101 ways to get people interested in your website

It happens to all website owners at some point. You sit down at your computer and stare at the screen, wondering how you can get more people to look at your website, check out your wares or even just give you a chance to wow them. It’s a common plight, and the internet is full of short lists that give a few loose ways to promote your stuff, but they’re almost all universally the same tips, all linking to different services that are going to cost you. This list offers 101 unique ways to grow the number of relevant hits you receive, and they work! If it wasn’t for these hard-earned, self-taught tips, I wouldn’t be the money-making author/blogger I am today!


1. Give stuff away. If your brand (or web address) is on it, people will see it every time they use it.

2. Sponsor (or hold) a public event. Even a small one will get noticed.

3. Write your web address on commonly handled objects (It worked for Where’s George!)

4. Put it on the side of your car (written or as a transfer)

5. Put it on a T-shirt (and then wear the shirt)

6. Put it on a business card and then leave it in a book where someone will stumble across it.

7. write it on yourself (or get it tattooed to yourself.)

8. Put it on a funny, strange, relevant or otherwise eye-catching video, then upload it to Youtube (or a site like it)

9. Get people involved with it by allowing ways (or places) for them to contribute, take polls, etc..

10. Watermark your images with your web address.

11. Trade link space with your friends

12. Contact others running similar sites and offer to trade link space with them.

13. Create a creepy/strange image, put it out where it can go viral, and put your web address on it.

14. Pull a media stunt. Make sure your web address is visible.

15. Print up fliers and hand them to people on the street.

16. Ask your friends to tell everyone they know about your website.

17. Change the homepage of a public computer (like at school or in a library) to your web address.

18. Put it on a billboard next to a busy highway.

19. Write it in the dirt on the back of someone’s window.

20. Buy a block of ad space on the radio.

21. Make press releases and send them off to the local paper.

22. Take out a classified ad

23. Fill your site with really awesome, eye-catching art.

24. Write your web address on a cake, then snap pictures of it and/or donate it.

25. Burn it into a piece of wood (utilizing the art of pyrography!)

26. Send it to people through the mail.

27. Put it on the signature of every email you send.

28. Write a book, a story (or even a poem) and use your address as a way for people to find more (if they like it.)

29.  Create a series of websites (or pages) that (among other things) refer back to your main webpage.

30. If you don’t already have one, come up with a catchy title.

31. Make your webpage as accessible as possible. Viewing your content shouldn’t be a chore (if it is, people won’t come back!)

32. Comment on blogs. Put your web address in when you do.

33. Submit a story or poem to a site like Yesteryear Fiction, Weirdyear, or Daily Love, then provide your link along with the submission.

34. Submit an informative article to a site like Weekly Artist or Chaos Grimoire, then provide your link along with the submission.

35. Provide people with a way to ask questions (and get responses.) People like interactivity.

36. Clean up interfaces, use Java or flash and get creative with your design. Make your site a pleasure to surf.

37. Talk loudly about your website while walking down the street with another person.

38. Order special stationary that features your web address.

39. Make sure your meta-tags are relevant (or that you even have them!)

40. Always look for new ways to reuse your old material and get it out into the eyes of the public.

41. Find and/or talk people into reviewing your website.

42. Create a blog that connects to (or relates to) your website. Use it for any updates people might want to keep appraised of.

43. Create a forum for the same purpose (helps create interactivity!)

44. Provide a free to use, embedded tool that people will come back to use over and over again.

45. Cultivate a mailing list and provide a way for people to sign up for it.

46. Ask your visitors to bookmark your site.

47. Find attractive angles to play up (like “Made in USA!” or “A 100% green company!”)

48. Find attractive people willing to be photographed with something that has your web address on it.

49. Create a rousing, positive plan for what you plan to do with the site in the future to convert people to your cause.

50. We live in a visual age. Make sure your site is more pictures (or movies) than just bare text.

51. Work with groups that hold public meetings. Find ways to trade publicity.

52. Create unique advertising materials, like beef jerky business cards, stamped aluminum handouts, knitted fliers, etc. Be creative!

53. Interview someone (or have a guest speaker/poster) on your website, even if only once. Remember, star power helps!

54. Work with other website owners to find ways to trade tips (and publicity.)

55. Cultivate a reputation. Create and utilize your own brand of star power.

56. Find something that you’re good at and teach classes about it. Make sure to give your students your web address.

57. Book and run a booth at a show or convention.

58. Create a brand for your website (logos help too)

59. Get an article on Wikipedia.

60. Guerrilla marketing tactics (like sticking branded magnets on things in public space.)

61. Spam it in multiplayer games (especially if your content is relevant to that community)

62. Tell people about it on stranger chatting sites like Omegle

63. Landscape it in bushes, hedges or with flowers.

64. Advertise it on image boards (cool and/or interesting images will catch more attention!)

65. Sign up to be a guest speaker at an event (like a rally at your local high school, etc.)

66. Advertise it on adwords (like the people who made the ad near the top of this page, just under my picture did.) Visit their site and see what other ways they came up with to get people interested in their website. (and help a starving artist in the process! Win-win!)

67. You can also use another affiliate marketing service like Project Wonderful.

68. Whenever a post (or a page) you write becomes popular, write more like it.

69. Find widgets (and other ways) to show off the number of readers and subscribers you have.

70. Offer online only freebies to people in the offline world.

71. Make a great impression. Treat people the way you would like to be treated, and make them want to get to know you (and check out your site)

72. Find something that’s just gone viral (or that might go viral) and then participate in it, carrying your web address with you the whole time (look at the kids who did the double rainbow song.)

73. Consider hiring an SEO specialist or a marketing team.

74. Put together a page on an art portfolio site (like Deviant Art, Weekly Artist or Portfolios.com) and make sure it links back to your main webpage.

75. Make sure your website doesn’t have anything annoying on it (like popup advertising)

76. Archive religiously. Make sure older articles are always accessible from multiple pages.

77. Blog about something that’s bound to catch a lot of eyes or from a political point of view that’s bound to draw a lot of attention.

78. Study the big boys of the internet. Study your competition. Ask yourself what they’re doing that you’re not.

79. Get on TV if you can. Talk to news agencies, local stations/public access and/or anyone else who might be interested in getting you on the air.

80. Remember: Funny sells, and so does sex.

81. Add it to Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, etc.

82. Tell your friends on Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, etc. about it.

83. Tell people about it on discussion forums

84. Remember, nothing stays fresh forever. Keep working at it.

85. Be willing to ask for help.

86. Be willing to leap without looking into every new opportunity that presents itself.

87. Attend parties where people who might be interested in your website, project, etc. are also attending (and might be receptive to what you’re putting out there.)

88. Change your name to your website’s address.

89. Create a brochure for your website.

90. Create pen-names and dummy email accounts and promote your material through them.

91. Be honest, be reliable, be original, and be engaging. Show people a face they can trust.

92. Diversify, diversify, diversify!

93. Look for ways to make your website more FUN!

94. Create help or how-to pages (or answer questions) and make sure you have a link to your site at the bottom of your answer.

95. Avoid being shy and don’t play down your accomplishments. Let people know how awesome you are so they’ll be more driven to check out your site.

96. Conversely, don’t boast or go off on an ego trip.

97. Women (statistically) read more than men do. Market to them.

98. Create a “101" list. Make sure it links back to your site.

99. Be patient. It doesn’t hurt to pray.

100. Spend some time sitting down, diagraming on a piece of paper and coming up with innovative new ways to advertise your website.

101. Provide interesting, reliable content that people will want to consistently return to (and refer their friends to.)