gary223

I have a new site being developed, actually made a down payment to the coder today. I think it will be a big hit. That is, if I can get the word out about it.

So my question is to you, what is your marketing plan for your sites? Lots of pre-launch marketing? Wait until it has been launched and market?

Some of what I have done in the past to market other sites:
SEO
Article marketing
Pay per click
Digg, del.icio.us, etc...
Craigslist

Telly

I'd definitely wait until your site is developed before you start publicly marketing it. You don't want people to visit a site that is not ready yet, because they will most likely not return.

The first thing is to try and get people to the domain, give them a head up of what’s the over all service is and pitch them on giving you their email or name and email.

From that you want to get some press from bloggers in the mark, you can do this buy writing a nice press release and (for free) emailing it to any blogger you can find, as well as, trying to touch base with them and get it published. Don’t forget forums if you can get the link in their.

While that is happening you are building out the service, getting links, and growing the hype of the product. Time you get to launch your platform will be larger than when you started and you will be able to email all them people that joined your email list, every blogger that you emailed before including the ones that never posted about your product, and after that you throw in some paid reviews and maybe some other simple marketing ideas and call it a day.

gary223

I suppose your right. The worst possible thing I could do is turn off future users from visiting again. A few friends of mine have done contests and such to get visiters, what do you think of ideas like that?

Telly

Contests are alright but if you want thousands of hits than I suggest you give away a good prise. And unless you want to fake the whole thing then you're going to have to get a sponsor or spend money on a good prise.

Gino

1. Networking in you niche is very important, make friends so they can post about your site on their blogs and websites.

2. Link exchanges.

3. Set up a blog on your website if it isnt already a blog, because its easier to get traffic with a blog and then you can funnel the blog traffic to your main site.

4. Find cheap banner advertising on other sites.

5. Buy some stumbleupon.com traffic - 5 centers per click targeted traffic

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CORPORATE IDENTITY CREATION //GRAPHIC DESIGN BLOG // T SHIRT BLOG

Agilius

For me its:
1) Blog Comments with my link in them
2) Social Bookmarking Sites
3) SEO
4) Thousands of submission to directories
5) Link Exchange
6) Article Marketing and/or forum posting with my site in the signature
7) Contests

I never tried out all those 7 steps, I am currently at step 5 and 6 with my blog ( my first blog ) and things are going well.

I don't have any idea on how to promote a site that wasn't even made. Maybe for specific niches yes. Take for example Starcraft 2. The game isn't out yet, but everybody know it will show up next Christmas ( I think ).

MediaMisfit

I have a new venture still in the works as well. As far as pre-launch marketing goes I would just start by mostly researching. Research who you're going to advertise with and set everything up so that when your site launches your not trying to come up with marketing ideas. Develop a marketing calendar of what you want to accomplish and see how to use your budget to effectively accomplish that.

Planning ahead always benefits the marketing process than hitting the panic button at the last second and spilling a ton of cash into a channel with no ROI.

If your marketing is going to be strictly digital then read up on SEO and other digital marketing techniques.

Nothing compliments a low cost digital presence like face to face social marketing.