Total Followers 132,503
It started very long time ago (to be exact December 27, 2008), when I created my first promotional article with 40 promotional links in it. Then I was just starting and I was excited, there exist such things like user news and sites like DesignBump or DesignFloat.
Time passed, and I needed to update my article, add more links, delete old ones because I have been promoting EVERY article in these sites. Now this promotional article consists of 70 sites, but again I wasn’t sure how all links work – I mean how much traffic they return. And now you will hear why this article is so outstanding and extremely valuable for every design-related blogger! Since I’ve been submitting all my article on those sites this whole time, I have also very precise statistics based on several months.
Now I completely reviewed whole article and here TOP 53 sites are arranged in ascending order – from the most valuable websites to less ones. Unique visit count and information is based on my Google Analytics latest 3 months statistics. At the end I added several new and unverified but promising promotional websites.
Needless to say I will update this article regularly, so be sure to bookmark it for later reference! This is really assured list because I’ve tested it and I can tell – these sites really deliver impressive traffic! If you need that traffic – go ahead and take it now! I give you tools, you just need to realize them in the same way I did!
StumbleUpon is no different – you need a lot of friends, good network to bring traffic. But if you have that all, again it totally pays off 10 times. You should have few powerful stumbler friends as well, who could discover or maybe even share your stories – returning you with easy traffic in that way!
Certainly not easy traffic, but when you get the first time of Digg FrontPage you will never doubt it’s power and beautiful traffic income source. Building community takes a lot of time, so be sure you build contacts with few power diggers in your niche.
*Updated: in the next day, when I published this article SM and Noupe took off their user news and now there are only SmashingNetwork news in sidebar, so for most of us, this traffic isn’t available more.
Since now SM owns Noupe, their design news are now tied together. This number is not so accurate because I am on SmashingNetwork and get traffic from their features as well, but certainly worth submitting – 2 in 1!
Seems like now Twitter is getting even more popular as it is – if it is possible! It’s good to have powerful account or powerful friends with big networks to share your links with.
If your links will be accepted in this site, you will get serious traffic regularly! This site is my big discovery, I was surprised how valuable it is and what kind of traffic it can deliver.
You need here to think seriously about community building or fan page, because it can really be good traffic income source.
You need to submit in those 3 sites articles one by one, because spam filter somehow work between these sites, I mean if all three pages are open you need to refresh page to get valid CAPTCHA numbers.
I will add here constantly new websites I will find or our readers will suggest and test it myself so I can drop out worthless sites out and put great websites higher in main list.
If you know more VALUABLE promotional sites or links, where we could submit articles, let us know and I’ll consider about showcasing that site as well here!
Get The Only Freelancer crash course you will ever need to read!
Dainis Graveris is 23 years old blogger and designer, founder of 1stWebDesigner, now more silently managing everything behind the scenes. He usually hangs out in Twitter tweeting design related links and chatting with people. If you have any questions or feedback that's the best place to start! Cheers!
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 13:56
Great list, I’m a designer over at Ladbrokes and I have to say that psd tuts+, net tuts+ and vector tuts are fabulous resources, gave me some great creative techniques to work with, particularly psd tuts+.
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 18:37
We virtually thank you for blog post. You can find lots of tactics we could place it to decent use by means of no effort promptly and savings. Thank you really with regard to helping result in the post react to many concerns we now have experienced prior to this.
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 18:34
I believe in this specific page, keep writing! It’s actually unusual that i can discover these a dynamic discussion of which drives my personal curiosity. The up-to-date data is mainly highly preferred. You fellows seriously seem to know what you’re talking about. This is because of everyone that your chosen internet conversations such as these maintain to keep their reliability. Appreciation for article!!! The text I obtained from these reports really assisted me out!
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 10:12
Very useful article, thanks! I’ll look into the use of StumbleUpon and Digg :)
Saturday, August 27th, 2011 08:41
Now I just need to get my but in gear and design my site better to feel like I can submit my site to all these. Thanks!
