~ First of all, don't even think about promoting your
net pet adoption agency until you have it posted on
your website!  Get your pages going, then promote them ~

~ If you are a member of Geocities and have your website
with them, place a banner advertisement on their Banner
Exchange.  And remember, the more pages you have on
your website which have the Geoguide on them, the more
times your banner will appear on other people's pages ~

~ Place a banner advertisement with Link Exchange.
I don't recommend placing banner ads of this type with
more than two advertisers, as you can place one at the
top and one at the bottom of a page and they will not
intrude on what your page was designed to be.  More than
two becomes a clutter.  Geocities requires its members
to have either a "Geoguide" on their page/s (i.e. the ad
banner at this top of this page,) or a pop-up banner ad
(I find these to be VERY annoying when I'm looking at
Geocities websites who don't have the Geoguide.)  The
Geoguide is at least stationery and does not block the
view of the top of your page, whereas the pop-ups are
just a pest - and, for me, a dissuasion to look at the site
when every page has a pop-up ~

~ There are a number of sites where you can make basic
banners.  Run a search for "banners", "banners+graphics"
or "banners+make" on your search engine and check out the
results.   One link to a free banner service is:
www.bannercreator.nu
Keep your banners simple because Geocities and Link Exchange have limitations on the size and file type (.jpg/.gif etc) of banner
you can post.  You can get current information on this from
the sites themselves, as it's always best to obtain current
information directly from the source.  Remember, though, that
Geocities' services are for members only.  (Note: Link Exchange
offers links to sites which make banners for you, and Geocities
has a list of members who have offered their services to other
members to make free banners for the Geocities Banner Exchange.
Since you must have ad banners on your Geocities website,
either the Geoguide or the pop-ups, you might just as well have a
banner of your own circulating in that banner ad ring!) ~

~ Add your site to the net pet listing at
Candyland CyberAdoption Links
which lists net pets by type, so people can find what they're
looking for easily.  You would list Wee Wickets under the
"Dogs and Cats" category ~

~ Add a "signature" note to the bottom of all your e-mails saying
"Adopt A Wee Wicket!" and give the URL, so that people can go
see your site and adopt your Wee Wickets ~

~ Sign guest books! LOTS of them! Be sincere about it, don't
just say "Come visit me", because they very likely won't.  I
don't respond to that in my own guest book.  Make sure you
leave your banner in everyone's guest books when you do;
though be aware that some guest books don't allow HTML,
in which case you can still leave a pleasant message.  Check out
this site for good information on guest book etiquette:

~ Register your site with all of the big search engines, wherever
possible classifying your site under "cyberpets" or "pet adoptions".
Yahoo!, Lycos, Alta Vista, Webcrawler, Excite, Infoseek, Hot Bot
- these are just a few.  Most provide easy means of registering
your site, offering a form to simply submit your URL for them
to "spider".  But Yahoo! is a little more difficult.  They require
you to classify your site very precisely, and Bear Jests advises
on their Cyberpet Help Site that the exact classification for
Yahoo! is:
Science/Artificial Life/Online Examples/Virtual Pets/Virtual Adoption/.
At the bottom of the page for this classification you'll
find a link to "Suggest a Site", and this is where you register
your website.  Just follow the steps carefully, 1 through 4.
Make sure your Wee Wicket adoption centre is posted on your site
before you attempt to register with any of the search engines! ~

~ Do a search for other cyberpet adoption agencies and
see if they maintain lists of people who have adopted their pets.
If they do, and if they provide the URLs of the people on their
list, spend some time visiting the sites and signing the guestbooks
of those people, to see if they would be interested in adopting
one of your pets.  Don't bully them - just be pleasant and offer
your wares.  Remember, guest book etiquette ~

~ Join cyberpet webrings - there are several.  One of the 
largest webring servers around is www.webring.com, and if you
check out their Directory you'll find that they list many
categories of webrings you can join, including those for net
pet adoption agencies.  Don't join too many as
they will clutter your site - I try to make a feature of
the webrings I've joined and have given some of them
a page devoted entirely to them, giving information or
some incentive for others to join.  Check out my pages
for Net Sisters and Random Acts Of Kindness to see
what I mean.  Join webrings which have meaning to
you, and give them meaning on your site! ~

~ If you're really ambitious, start your own webring! ~

The more time you spend promoting your net pet adoption agency,
the bigger the reward in site traffic will be.  Again, check out
the site below for a lot of great information on net pet adoption
agencies, how to run them, what precautions to take, copyright,
and other good stuff!

Another excellent site for general information on website
design and registering your pages with search engines so that
they can find you, and some great HTML tips:

Dan's Web Tips

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