[Visual]

If you think that using their service helps you, then by all means you should use it. I've noticed that they have people conditioned to believe that you're not a whole site unless you adopt their service. It's sort of the same pressure and mind control that cults use. Why is it not ok to not have it?
My real concern is paying certain people to pull others in who will never profit in any way from it. Facebook has a problem with selling all information of it's users for profit. Why wouldn't you want to sell it yourself so you can profit? Do you think it's right for them to profit and not you?

[kuroneko]

Well for me that is not the case and I don't plan on engaging you in an argument. If you think a shady corporation like Facebook, Twitter or Google are planing on taking over the whole word by launching something shady good-to-be-true service which is in fact a nuke that will wipeout the whole world then you are in bad luck my friend.

And as I mentioned before, I avoid Facebook because of their privacy policy.

And I think you should focus that energy of yours in your website's design. Good luck!

[ShocK]

Isn't the profit gained from using facebook more visitors to your site for free, it's not like you have to put a link on your site to facebook. All you have to do is make a facebook page with a link to your site. If/when facebook goes the way of myspace then what have you lost?

[Doug Lochert]

Nobody is asking, or suggesting that anyone "succumb" to the internet giants. I myself rarely visit places like FB and I have never tweeted or even been interested in what others tweet...lol

But that goes without saying... I have been developing websites since the early 1980's. I have clients that I develop sites for and the main interest of those clients is to get their websites recognized and viewed (traffic). Before FB, it was pretty much a golden rule to NEVER post, advertise or even mention your own website on "Others" websites. Much like, I would assume, 000webhost might be upset if I were to advertise my own webhosting company here on their forums. I can understand and accept those "old" rules but needless to say, getting visitors to our websites was VERY difficult and rare.

However, it is the age of the internet and social media. I for one was astonished when FB allowed us fellow web developers to SHARE our websites with others through their website, and since then any website I have developed (and shared with fb users) has recognized mass volumes of visitors, due to the fact that FB has a user base of millions. I dont even have to visit FB to get that traffic, I merely have to add a SHARE button on my website, and when clicked by visitors to my site they are doing my marketing for me, by sharing it with all of their friends.

Places like myspace had a completely different business model, nothing compared to that of fb's business model. Myspace simply gave people a place to build a web presence, personal space.... but not so much ease of access, by sharing with social groups. Your myspace page, unless you were a successful marketer, never would realize mass volumes of visitors. FB changed that, as their business model was planned to bring in mass volumes, and in doing so they were very wise in allowing us to share offsite content, which in turn brought in even more users.

If FB and Twitter want to pay celebrities to frequent their sites, which may bring in more users then who am I to complain? It isn't hurting my web presence, instead it only increases my web presence and it doesn't cost ME anything!

I will end this with one last point:
Prior to social media... my web development projects barely saw any traffic. This one and only fact made it seem unreasonable for me to even try to build sites... as I was the ONLY viewer to enjoy them. Since FB, all of my websites now enjoy hundreds of viewers every week.

I also track visitors to my sites so I can target audiences better etc. To do this we must know where visitors come from, who sent them etc. and it is extremely apparent that FB and Google are my number one advertisers. On the average day I might get 6-12 users from Google search, and 20 - 30 viewers from FB. And I don't even visit FB, they do the work for me!

Note: If you are so hesitant to grab hold of the social media/marketing wave, then why would you post your website here on these forums for review? Are you not in fact now advertising 000webhost, adding to their profit margins? In effect, we are all giving them something for nothing, by developing websites here, and by posting in their forums we are now advertising "their" service making them money, and NOT making any ourselves. When does it end? When we can all grasp the tiger by the tail, and realize the nature of the web. If we plan to succeed online, and subsequently gain enjoyment from what we do, whether that be monetary gain or mere personal pleasure, we must all learn how to be seen, else we fall into the deep depths of the internet and are lost, wasting our time and effort in an ever growing web, competing against the giants which without the funding is a losing battle.

I for one only want to take some of their hard earned money is what I say...

[Visual]

Let me just add that i'm not mad. It's hard to get a feel of what somebody is writing without seeing them. Maybe that's why I don't like communicating with texts. Skype looks promising. If I wrote an article or blog I would probably use those pools of people, but that's not my case. The people who visit and download my images do use those venues, so in a way it already helps me. I'm constantly amazed that I have averaged 10 thousand page views per month. Impressions are always believed to be actuall hits, but they aren't. That's just using certain popular keywords.
My goal is to help our hosting people 000webhost and others who help me. I have no reason to help people that don't impact my life. That's called dedication.

[kuroneko]

@Visual Maybe you should double check those figures...

+1 @Doug

[ShocK]

10,000 individual IP hits a month is rather alot, I'd be thinking of using adsense on the site.
The site refreshing every few seconds isn't being counted is it? (dumb question, but thought I'd ask )

[Doug Lochert]

It is impossible to ascertain a writers "feelings" indeed, thus it's probably better not to even try. We can only take the merit from what said writer is trying to convey, and that is quite easy to do. It's either hogwash in which case one must simply move on and not give it a second thought, or it has merits and we can take from that what we wish to take, nothing more.

I would be quite surprised if any of my sites warranted 10,000 unique visitors each month, and if they did I would then be very suspicious as to where they were all coming from and why? I used to see things like that back when IRC, ICQ etc were the norm venus for hackers and phishers etc and it was never a good thing in my experiences. If this is true, I would be concerned that 10k visitors sounds an aweful like bandwidth leeches perhaps?

I wasn't aware that Skype was an actual marketing tool. Although it can be used to communicate/chat with your own group of friends it has never done me any good so far as mass marketing my websites on the www.

Word of advice:
Don't limit yourself or your market. You do have alot to offer.
Get Google ranking by allowing yourself to expand (backlink) EVERYWHERE!
You will not get any decent search engine placement unless you learn how to backlink your web projects. This includes networking with social media places like Google, Google+, Bing, Facebook, Alexa, Twitter etc. Regardless of the "small amount" of income this may bring them, it is the only way we as developers can even begin to realize our own successes and/or profits online. Just like running a business in real-life, if we hide in our basement nobody will ever know about us, so we must get out there and tell the world about what we do. The more networking you do, the better your traffic will get and I'm sure you will appreciate that, perhaps even make a dollar or two of your own, and doing it off the backs of those business/internet giants.

[Visual]

That's exactly what i'm getting. I use a cloud service which registers actual clicks and openings. Their tracking system is much better than what adsense used to have. I don't use them because I don't want to give most of any possible ad clicks to them. I look to build personal relationships where people want to pay me directly without some ad agency taking almost all of the profits. That's basically what has been happening to all of the smaller site owners. They make $2 when you get .05 cents

I hate bragadocious people, but look at the proof. This is nowhere near my peak, it has just made a level here for over a year.

[kuroneko]

I think I need new glasses. 2,128 regular traffic | 472 unique visitors font's looks blurry to me...