How I think I screwed myself - newbie experience

CalModels · 2005-09-04, 01:01 AM

OK, so I guess the first lesson I learnt is I know squat...

It all started with an unfortunate combination of two things... I own share of a webhosting company, and I like taking pictures of women (as a hobby mostly) so being the genius I thought I was, I said to myself "why not start up a free lingerie models website?" and without really researching the hows or whats, I got some opensource software together, and put up a gallery of lingerie models...

Now this is 100% custom content, not found anywhere else, and I think I did a fairly decent job as far as the actual design goes, but you can judge for yourself here:

http://www.CalgaryModels.com

And I figured, "you know, I should upload some of these pictures to the newsgroups and pretty soon people will be flocking to the site" so I made my firt mistake and posted some images to a bunch of newsgroups, and sure enough, the traffic started trickling in... but in my idiocy, I included my real email address in that post and now I have more spam than I have warts... and I am loathe to spam newsgroups so I posted about 30 pictures and gave up on it incase someone starts cursing me for excessive posting...

Now the next step was getting affiliates that I could advertise, so I came here, did a bit of reading (and not enough reading I soon realised) picked a bunch that people seemed happy with and signed up with them... that gave me all their banners I could advertise... and lo and behold, I went overboard with the number of banners (as in REALLY overboard) thinking if I fill up the pages with banners then someone will buy something and I make a bit of cash and sure enough two days later people just stopped coming... well anyway, I dialled down the number of ads I had on the site a bit after I got some helpful feedback from a couple of visitors, and I think its at a decent enough level now... but then again history has taught me I am frequently wrong so maybe they are still too much...

Once the number of banners went down, I read that I should now submit the site to link lists, and promptly began submitting to a few... but rapidly realised that a LOT of the link lists wanted recip's on the index page, and had rules that simply didnt apply to me, because my site is a little different in the sense that its not a pay site, its free, but the content is not stock hosted galleries etc, and realistically, I cant link a recip on my index or warning page (mostly because I do have a main page but not really a warning page except for a short blurb on the main page) so I am not really sure where to put the recips... I have a "Links" page I have been putting the recips on, but a lot of the link lists say they want it on the main page and not on a links page, which just isnt possible (unless there is something else I dont know aboutthat I overlooked)...

So anyway I submit the site to about 20 or so link lists that did not seem to mind being on a Links page, and out of the 20, its been three or four days and I have been listed on two.. and as for traffic, it just isnt coming...

So short of desperation taking me back to spamming the newsgroups (which I really really dont want to do) I am at my wits end... how do I get traffic? Are there specific things I could do? Not just in the generating traffic part, but maybe even in the site layout (part of me thinking that maybe its the layout that link list owners dont like?)

Being the noob, I'm hoping you guys may help me point myself right side up again.. please please please??

2005-09-04, 01:01 AM	#1
CalModels Trying is the first step towards failure Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 122	How I think I screwed myself - newbie experience OK, so I guess the first lesson I learnt is I know squat... It all started with an unfortunate combination of two things... I own share of a webhosting company, and I like taking pictures of women (as a hobby mostly) so being the genius I thought I was, I said to myself "why not start up a free lingerie models website?" and without really researching the hows or whats, I got some opensource software together, and put up a gallery of lingerie models... Now this is 100% custom content, not found anywhere else, and I think I did a fairly decent job as far as the actual design goes, but you can judge for yourself here: http://www.CalgaryModels.com And I figured, "you know, I should upload some of these pictures to the newsgroups and pretty soon people will be flocking to the site" so I made my firt mistake and posted some images to a bunch of newsgroups, and sure enough, the traffic started trickling in... but in my idiocy, I included my real email address in that post and now I have more spam than I have warts... and I am loathe to spam newsgroups so I posted about 30 pictures and gave up on it incase someone starts cursing me for excessive posting... Now the next step was getting affiliates that I could advertise, so I came here, did a bit of reading (and not enough reading I soon realised) picked a bunch that people seemed happy with and signed up with them... that gave me all their banners I could advertise... and lo and behold, I went overboard with the number of banners (as in REALLY overboard) thinking if I fill up the pages with banners then someone will buy something and I make a bit of cash and sure enough two days later people just stopped coming... well anyway, I dialled down the number of ads I had on the site a bit after I got some helpful feedback from a couple of visitors, and I think its at a decent enough level now... but then again history has taught me I am frequently wrong so maybe they are still too much... Once the number of banners went down, I read that I should now submit the site to link lists, and promptly began submitting to a few... but rapidly realised that a LOT of the link lists wanted recip's on the index page, and had rules that simply didnt apply to me, because my site is a little different in the sense that its not a pay site, its free, but the content is not stock hosted galleries etc, and realistically, I cant link a recip on my index or warning page (mostly because I do have a main page but not really a warning page except for a short blurb on the main page) so I am not really sure where to put the recips... I have a "Links" page I have been putting the recips on, but a lot of the link lists say they want it on the main page and not on a links page, which just isnt possible (unless there is something else I dont know aboutthat I overlooked)... So anyway I submit the site to about 20 or so link lists that did not seem to mind being on a Links page, and out of the 20, its been three or four days and I have been listed on two.. and as for traffic, it just isnt coming... So short of desperation taking me back to spamming the newsgroups (which I really really dont want to do) I am at my wits end... how do I get traffic? Are there specific things I could do? Not just in the generating traffic part, but maybe even in the site layout (part of me thinking that maybe its the layout that link list owners dont like?) Being the noob, I'm hoping you guys may help me point myself right side up again.. please please please??