My current project is a site dedicated to my writing. It's not really up yet (well, the proto-type is xD) but as I consider moving on and expanding the project I hit several road blocks, the first being: who's going to care?

It's not that I don't have a shortage of talent--not at all! I'll be the first to toot my own horn and say I can write an excellent story. =D But the potential fans probably are not going to care enough about me or my work to read anything. And until they read it and realize my awesomeness, they're not going to care. How do I encourage them to care? D:

Second: reading a screen hurts.
A lot of people just don't like to read on the computer that much, unfortunately. I can't really think of anyway around this...

Third: My name. How silly! XD
But important, right? I don't really want anything like 'writer' or 'reading' in my name, I think that will seem kind of lame. D: Nor do I want to use my name, because I fear that won't be too exciting.
Bearing in mind that my target audiance is most realistically teens through young twenty-somethings... any suggestions or directions I should go?


Gosh, help! ; ;

Oh, something else I'm curious about:

web statistics. How do I get me some? O:

Put this way, if you have an interest in something you can bet there a few thousand people out there that have the same interest, doesn't matter what it is.

You can get your visitors to contribute to your site by asking them to submit their own writings, experience etc.

You made an excellent point regarding reading from a screen. I hate this myself and tend to print out the more important things that I find, then I can read the content without straining my eyes. You can offer your readers the same content in a PDF file, this will allow them to easily print off what you have a written. Place a link at the top & bottom of each page saying something like 'download this article in PDF format'.

As for your name, its not silly at all. If you knew me personally you would also know the several different names that I have online.

Look around for sites that are doing something along the lines you want. How does the site owners introduce themselves? Take a look at what they are doing to please their visitors, can you do the same?

For one thing, you are asking all the right questions.

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Help with search engine marketing

Do YOU care who cares or do you want to put up the site?

There are boat-loads of people doing things on the web just for themselves and find out there's other like minded people.

Maybe the site will be an inspiration. Maybe a publisher will happen by. Take a look at sites dedicated to writers and get involved if you haven't already.

This is the real key to success with a website--it's gotta be targeted...you have to be in the traffic flow of the niche and your content MUST be worth while.

The quickest way to do that is social bookmarking and commenting on like sites and blogs with a link back to your site.

There's some standard SEO stuff you can do to get found by search engines but you need back-links to rise high in the rankings. It's a good idea to cover that base but with Web2.0, Google is becoming less and less the main focus for getting traffic.

--Mike

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Thanks, Gavin. I definately agree--offering people a way to print it out might just remedy that problem.

Mike, excellent advise, but you're talking a little fast. SEO? What is that!? O:

SEO is Search Engine Optimization.

It's just a way you set up your site and content so that it can get indexed and found when people search. It's really not hard and their ain't any secrets you should look for. There are tutorial all over the place and one of the members here has an SEO website you can read...it all there. I don't have the link handy but I'm sure someone else has.

The important part is the content. The more you have the more opportunities there are are for people searching to find your site. The better the content the more people will come back. "Repeat Customers" rule on the internet as well.

This post:
http://www.websitebabble.com/search-...g-you-bet.html

Is pretty much on as far as I'm concerned. The Web is social and now that the Tech. has made EASY to be social (social bookmarking is basically "Word of Mouth" advertising) thats where the traffic is. People will always use search engines to look for information and answer questions but if your site doesn't offer "answers" then theres no point to stress over SEO

Just my opinion.

--Mike

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Excellent. Thanks tons!

I agree with you, my main focus is LARGELY going to be people telling their friends about me, though eventually I do intend to get back to other writers by offering advice of some sort. =)