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 10:29
I still dont know how to derive traffic from Stumbleupon :(
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 14:55
Nice list thanks.
Monday, March 21st, 2011 16:18
This is a great list, I would have never thought of some of these sites as a means to increase web traffic.
Saturday, December 4th, 2010 23:35
Great guide Dainis. I really found helpful how much traffic you received from each site. Thanks!
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 21:01
Thanks for sharing such great resource was searching for such websites for while. Thanks
Sunday, February 28th, 2010 05:48
Nice collection of resources. There are a couple of sites that I didn’t even know existed, thanks for the heads up. Looks like I have a bunch of more reading to do. Thanks.
Sunday, February 7th, 2010 11:32
Great list. Even though I live in Denmark some of them are useful for me. Thank you :-)
Saturday, February 6th, 2010 02:43
You forgot a really good one, http://zero3computers.com/user-submitted.php, they let you submit a community link without signing up.
Monday, February 1st, 2010 17:25
heyy
thankss sure… :)
Friday, January 29th, 2010 19:36
very good info, I think I need to register at all that the websites. :D
thank
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 17:16
awesome tghis is v interesting to me – I try to submit to teh top 20 that bring traffic – I’m only just working out which ones do – Do you post to all of them?
best ben
@ lars hello
Sunday, January 17th, 2010 18:57
Awesome list. I just started new blog, and your article sure help me a lot.
Subscribed!! :-)
Friday, January 15th, 2010 17:29
you can include mine in the list if you want : http://designartwall.com/news/
thanks for the share..
Friday, January 15th, 2010 12:05
Nice list there, some new sites i’d not seen and some old faces. Thanks :)
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 15:26
thx for this Wonderful info! I’m gonna submit my article to all of this website! Thx a lot Dainis! Nice knowing you! I mean your website…
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 05:50
Wow a lot of these I never heard of which is great so I can now take advantage of more sites to try and gain more traffic. Thanks so much!
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 02:33
Hi Dainis,
that’s such a great list of awesome websites where we will be able to engage with our audience and add value.
Thanks a million, the team at advisor websites
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 03:57
Just created a design news website check it out!
http://webtoolnews.slinkset.com/
Monday, January 11th, 2010 14:45
This is Truly Amazing,once you get listed on all these high traffic sites, you can expect some terrible traffic.
Thanks Dainis 4 sharing.
Monday, January 11th, 2010 12:02
emm, a good list .
I don’t know SmashingMagazine and Twitter cna gain so much traffic! cool!
Monday, January 11th, 2010 09:35
Hey thank you for the list, most of site is still unknown for me. Well if all provide dofollow link I will definitely join them.
Monday, January 11th, 2010 07:17
This is Ultimate!
Congrats!!!!!!
Monday, January 11th, 2010 13:37
nice, comprehensive list. few sites i’d not come across before!
Monday, January 11th, 2010 04:46
Wow, great article. I never took networking seriously until after I graduated, which is too bad, because now I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of opportunities. This is a great place to start.
Monday, January 11th, 2010 04:01
Great list. I dont use, but now, i have a few new sites to reed :P.
thank you
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 00:32
I must admit that this collection of sites and the content on this post is truly helpful. Great collection!
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 07:05
The biggest problem I see with your site, it’s not how many aggregators you submit to, it’s the quality of your own content. All I see here is lists of “top 50 xyz” and it has absolutely no value. If all I want is lists, I can browse Delicious like everyone else.
Less quantity, more quality. That’s what drives a good site. The traffic will come, so long as there’s rich content to be delivered. Anyone can compile an obvious list of popular sites, even a mindless PHP script could accomplish this with ease. Instead, write about your own experiences, focus on something you have a passion for, a topic you can examine in-depth; be an expert at something, then share that wisdom. If you want to drive traffic and make money, you have to offer something of value. Right now your head is full of lies from reading “money making blogs” like Shoemoney and Chow and Kiyosaki, and you’re just adding to the background noise.
