If you owned Pixel2life, where would you advertise it?

The magazine idea is very good. Try putting some in gaming magazines too! i mean i'm a part-time gamer and part-time designer. I'm sure plenty of other pc gamers would love to be part of P2L. I also second the ideo to advertise on battle.net! Over 500,000 people use it a day and the advertisements are clicked all the time! The MySpace idea is pretty good too as so many people go on MySpace nowawdays and i'm sure you'll find plenty of designers wanting to join P2L!

Adding a proper download manager, Art Gallery, Resource Center and maybe even Blogs to Pixel2Life to increase member participation and the word will spread P2L has it all (btw IPB has all of these components and they are a simple install that fits into the sites look no skinning nothing) I use them at 13 if you want to test them out.

Personally, I feel that even with just the Toplist there's too much weight placed on IPB around Pixel2life. Now you have TWO coders, and 1-2 others that are working on smaller 'google ad' sites I feel that you could code any of these features yourself - and to use IPB mods would simply put more focus away from the main site and onto the forums.

Adding a proper download manager, Art Gallery, Resource Center and maybe even Blogs to Pixel2Life to increase member participation and the word will spread P2L has it all (btw IPB has all of these components and they are a simple install that fits into the sites look no skinning nothing) I use them at 13 if you want to test them out.

Personally, I feel that even with just the Toplist there's too much weight placed on IPB around Pixel2life. Now you have TWO coders, and 1-2 others that are working on smaller 'google ad' sites I feel that you could code any of these features yourself - and to use IPB mods would simply put more focus away from the main site and onto the forums.

Could you imagine if Pixel2Life had their own coded Forum - can see now all the comments that would turn up in the most strangest places saying the coding is bad.

Adding a proper download manager, Art Gallery, Resource Center and maybe even Blogs to Pixel2Life to increase member participation and the word will spread P2L has it all (btw IPB has all of these components and they are a simple install that fits into the sites look no skinning nothing) I use them at 13 if you want to test them out.

Personally, I feel that even with just the Toplist there's too much weight placed on IPB around Pixel2life. Now you have TWO coders, and 1-2 others that are working on smaller 'google ad' sites I feel that you could code any of these features yourself - and to use IPB mods would simply put more focus away from the main site and onto the forums.

Could you imagine if Pixel2Life had their own coded Forum - can see now all the comments that would turn up in the most strangest places saying the coding is bad.

My issue would simply be, why re-invent the wheel? The IPB systems works great, why change it? I think we could put the efforts of the programmers to better used, especially with their very limited time now that they are back in school or just about to be. I don't think there's anything wrong with a heavy focus on the forums, I'm all for developing a larger and more active community, but there's always over 10 times more guests that members on the site at any given moment, and you can bet they are using the tutorial areas, not the forums. In fact, the forums aren't even in the top viewed areas of the webstats stats yet.

Anyhow, I am looking for ad specific solutions right now, not what to add or remove to the site to generate traffic... that's an entirely different discussion. Jay - if you read this, what was that high end tutorial site/blog you showed me once where they are ubber specific about who advertises with them? I can remember the link.

Dan

I think I may have phrased it wrong or you guys may have read it wrong... I meant code the additions yourself into the site - and not use IPB mods. Thus bringing more value to the site itself (which as you said, is mostly used so will have the new features used more).

Edited by Jay, 13 August 2006 - 09:57 AM.

I think I may have phrased it wrong or you guys may have read it wrong... I meant code the additions yourself into the site - and not use IPB mods. Thus bringing more value to the site itself (which as you said, is mostly used so will have the new features used more).

Ah ok, that makes sense... yeah that's what will probably happen anyhow because the IPB mods usually have some kind of limitation or it's just not quite right or something along those lines... the topsites thing is a great example... Neil ended up re-writing the entire security backend to it for us because the old security was... well... non existent lol! And that was just a small app. It's probably safe to say the bigger and more significant the mod, the more things that won't be quite right it'll have and require customization and coding added to it.

The other factor is I don't want to rely too much on IPB for stuff outside the forums because their large updates tend to cluster fuk the entire system. So the more I put on the IPB system, the more stuff I risk breaking when a major update is released.

So yeah, I see exactly what you mean and I agree.

