November 7, 2004

11:30 AM

I am the "neighbourhood geek" where I live, and so end up giving away a lot of free tech support. I am perfectly happy to do so, and now plan to start up my own web site where I dispense knowledge I have recently been asked for to the world. Kinda like "SlashDot... for dummies".
If the site gets sufficiently popular I may place some Google ads on it, but first I need to get my site "out there" and so I need to advertise, which I am willing to spend a few currency units on. I was going to use Google AdWords, but I'm really useless at picking keywords.
Are there better places to advertise, based on the target audience (non-geeks and wannabe-geeks) of my site?
posted by Mwongozi to (3 comments total)

If you look at _how_ someone in your intended audience is actually going to look for help, it's probably hard to beat Google as a way to reach out for them...if they don't have a well-formed idea of how to take care of their computer, they probably don't have a well-formed idea of how to search for help.

They're almost certainly not going to have a stable of dedicated sites like yours, where they're already looking at for that kind of info. They're most likely to go to Google, type in some keywords that kind of describe their problem, and go from there.

With that in mind, while you might look at AdWords like "novice technical help", you might also look at the typical problems your audience is likely to be looking for help on, and buy some hits off of those as well.
posted by LairBob at 1:36 PM on November 7, 2004

Overture has a free tool that helps find keywords.
posted by yerfatma at 2:23 PM on November 7, 2004

Try plugging it on public forums. (Sorry, that's not helpful and was a well-meant joke.)

I would think you'd need to focus your site on either a few specific topics or, like LairBob said, advertise it as help for novices and the ignorant. Easy explanations, walk-throughs, layman's terms, etc.

It sounds like a great idea, though. HelpForAOLers.com?
posted by MrAnonymous at 8:35 PM on November 7, 2004