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 12:56
I’d have to disagree. It’s personal preference. Personally I think list sites can be really useful and saves people the trouble of having to find good resources on their own- I started my own blog for the reason that I could organise good resources into lists instead of having huge bookmark folders.
On the other hand, I’m not into blogs with a lot of writing or personal diaries. Sure, what they write about may be useful to a lot of other people out there, but to me, it’s mostly general advice that’s common sense. Neither am I interested in a page-long post about a person discussing their personal values when it comes to freelance work for example.
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 13:46
Interesting comment – about list posts there have been a lot of discussions already why blogs compile such posts and why they are so popular.
If you’re thinking that this blog is inspired by some background noise, how comes it’s one of the biggest in world with 1.5 million uniques monthly? How much for background noise now – if we would do a bad job here, we won’t get such attention and I don’t think you see here too many affiliate,promotional articles, I would say you see them pretty rarely, but you’ll still complaining.
Show you can do better job and then talk – however of course I agree always quality can be increased. But that doesn’t come easily, it’s really tough work and while we are improving I still think you could show some appreciation.
Cheers to that!
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 21:04
It’s funny to still see Digg on these kinds of lists. Not to say Digg is completely out of fashion and nobody uses it anymore, but it really is overrun with crappy spam articles and things not even interesting.. not to mention the FP traffic isn’t even that great anymore.
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 03:06
Thanks a lot for this seriously interesting post. I know it has been quite an effort to create it! Also thanks for including tripwiremagazine.com – great to hear that others in the community actually benefit from contributing with links on my site!
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 16:41
Bookmarked! Thanks for this fantastic list… Will definitely help budding bloggers to promote their interesting articles. Appreciate your efforts in putting these together. Thanks!
-Deepu
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 00:37
Thank you for including graphicmania in this wonderful list :)
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 06:56
Thanks Dainis for including my WhoFreelance.com here!
I know the reason why you put Whofreelance here is your submissions will be display in both of my website aext.net and whofreelance.com. Some people still did not realize it yet, but when articles were submit to whofreelance also got a good traffic from my blog aext.net.
Thanks again and hope you are doing well with your awesome blog!
Cheers.
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 14:35
Thanks for an awesome list, definitely something I will bookmark and use again and again.
I love that you take the time to add banners for each site, it really builds extra value for me when reading through the list.
Here is an idea for the future:
*Add sorting buttons at the top of the list(could be simple links actually) so your visitors can get the list sorted on other things than traffic.(simply to recycle the work you have done)
What do you think?
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 01:14
Good article. help me to do marketing for my website.
Friday, January 8th, 2010 23:15
Good to know, I’ve been trying to figure out how to promote my design blog better…I’ll definitely be putting these to use now..
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 05:41
great list of website you have here. I have to try some of them out :)
Friday, January 8th, 2010 21:14
Excellent and helpful list dude. Thanks. There’s quite a few sites I’ve never come across before.
Friday, January 8th, 2010 18:25
Thanks for including Designussion.
I have a list myself that i like to submit too but this is just outstanding.
Will defo be using this, thank you.
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 00:13
Wow, thanks for sharing.
It took me some time to figure out which sites helped bring the most traffic and finally coming to the conclusion that Digg and Stumbleupon were gold mines. I’ve had sites indexed and ranked in the top 20 for a key term in a matter of hours from both of those sites.
Beyond your top 5, I haven’t been aware of most of the sites you listed — so again, thank you.
*Bookmarked and looking forward to the updates!
Friday, January 8th, 2010 23:53
Facebook?!? If anything, Facebook is the reason why many Design entrepreneurs are struggling. You can’t customize your Facebook page, so you can’t hire a web designer to code it for you. Therefore, no promotion with your trademark designs.
Also, Twitter should be #1. If it wasn’t for Twitter, none of the other sites would get any recognition. I wouldn’t even read this article if it wasn’t for Twitter.
Overall, this article is a disappointment in hard hitting facts, but I did find sites to look through.
