What sites should I submit my startup to?

March 11, 2009 11:40 AM

I have almost finished development on an online classified site dedicated to bartering. It will launch at the end of April and I want to know what general submission / initial promotion sites I should use to get my name out there.

I think there are 4 general areas of submission (please correct me if I'm wrong)

1. Sites that are dedicated to startups/projects: MetaFilter Projects (duh), KillerStartups,, StartupNation,

2. Search engines (the link below has most of them listed)

3. Article Directories (also in the link below)

4. Newswires like PRNewswire and PRweb...although I have never used these companies they seem like the larger companies on my google searches. Once the site launches I was going to create a press release and submit it to these sites. I am looking for your guys suggestions in this press release area...

I have found this site that goes over the general pages for submission to search engines and article directories:

http://www.addme.com/newsletters/issue217.htm

Is this a complete good list to start with? Is there a better, automatic way of doing it? And what would be your suggestions for press releases?

I should mention I am obviously on a tight budget and only have nominal amounts of money to spend for submission/ initial promotion (under $1K). I can do the work myself

posted by schindyguy to computers & internet (2 answers total)

I also found this from http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53874....but does anyone have some other suggestions for initial startup promotion like this? If I am being stupid, please let me know so I dont waste more time :)

Search Engine Submission Pages:
http://www.google.com/addurl.html (for Google, Yahoo, and AOL)
http://www.altavista.com/addurl (for AltaVista)
http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php (for Lycos/Fast)
http://www.wisenut.com/submitsite.html (for WiseNut, LookSmart (assumed eventually) page taken down 24/6/2002)
http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request (Yahoo Search/Inktomi)
http://ask.ineedhits.com/ (AskJeeves, Teoma)

Directory Submission Pages:
http://dmoz.org/add.html (for DMOZ, Google, AOL, Others)
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ (for Yahoo Directory)
http://listings.looksmart.com/?synd=none&chan=lshomeft (For MSN, LookSmart, Altavista)
http://www.zeal.com (Free way into LookSmart for non-commercial sites)
http://www.goguides.org
http://www.joeant.com/
http://vlib.org/ (mostly educational sites)
http://www.wannalearn.com/ (educational sites)
http://libraryspot.com (primarily reference sites)
posted by schindyguy at 9:06 PM on March 11, 2009

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be offensive, but I don't know any other way to say this.

It is not 1997. Submitting your site to directories and search engines isn't really how online marketing works anymore. If you want exposure for your site, these days it's done through blogging, leaving conversational comments on other blog entries relevent to your site, social networks like Twitter and Facebook, and if you're very lucky, some kind of viral... something.

In terms of press releases, nobody is going to cover the launch of a site. Thousands launch every day. You need to find a specific angle for your release. I have a whole entry about how to do this and some example releases if that's useful. There's a serious recession afoot and your site is about bartering; it should not be hard to do.

I'd also directly, individually and one by one contact bloggers about your site with a very short, well-crafted introduction to your site. Obviously, concentrate on hand-building a list of relevent blogs - money saving, budgeting, off grid living, home schooling, that sort of thing.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:04 PM on March 12, 2009