but this does not seem like a strategy to popularity.

[sushi]

Those were just few suggestions. Of course it all ultimately depends on the kind of site you have.

I just checked the site and I think it's a cool idea. It makes money once you can engage the users which I'm afraid it probably is not doing in its current form. Also the kind of site you have is more likely to be bookmarked and used than being talked about in blogs which is actually not that bad.

First of all the home page only gives the impression that this is some kind of product directory. What you can do to fix this is by showing some products on front page. It could be hot-sellers or anything you fancy. Don't put the user go through the trouble of typing it. Tease them with few products and then they will search on their own.

The priority right now should be to engage the users. If they are not spending more than 4-5 minutes on your site then it means you need to try new landing pages.

You can also increase the size of thumbnails that one gets on product category pages. It looks too congested right now.

In a nutshell, you Sir need a better optimized homepage more than anything else right now.

[jerryblack]

wow, i really appreciate your suggestions. i definitely agree with showing some 'hot seller' products on the home page and will get right on it.

thanks