Friday, January 8th, 2010 15:51
thanks for adding my site :D #49 . and cssglobe,cssdrive,blogfreak are new to me, and he is really help and advise for new bloggers, | one of my inspiration blogger
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sriganesh
Friday, January 8th, 2010 15:51
thanks for adding my site :D #49 . and cssglobe,cssdrive,blogfreak are new to me, and he is really help and advise for new bloggers, | one of my inspiration blogger
kevin
Monday, January 11th, 2010 02:36
and…. http://www.queness.com :)
mupet
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 02:42
Thanks Dainis for including my blogfreakz.com
Ashley
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 00:32
I must admit that this collection of sites and the content on this post is truly helpful. Great collection!
daniel
Monday, January 11th, 2010 04:01
Great list. I dont use, but now, i have a few new sites to reed :P.
thank you
Francis Baptiste
Monday, January 11th, 2010 04:46
Wow, great article. I never took networking seriously until after I graduated, which is too bad, because now I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of opportunities. This is a great place to start.
Tanmi Gold
Monday, January 11th, 2010 14:45
This is Truly Amazing,once you get listed on all these high traffic sites, you can expect some terrible traffic.
Thanks Dainis 4 sharing.
Allen
Monday, January 11th, 2010 12:02
emm, a good list .
I don’t know SmashingMagazine and Twitter cna gain so much traffic! cool!
chandan
Monday, January 11th, 2010 09:35
Hey thank you for the list, most of site is still unknown for me. Well if all provide dofollow link I will definitely join them.
cchana
Monday, January 11th, 2010 13:37
nice, comprehensive list. few sites i’d not come across before!
Chethan
Monday, January 11th, 2010 07:17
This is Ultimate!
Congrats!!!!!!
Billco
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 07:05
The biggest problem I see with your site, it’s not how many aggregators you submit to, it’s the quality of your own content. All I see here is lists of “top 50 xyz” and it has absolutely no value. If all I want is lists, I can browse Delicious like everyone else.
Less quantity, more quality. That’s what drives a good site. The traffic will come, so long as there’s rich content to be delivered. Anyone can compile an obvious list of popular sites, even a mindless PHP script could accomplish this with ease. Instead, write about your own experiences, focus on something you have a passion for, a topic you can examine in-depth; be an expert at something, then share that wisdom. If you want to drive traffic and make money, you have to offer something of value. Right now your head is full of lies from reading “money making blogs” like Shoemoney and Chow and Kiyosaki, and you’re just adding to the background noise.
Dainis Graveris
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 13:46
Interesting comment – about list posts there have been a lot of discussions already why blogs compile such posts and why they are so popular.
If you’re thinking that this blog is inspired by some background noise, how comes it’s one of the biggest in world with 1.5 million uniques monthly? How much for background noise now – if we would do a bad job here, we won’t get such attention and I don’t think you see here too many affiliate,promotional articles, I would say you see them pretty rarely, but you’ll still complaining.
Show you can do better job and then talk – however of course I agree always quality can be increased. But that doesn’t come easily, it’s really tough work and while we are improving I still think you could show some appreciation.
Cheers to that!
Marina
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 12:56
I’d have to disagree. It’s personal preference. Personally I think list sites can be really useful and saves people the trouble of having to find good resources on their own- I started my own blog for the reason that I could organise good resources into lists instead of having huge bookmark folders.
On the other hand, I’m not into blogs with a lot of writing or personal diaries. Sure, what they write about may be useful to a lot of other people out there, but to me, it’s mostly general advice that’s common sense. Neither am I interested in a page-long post about a person discussing their personal values when it comes to freelance work for example.
Webber
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 21:04
It’s funny to still see Digg on these kinds of lists. Not to say Digg is completely out of fashion and nobody uses it anymore, but it really is overrun with crappy spam articles and things not even interesting.. not to mention the FP traffic isn’t even that great anymore.
