Friday, February 18, 2011

How to get your Web Comic Discovered with Fireviews

If you create a web comic, what you really want most is for people to see it and enjoy it. It's not really about the page views or selling the merchandise, it's about showing people your drawings and making them laugh. So by now you've drawn a few strips, set up a website to host them on, and showed it to a few people. They liked it, but not many people are getting to see them. Drawing a new comic every week, or every day, is a lot of hard work, especially if no one is getting to see them and appreciate them.

So where do you go to find potential new fans for your web comic? Fireviews. (www.Fireviews.com)
Fireviews lets you post any kind of content and make sure it gets viewed by lots of people. You could just as easily post your webcomics on other user content sites, but then no one would get to see them! You'd have just as much trouble sharing your comics with new people as on your own website. Fireviews works differently. Instead of forcing you to find your own fans, Fireviews makes sure your content gets viewed as much as you want it to. It's really easy, and it's all free. Basically, all you need to do is view other users' content too. Other users may upload their own web comics, music videos, blogs posts, you name it! You never know what kind of content you might discover while you are browsing Fireviews. Then for each thing you view, someone will view your own web comic. Even better, each person who views your comic will leave a comment and a rating. So you not only have a way to find new fans, but you get great feedback from all sorts of different people too. It's a great way to find out what people think of your artwork, what kind of people might be into it, and reach out to a ton of potential fans. Just think, if even half of the people who see your comic like it, they will each tell their own friends and your comic will spread far across the internet in the blink of an eye. The more views you earn on Fireviews, the more people get to see your comic. And earning views is really easy. Just leave your own comment on other profiles, and for each one you will get another view for your own profile. Or if you don't want to spend the time earning views manually, you can buy views in bulk for much cheaper than most normal methods of online advertising.

Here is how to get your web comics viewed on Fireviews, step by step:

  1. Sign up for an account. That's easy! Quick, free, and no hassle.
  2. Create your first profile. Just add a title and a description of your web comic. Whatever you want to catch Fireviewers' eyes. The best things to add would be your favorite comic strips to attract new readers (you can upload as many images as you want) and a link to your web comic website.
  3. Start earning views. If you're in a hurry you can buy views, but otherwise this is completely free. Just start browsing some of the other great profiles. At the bottom of each one, you will be asked to pick a rating and leave a short comment for each one. Then you'll get to see another one! For each profile you rate and comment on, you will earn another view. The best part about earning views this way is that it never gets boring. There is so much amazing content by other amateur artists and performers, you will constantly be discovering something great.
  4. Start getting viewed! Now you get to sit back and see how many new fans you can find for your web comic. Just check on your profile and read all your comments. You will be amazed at how many comments you can receive in such a short period of time.

There is no guarantee that they will all become regular readers, of course. That's up to you. If your web comic is creative enough and entertaining enough, they will definitely start to flock to it. Fireviews can give you the initial boost you need to get started finding your audience.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Playing Guitar and Getting Heard Online

   Learning to play the guitar is fun, but once you get good enough to perform you need to find people who will listen to you play. If you are not part of a band, it can be hard to find people who are willing to listen to your music. It's easy to record yourself playing and post it on Youtube, but how is anyone ever going to find your music? You can show your videos to your friends and family, but beyond them no one will ever find your videos. They will get buried under the countless other guitar videos on Youtube.

   This is where Fireviews can be really helpful. Fireviews can help you kickstart your Youtube guitar videos by getting them viewed as much as you want. If you need to show off your playing to 50 new people, you can easily earn the views for your youtube videos. Everyone who watches your video on Fireviews will leave a comment on your profile and give you feedback about how you can improve your playing. If you're really good already and they think you're going to be the next great rock star, they'll tel you how much they love it. Better yet, they'll tell all their friends about your video and your video will take off on its own.

   Getting started is the hard part, but Fireviews makes it really easy to get those first few views. Then if your guitar playing is good enough become popular, it will take off on its own. Good luck!

How my Music Videos on Youtube Became Popular

I create music videos for my band on Youtube. I play the bass, but I am also the only one in the group skilled with video editing. We uploaded our first video of our band playing our favorite song at a gig a few months ago. The video looked good and the band sounded great, but no one seemed to take notice. We only got 5 or 10 views in the first week, and they were mostly from our friends and ourselves, but we really wanted to get hundreds or thousands of views so our band could get famous quickly. Our second and third videos on Youtube went just as slowly.

