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The Best Way to Promote Your Site

SelfPromotion.com

by Charlie Morris

A friend of mine uses the term "Leatherman" to describe any great product, much as some people use the term "Cadillac." For those of you who don't know, a Leatherman is a small all-in-one tool, with all the features of a Swiss Army knife plus the ability to fold out into a pair of pliers. Actually, to be a "Leatherman" is better than to be a "Cadillac." Cadillacs are luxurious, but they have a price tag to match, and are not the most reliable or fuel-efficient of cars. A "Leatherman," however, is a product that is not only well-conceived and well-executed, but will serve you well for years at a bargain price.
July 10, 1999

The point of this rambling intro is that Selfpromotion.com is the Leatherman of auto-submission services. When you've got a Web site to promote, an auto-submission service can save you a lot of time, as you only have to enter your information once, and it automatically sends the info to your choice of search engines, directories, spiders and such. In fact, using Selfpromotion.com is even better than submitting to search engines and directories manually. It has a comprehensive list of all the major sites, and it automatically ensures that your submission conforms to their rules, makes it very difficult for you to make mistakes, and offers you a lot of valuable advice about site promotion to boot.

How much woudja pay for a slicer-dicer like this? However much you wish! Selfpromotion.com is a "share service," meaning that if you like it, you send in as much as you think it's worth. I myself even sent in some dough, and that's a major endorsement, since I firmly believe that my public-spirited punditry entitles me never to pay for any computer-related product or service. In other words, I'm as tight as a duck's wazoo, but I gladly shook loose some green for this one. According to creator Robert Woodhead, enough other folks agree with me that the site generates a tidy little income.

Selfpromotion.com leaves other autosubmitters like Submit-it and Add-it in the dust. Those are both very worthy services, but Selfpromotion.com has more features, is easier to use, and the price is whatever you deem right. Also, Selfpromotion.com only auto-submits to sites that it feels can effectively be done automatically. There are some sites that really need to be done manually, and Selfpromotion.com tells you exactly which ones. In fact, it gives you a lot of very useful information about site promotion, including some excellent tips on how to get listed in Yahoo (the most valuable, and one of the most difficult, things to pull off).

Here's how it works. The first time you visit, you set up a new account, which can contain several different Web site records. For each Web site record, you choose which sites you want to submit to, and enter the necessary information as needed. The sites to submit to are divided into logical categories: Search Engines, Major Indexes, General Indexes, Personal Indexes, Business Indexes, Shopping Indexes, Special Indexes, International Indexes, Adult-OK Indexes, New Site Indexes. This makes things a lot easier, as you can select just the types of sites that you need to submit to, and don't waste time with the ones you don't.

Once you've selected the category of sites that you want to submit to, you choose which individual sites within that category to submit to, and then fill in the required information about your site. Instead of making you enter all your info first, Selfpromotion.com only asks for data as it is needed. This is a great way to organize things - if you don't choose to submit to certain sites, then you don't have to enter any info that's specific to those sites. Saving time is what it's all about.

The difference between this and some other auto-submit services is that Mr. Woodhead has been very thorough about including all the information that you can include in your submission. Every little detail is there, so every submission will be just as cool as if you had done it manually. In the few cases where you need to go to the site itself to find the proper category, Selfpromotion.com sends you there and tells you exactly what you need to do.

If you make a mistake, for example entering an invalid URL, or entering too many words in a site description, the system will tell you exactly what you did wrong, and give you a chance to correct it. The system keeps track of eveything you've done, and tells you at a glance which sites have accepted your submission, which are pending, which you haven't submitted to, etc.

The help files are comprehensive and contain a wealth of great info. The database of sites is excellent, and is continually updated. There are also various additional promotion tools, including the Rankulator, Espionage, Keyword Diffuser, and other useful items.

The overall impression you'll get from this site is one of excellence and scrupulous attention to detail. Mr. Woodhead is a bit of a non-conformist (the site was developed on a Mac, programmed in WebSiphon, and is served by WebStar), but believe me, he's a perfectionist. Every aspect of Selfpromotion.com works perfectly. Truly the Leatherman of promotional tools. It costs you nothing to try it (or to use it as much as you like, if you don't choose to pay), so pop on over to http://SelfPromotion.com.

Charlie Morris is the managing editor of The Web Developer's Journal.
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