Hi everyone,
I am new to the forum here.

I am starting a Web Design company and don't have any funds to advertise. Do any of you have ideas on how I can get my company started. Right now I just have my labour power.

I do basic web design, graphics etc. I'm open to working for other designers doing subcontract work or being a webmaster.

I would appreciate any ideas and tips that you may have...

Gavin
www.monkeythink.com
gavin@monkeythink.com

Hello Gavin,

Checked out your portfolio, not bad for someone just starting out...

Ideas? I have none right now but when I put on my thinking cap, I am sure I can come out with something... at least!

__________________
J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Hi Gavin, welcome to GIDForums.

I had a mad idea that might just work see what you think. The most original idea I have is for you to offer your services for free on some sort of charity website whether it is national or International. Don't sniff at it, a friend of mine did some free consultancy for a charity and as "payment" (he wouldn't accept money) they leant him a Audi TT for a week.
Anyway, back to reality.
Submit some free template designs with your name on to http://www.oswd.org and http://www.freewebtemplates.com/ . There's loads more of these, but I reckon only 5 of them are really worth it. You could quite easily stick your portfolio on them all and people will either read them and delete them or in some cases check out the site and who knows.
One massively popular thing to do is create a decent free script and submit it to places like hotscripts and the like. In all these cases you will be getting webmaster traffic.

Something more entertaining though may be to submit funny pictures that you've made to http://www.b3ta.com, http://www.fark.com and http://www.worth1000.com/ with your website watermarked into them.

Hope at least some of this helps.

Rob

Hi again everyone,

Thanks alot for the tips.. Great ideas!
I will look into them. If anyone else has more ideas please post them.

Gavin
www.monkeythink.com
gavin@monkeythink.com

Let us know what you do and if your feeling generous what worked and what didn't.

Rob

This may be an obvious question, but what have you done in the way of attracting Search Engine, Directory and other such traffic?

You may also find using gtopsites useful...

__________________
J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

In its current state, the site wouldn't be legible to appear in Zeal since its a commercial venture, however and its a big HOWEVER it is possible for you to appear if you use some fair tactics. Going back to the suggestions I made if you provided a load of free templates on the site or some sort of webmaster tools or site scripts (not just one quite a few) for free, then personally I would have no problem adding that page to a category.
As for DMOZ well your talking about submitting to the biggest and most corrupt section of the whole thing and so maybe selecting much more specific and lowdown categories would be of benefit instead of waiting over a year or never for a listing.

Rob