Dan

The other factor is I don't want to rely too much on IPB for stuff outside the forums because their large updates tend to cluster fuk the entire system. So the more I put on the IPB system, the more stuff I risk breaking when a major update is released.

Exactly

I think I may have phrased it wrong or you guys may have read it wrong... I meant code the additions yourself into the site - and not use IPB mods. Thus bringing more value to the site itself (which as you said, is mostly used so will have the new features used more).

Ah ok, that makes sense... yeah that's what will probably happen anyhow because the IPB mods usually have some kind of limitation or it's just not quite right or something along those lines... the topsites thing is a great example... Neil ended up re-writing the entire security backend to it for us because the old security was... well... non existent lol! And that was just a small app. It's probably safe to say the bigger and more significant the mod, the more things that won't be quite right it'll have and require customization and coding added to it.

The other factor is I don't want to rely too much on IPB for stuff outside the forums because their large updates tend to cluster fuk the entire system. So the more I put on the IPB system, the more stuff I risk breaking when a major update is released.

So yeah, I see exactly what you mean and I agree.

Dan

Toplists/Topsites is not coded nor supported by IPB that's a 3rd party mod and well you take the highest risk installing any non supported 3rd party mods.

Mods are also a little outdated it's all components now and a 100% easier to install and maintain.

But anyways back to the original topic before you have a attack.

How about myspace? It seems to be the most popular thing nowadays. Why not create an account for P2L and post artwork, pictures, etc. I would also try Google Video and You Tube. Create some funny videos or animations that show P2L and include a link to the P2L website. For example, have someone dress up as a "pixel" and hatch from an egg or something!

The other factor is I don't want to rely too much on IPB for stuff outside the forums because their large updates tend to cluster fuk the entire system. So the more I put on the IPB system, the more stuff I risk breaking when a major update is released.

Exactly

Not exactly true. If you do the upgrades by hand it'll work and if your too lazy to do that then you just need to redo the edits for the mod in the files that were updated.

Anyway, If I owned P2L I would print out like 5000 flyers and put on it "Free Hammertime! Use this coupon at any P2L store or at www.pixel2life.com and get your FREE hammertime!"

http://www.federatedmedia.net/ is also worth a try looks pretty good actually.

SPAM, always the way to go is SPAM. Well if you want to lose people..

SitePoint it only costs $1000 a month I think. Although you can get traffic through PR and IBL so the more people you get linking to you the better.

You could advertise at dynamicdrive.com, its a site that has free DHTML scripts. Maybe P2L and DD and become affiliates or partners or whatever you may call it.

Guerilla marketting: Find out the closest Graphic Design specialist colleges and university (and if you want secondary schools/high schools). Flyer & sticker the place like hell.

Viral marketting: Viral marketting is something which alot of people would feel compelled to share (e.g funny videos & pictures).


Really if your considering heavy duty advertising you need to do alot of research. Find out where potential users hang about, their age, their gender and their education.

Also might be a nice idea to ask the community how they found the website to see what your current best marketting approach is (if you havn't already).

BTW: Do some more search engine optimization or something, if you search "photoshop tutorials" on google pixel2life.com is on the 5th page! (I would have thought it would have come up first as I consider it bigger than both good-tutorials and absolute cross).

Hope all is well,
- Adam

Edited by GCORE, 05 September 2006 - 01:40 PM.

I think google is probably the best place to hit. Although it may set you back a rather large sum of money I think it may be worth it in the end.

SPAM, always the way to go is SPAM. Well if you want to lose people..

Spam is a BADBADBAD idea. Greycobra recently had a spam issue, lost quite a few members as a result.

I don't think it would really be a stretch to get P2L advertised on Adobe.com, you host Adobe Photoshop tutorials which may attract even more people to use the software if not only to create what your hosted tutorials have shown they can do.

if i owned p2l and was advertising i send leaflets to the unis and collages that do courses in the stuff offered on p2l, that way i would hit the target market, i would never spam anyone! i hate reciving it, it really gets me down when my only email is trying to sell me stuff

Nice and interesting idea youve got there.

I'd advertise it on places such as yahoo (if its possible, not overall sure) but, when I get my site and stuff back up and running, ill pm you Dan for a link to your banner and advertise it for free.

make sure P2L url is in the top when anyone tries to google "photoshop" or "tutorial" or whatever..