The best thing we ever did for those videos was to post them on Fireviews. Everyone in the band made an account and started earning views. We each put a separate music video on our profile and started trying to get them viewed on Fireviews. Before we knew it, our views on Youtube of our music videos had doubled , and then tripled! We were getting dozens of views and a ton of feedback about our music. Everyone on Fireviews who watched our videos left a comment about them on our Fireviews pages. Some of those viewers must have really liked it and told a bunch of their friends, because even after we stopped using Fireviews our Youtube views kept going up. Fireviews really helped us get the word out initially, and our great music helped the videos spread from there.

Now we're getting a couple thousand views on each of our music videos. It's not exactly rock star status, but it's definitely better than when we started. We have a bunch of fans now, and we're working on our own band website for those fans. If you want to kickstart your fame, I would definitely recommend using Fireviews.

Getting your Artwork Discovered

The internet is a great place to show off your artistic creations. There are millions of art appreciators, all of which appreciate art in their own unique ways. That makes the internet like the world's biggest museum/art gallery. The problem is, there is so much art online, where do you start to show off your own? You want to be discovered as an artist, but unless you are already famous it is next to impossible to get noticed. Here are some ways to find the audience you deserve:


  • Find an Online Art Gallery Related to your Specific Form of Art
    There are some websites which will allow you to post samples of your specific medium. For example, if you are a painter, search for a website which will display amateur and professional paintings. If you are a musician, find a website that will show clips of your music. Even Youtube can be a good place to start.
  • Find your Own Audience on Fireviews
    Fireviews lets you get viewed until you find exactly the right kind of person. By posting pictures or videos of your artwork on Fireviews you can get helpful feedback from a lot of people very quickly. Soon enough, you will be able to find true appreciators of your artwork.
  • Create a Social Network "Fan Page"
    By creating a Fan Page on Facebook or a similar social network site, you can reach new fans and communicate with existing ones. This allows you to encourage your supporters to spread the word about your creations.
If you can think of more ways for artists to get noticed online, please leave your ideas in the comments.

How to Get Viewed Online

The Internet is an amazing tool for reaching huge audiences from all over the world, yet getting viewed online can be a daunting task. No matter what kind of content you are publishing, odds are there are a ton of other websites with very similar content already on the internet. That means that if you expect to reach those huge audiences immediately, you can forget about it. Whatever you create will be buried under all the other content that already exists. You may be able to reach a hand full of people at a time, but it will be difficult to ever reach those huge audiences that are out there. Here are some tips for pushing your content to as many people on the internet as possible:


  • Use FireviewsFireviews can be very helpful in getting your content viewed. The fact that it allows you to control exactly how many people see your content is a tremendous advantage over most other content sharing networks. Instead of leaving your views up to luck or the number of friends you have on your network, Fireviews puts you in control of how many views your content gets. The more time you spend browsing other users' content, the more yours will get viewed. Even if no one is interested in your content, it will at least get a chance to be viewed, and you will get valuable feedback on it.
  • Use Social Networks
    Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter can allow you to reach a large number of people very quickly. The downside is that they require you to know a lot of people on each network. Facebook needs you to have a lot of friends, and Twitter needs you to have a lot of followers. However, by becoming friends with many people on each of these networks, you can instantly communicate with them and share any content of yours.
  • Use Online Paid Advertising
    Sometimes your content is so valuable, you would rather pay to ensure that people see it. This can be quite expensive, ranging from a few cents to several dollars per viewer, but it can yield a lot of views very quickly. Google AdWords is an excellent example of paid internet advertising.
  • Write a Blog
    Writing a blog can be a great way to share your content with the internet. As long as you have something interesting to share with the internet, people can usually find it on blogs through search engines or through blogging networks. The problem with relying on search engines is that if no one is searching for your content it may never get found.
  • Finally, Just Tell your Friends!
    If all else fails, and you still need people to see your content, just show it to your friends. If they like it, they will surely pass it on to more of their own friends. Then those friends will pass it on to more friends, and before you know it the entire internet will have heard of it. This is what is known as content "going viral." However, for something to go viral it needs to be incredibly interesting, which is very difficult to achieve given the massive quantities of information on the internet competing with your own.

Hopefully this will help you get started with getting your own content viewed on the internet. If you can't get viewed, don't give up hope. And remember, the most important part of making popular content is to create something valuable and interesting that the users of the internet will enjoy.