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If I Build It, Will They Come?
By UncleMikey , Section Help! [] Posted on Fri Mar 01, 2002 at 12:00:00 PM PST

OK, so I'm not having any technical issues with Scoop. It's working great for me, and I've got a site almost all ready to go. No, my question is: how do you really get a site started?

Do I just throw the link out there -- run it up the flagpole, as it were, and see who salutes? Do I 'seed' it with content from friends who are in on the secret early, then start posting the link around?
How, in short, does one get the ball rolling? How did you get started? Enquiring minds want to know!

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If I Build It, Will They Come? | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)

depends (4.00 / 2) (#1)
by hurstdog on Sat Mar 02, 2002 at 09:49:19 AM PST

It depends on the type of the site. If it was going to be a discussion site like kuro5hin, I would say just start posting stuff there. Then leave a link to it in your .sig on k5, and slashdot, and everywhere else you go. Put it in your email signature too. Then just make sure you keep stuff updated. I think it took kuro5hin a while to get people to start participating, like 4 months or so before rusty could leave for the weekend and it would run itself. And as far as I know rusty did it the way I described above.

-hurstdog

Yes, and... by rusty, 03/03/2002 06:03:25 AM PST (4.50 / 2)

not always enough by janra, 03/05/2002 07:32:46 PM PST (5.00 / 1)

Exactly my fear by UncleMikey, 03/07/2002 03:46:33 PM PST (none / 0)

cool, more SF/F by janra, 03/08/2002 01:22:06 AM PST (none / 0)

RFT by UncleMikey, 03/08/2002 07:52:04 AM PST (none / 0)

Topics by UncleMikey, 03/08/2002 12:42:44 PM PST (none / 0)

Which sector, what users... (4.00 / 1) (#2)
by The Trinidad Kid on Sat Mar 02, 2002 at 11:56:33 PM PST

The first issue is what do you want to cover, what is the subject - the second is what users do you imagine using it.

My Scoop site went live 3 days ago (after much pain). I am intending to virtualise a community that already exists in the real world.

I have an overall view for how my site fits into that world.

The Scottish politics sector is very poorly formed in the internet world. Searching for "Scottish Politics" on Google returns 258,000 pages. However it is not very well connected. If you use Google's "link to" function, the number 1 Scottish Politics site has 150 links in. My overview site which has been around for 4 months now has a page ranked 27th with 8 links in. My first ambition therefore is to get the new one up at the top of that search list. I am 'borrowing reputation' from my K5 persona. Keeping an implementation diary on K5 will help boost that.

I am also writing content (which is very time consuming) and manually building an audience.

There is a small fraction of the K5 audience which I can steal/borrow but not a lot.

Once I have more content I will try and get newspaper converage in Scotland. (I will write a story using dialectiser sites to monkey with politicians speeches and then try and place an item in a newspaper diary).

I also intend to implment sub-domains like "american.politicaldiscussion.org" that bring people into a section page instead of the front page but to do that I need to add some graphics monkeying around and referrer stuff and new logs and probably cookie management, so that may take some time, especially as I have to finish usability and help.

As well as all that, Scoop text ads, Kuro5hin text ads and Google text ads...

Scottish Political Discussion

...and... by The Trinidad Kid, 03/02/2002 11:59:17 PM PST (none / 0)

Wait (none / 0) (#6)
by Smirks on Wed Mar 06, 2002 at 07:13:46 AM PST

I started my Scoop Site about a year ago. Over time things have started picking up. I did notice though that traffic seems to come in waves. The site will be quite active for a few days, then it'll slow down for maybe weeks at a time. It's all about spreading the word, taking an active part in your community and having content people will come back to. It's rough in the beginning, but I'm slowly starting to see the rewards. InTune gets about 4 or 5 new users a week now, and the good thing is some of those new users are actually active and post, which is certinaly a good thing.

[ InTune ]

Another question... (none / 0) (#8)
by UncleMikey on Thu Mar 07, 2002 at 03:50:05 PM PST

...how does a body get some decent topical icons without legal hassle or artistic talent? :-)
--
Uncle Mikey, Addicting the unsuspecting to the 'Net since 1987
Radio Free Tomorrow

Email me. by haflinger, 03/12/2002 04:33:27 PM PST (none / 0)

Turn it 'round by UncleMikey, 03/12/2002 09:08:25 PM PST (none / 0)

Doh! by haflinger, 03/13/2002 04:15:48 AM PST (none / 0)

I have the programs too... by janra, 03/13/2002 01:44:11 AM PST (none / 0)

Great post (none / 0) (#16)
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If I Build It, Will They Come? | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)

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