Site Promotion

 

The new site Pink Toffee offers free listings for multimedia companies; this onehas a difference though - it uses a quirky cooking theme so you add your company, or recipe, to their database so potential clients can search you out. The details you provide are ingredients; it's a nice original approch to an otherwise unoriginal concept. Let's hope this unique angle proves successful for the Pink Toffee team.

I've added Texelate - add yours now!

Well, it's been a long time coming but my portfolio site is finally launched.

The Leeds Web / Multimedia Design Studio is called Texelate (the name is based on the computer graphics term, texel) and features details of the services I offer and a selection of my recent work. I decided that it was too confusing to incorporate the commissions work on the Dr Quincy site so I've taken most of the Dr Quincy commissions text and consolidated it into this new site. I'll be changing the Dr Quincy commissions section soon and will set up some redirects to Texelate.

Version 2 of Dr Quincy will be solely my personal site and resource site - I'll change the layout to reflect this.

Enjoy.

I decided it was a good idea to create a portfolio site that is seperate from the main Dr Quincy site. The portfolio (should be live by tomorrow night) was fun to make and I learnt a few things along the way. On reflection there are a few tips I thought I could share with anyone in the same boat.

You can read the article, Online Portfolio Tips, here.

The article suggests six ways in which you can make your online portfolio better.

I thought I'd share this bit of information as it could to useful to tutorial writers. Obviously, you want as many organic hits to your tutorials as possible. With Google being the most popular search engine that's a good place to start.

Just through a bit of tutorial writing experience it's really easy to write a tutorial that gets to the top of Google in just a few days. Here's what you do:

Firstly, you need to make sure the tutorial you write is original. If you Google search some tutorials and there are hundreds of similar ones you need to rethink the subject matter of your tutorial. If this is the case you should think about an alternative subject even if you have your heart set on writing this one. If you do a search and deem your idea is original then you are already over the biggest hurdle.

At this point you need to write the actual tutorial. Let's say you've written it; you're only one step way from getting to the top of Google.

Next you need to get Google to find the tutorial by getting some good-quality links to it. It's all about quality and not quantity here so two or three links from high ranking sites are much better than fifty links from low ranking sites. I recommend you submit your tutorials to Pixel2Life and Tutorialized (and if the tutorial is Photoshop based Good-Tutorials.). Here is the important part: make sure the name you give the tutorial (in the title tag and h1 tag) and the name you use to submit the tutorial to other sites all match the keywords you originally entered into Google when you were doing your originality search. Now let's assume your tutorial has been accepted by a couple of these sites; Google loves sites like these and once your tutorial is accepted and linked to it will begin indexing your tutorial. Wait a few days (it may be up to a week) and then enter your keywords into Google and if everything has worked in your favour you will see your tutorial in the top spot. It will periodically fluctuate but that's the nature of the Google beast.

Of course for this process to work your tutorial must be of a good quality else it won't get accepted by the high profile websites. The trick is to find some keywords that a) people will search for and b) someone else hasn't used to write a tutorial yet.

I've submitted a lot of tutorials over the last three months - they're the primary way I get traffic to my website. I thought I'd share my views on the differences between what I regard as the three biggest players: Pixel2Life, Tutorialized, Good Tutorials.

Pixel2Life - Of the three sites Pixel2Life has the most comprehensive categories; as well as listing tutorials of the more popular programs and languages such as PHP and Photoshop it lists some lesser-known categories such as Fruity Loops and Autodesk Combustion. The more you submit to Pixel2Life the more you realise how professionally it is run. You can submit tutorials via a user account and view which of your tutorials are awaiting review. You can also elect to be notified by email if a tutorial is approved or denied. Furthermore, you are given a reason albeit a general one (e.g. too basic). Pixel2Life add tutorials on a half-hourly basis which means any of your tutorials that are approved will stay on the home page for a reasonable amount of time. The Pixel2Life team also take the time to review the title you've given your tutorial; they often change it by adding a few words here and there. Don't be put off by this - they always add more detail to your tutorial and it shows they've really taken the time to look it through. Pixel2Life is run by a team (although I don't know how many) of people who seem to do a great job at filtering out all the bad tutorials. The amount of traffic you get from Pixel2Life varies greatly on the subject matter; Photoshop will always bring in more than anything else.

Tutorialized - Tutorlalized was founded and is run by Kurt Schell. Kurt has put together a popular, all-round tutorial database that can generate good traffic for your website. The categories are not quite as exhaustive as Pixel2Life but they should serve the needs of most tutorial writers. Tutorials are submitted via a user account; although you can see the status of your tutorials whenever you log in there is currently no email notification system. Tutorials will show up as Pending until they are either Approved or Denied. I've got one that shows up as Broken, as in broken link, I've emailed Kurt to say the link is live but I've heard nothing back. Traffic-wise, Tutorialized is similar to Pixel2Life in that the amount of traffic you get depends on the category. Tutorialized is updated slightly less regularly than Pixel2Life - sometimes days will go before more tutorials are added. This makes Tutorialized somewhat a gamble - if you happen to get a tutorial on the front page prior to a period of inactivity you can find your tutorial on the home page for a few days. Conversely, if your tutorial gets added with lots of other it may not make it onto the home page at all.

Good Tutorials - Despite the generic name, Good Tutorials is Photoshop-only. Good Tutorials, or GT as it is affectionately known, will drive more traffic to your website on a per-tutorial basis than either of the other two. Like Tutorialized, GT is run by a single person, in this case Zach Holman. Zach has built up the largest Photoshop tutorial database available; considering it's a one-man show the site always has fresh content. I've yet to have a tutorial declined from Good Tutorials but I know of others that have. I get the impression Zach screens for quality rather than originality - although most of the content is original some searches yield large numbers of very similar tutorials. If you want some serious traffic GT is the one to submit to - when you make it to the GT front page you know about it! Such is the popularity of GT (it ranks number 1 for "tutorials" with Google at the time of writing) that once your tutorial leaves the home page you will still get a steady flow of traffic. You have to keep checking the site to see if your tutorial is listed - GT does notify you of tutorial approval or rejection.

Here are the links to the sites:

Pixel2Life
Tutorialized
Good-Tutorials