The first step involves making a detailed (if not exhaustive) list of other companies/web sites related to yours. Now carefully formulate approach you are going to take to inform these companies of your existence.

You need to have some feature on your site that might benefit them, which becomes angle you will be using. (You should actually have these features on your site; please don’t lie just to get "angle.")

1. Have a links page. Institute your links first and then inform other sites. Obviously, you can’t link to 500 web sites, but you CAN email them, ask for more information about their company and tell them that you will consider a link to them (make sure that you do add some of these companies, or rotate your links periodically)

2. Write a monthly (or weekly) feature on a related company that is doing something new and/or exciting. Email a large selection of companies, tell them that you might like to feature them in future and ask for more information. (You can email them again when they are featured!)

3. If you feature/review/promote any type of product, you have an immense opportunity to contact hundreds, if not thousands, of companies for information. Most often you will have little trouble getting a response.

Every company loves to talk about itself, and have others in their industry acknowledge them as an important player. Even if your site is small, companies will value exposure you can give them. Your carefully constructed emails will not only stroke their ego, but will let them know who you are. You might develop a correspondence relationship with some, and those that benefit from your features will often help you in return. Others may return to your site periodically to see their feature.

So start sending those emails, but remember… it’s not about you, it’s about them!

Think of amount of email you reply to weekly; that's a lot of people who will receive your mini billboard. It works silently in background selling your site and services.

Signature lines are extremely important when posting to discussion boards and newsgroups. You can't just barge in and try to sell your products, but with a good signature line, you're doing it in an acceptable way when you post or reply to a message.

As in all of your advertising, try to pique readers' curiosity with your signature, so they want to click on your URL and find out more about you.

Promoting your website means getting your URL seen in as many places as possible, and signature lines are one avenue in that direction. If you need more help with composing your signature lines or configuring your email client try:

http://www.smithfam.com/news/june99r.html

http://www.earthlink.net/internet/email/signatures.html

Although this may seem pretty elementary, you'd be amazed to see amount of email I receive daily that's missing signature boat. If you've overlooked your mini billboard I suggest you create one now, because you never know when someone may ask to see your "John Hancock."