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Self-promoting and Talent Search Resources
Whether you are considering promoting your talents through the Internet or are looking for others to work with these are some good places to start.
- If your ISP (Internet Service Provider) does not offer you free/reasonably priced web space there are a number of places, which offer "free" web space to anyone. The biggest two are Geocities who offers 15 megs of space and Tripod, which offers up to 50 megs. The biggest difference between the two is Tripod allows commercial sites, whereas Geocities doesn't though you can probably get away with selling services through Geocities if it isn't the main focus of your page (and no one complains about it). It should be noted that various comic publishers have their site on Geocities.
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If you don't want to setup your own webpage there are a number of web sites that you post samples of your work. These are also good places to check out other artistic talents. Here are a few:
- Arch-Type Studios - Talent Pool. Here you will find resumes and links from various comic creators regardless of whether or not he/she is involved with Arch-Type.
- The Comic Ground: Part of N-Space's web site this offers a very well established site for creators to post bios and samples of their work. This is all database driven allowing easy searches through the listings, and instant updates and additions.
- If you are looking for artists or writers to work with there are a few places that post want ads. Check out the Comic Creator Ads, which are part of the Comic Web site. Some small press publishers looking for talent also have some ads listed here. Other places for ads include Digitalwebbing's Talent Search Page, World Famous Comics' Comic Book Classified, Comic Talent Search mailing list and Figma's Help Wanted forum. In addition you can check out the ads for the Comic Buyer's Guide online. In addition, you might find some success posting messages in the various newsgroups mentioned above.
- Another way to get regular traffic to your site is to have your updates listed at Digital Webbing. I know it has helped created traffic on my site.
- Anyone maintaining a web site with links will find this very helpful. NetMechanic is a free robot that will check all your links for you a send you back a report. This is a wonderful tool that makes checking for broken links a much easier item to do and is highly recommended.
- Also, important if you have your own webpage is letting other people know the page exists. Sending notices to the newsgroups and mailing lists mentioned above is a good start. Another is getting your page listed within search engines and directories. Going to each site individually can be time-consuming, however, there are a few places which ease this process greatly. Some of the major ones include Add Me. It offers free services, aiding in arranging for only a few dozen links, and commercial services, for setting up to a few hundred links. Obviously the more links you can get into your site the higher the traffic.
- Once you are linked to various search engines it is helpful to know your site's position and ranking. One very useful tool for doing this is Web Position, who offer a free trial version of their software.