Marcell Purham
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 05:41
great list of website you have here. I have to try some of them out :)
Andy Walpole
Friday, January 8th, 2010 21:14
Excellent and helpful list dude. Thanks. There’s quite a few sites I’ve never come across before.
Joseph Victory
Friday, January 8th, 2010 18:25
Thanks for including Designussion.
I have a list myself that i like to submit too but this is just outstanding.
Will defo be using this, thank you.
Elle
Friday, January 8th, 2010 23:53
Facebook?!? If anything, Facebook is the reason why many Design entrepreneurs are struggling. You can’t customize your Facebook page, so you can’t hire a web designer to code it for you. Therefore, no promotion with your trademark designs.
Also, Twitter should be #1. If it wasn’t for Twitter, none of the other sites would get any recognition. I wouldn’t even read this article if it wasn’t for Twitter.
Overall, this article is a disappointment in hard hitting facts, but I did find sites to look through.
Shawn Hooghkirk
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 00:13
Wow, thanks for sharing.
It took me some time to figure out which sites helped bring the most traffic and finally coming to the conclusion that Digg and Stumbleupon were gold mines. I’ve had sites indexed and ranked in the top 20 for a key term in a matter of hours from both of those sites.
Beyond your top 5, I haven’t been aware of most of the sites you listed — so again, thank you.
*Bookmarked and looking forward to the updates!
Melody
Friday, January 8th, 2010 23:15
Good to know, I’ve been trying to figure out how to promote my design blog better…I’ll definitely be putting these to use now..
Rajib Roy
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 01:14
Good article. help me to do marketing for my website.
Lars V
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 03:06
Thanks a lot for this seriously interesting post. I know it has been quite an effort to create it! Also thanks for including tripwiremagazine.com – great to hear that others in the community actually benefit from contributing with links on my site!
Deepu Balan
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 16:41
Bookmarked! Thanks for this fantastic list… Will definitely help budding bloggers to promote their interesting articles. Appreciate your efforts in putting these together. Thanks!
-Deepu
Rafiq elmansy
Sunday, January 10th, 2010 00:37
Thank you for including graphicmania in this wonderful list :)
Robert Lönn
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 14:35
Thanks for an awesome list, definitely something I will bookmark and use again and again.
I love that you take the time to add banners for each site, it really builds extra value for me when reading through the list.
Here is an idea for the future:
*Add sorting buttons at the top of the list(could be simple links actually) so your visitors can get the list sorted on other things than traffic.(simply to recycle the work you have done)
What do you think?
Lam Nguyen
Saturday, January 9th, 2010 06:56
Thanks Dainis for including my WhoFreelance.com here!
I know the reason why you put Whofreelance here is your submissions will be display in both of my website aext.net and whofreelance.com. Some people still did not realize it yet, but when articles were submit to whofreelance also got a good traffic from my blog aext.net.
Thanks again and hope you are doing well with your awesome blog!
Cheers.
Wajid
Monday, January 11th, 2010 18:02
Very impressive post thank you
Ivan Mišić
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 23:55
Great list, bookmarked
Greg
Monday, March 21st, 2011 16:18
This is a great list, I would have never thought of some of these sites as a means to increase web traffic.
Alex W
Saturday, December 4th, 2010 23:35
Great guide Dainis. I really found helpful how much traffic you received from each site. Thanks!
Louis Gubitosi
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 14:26
hey, thanks for including The Web Blend!
Miko
Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 14:55
Nice list thanks.
Salman Saeed
Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 10:29
I still dont know how to derive traffic from Stumbleupon :(
Liam
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 13:56
Great list, I’m a designer over at Ladbrokes and I have to say that psd tuts+, net tuts+ and vector tuts are fabulous resources, gave me some great creative techniques to work with, particularly psd tuts+.
zumba bristol
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 18:37
We virtually thank you for blog post. You can find lots of tactics we could place it to decent use by means of no effort promptly and savings. Thank you really with regard to helping result in the post react to many concerns we now have experienced prior to this.
Marc Clinley
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 18:34
I believe in this specific page, keep writing! It’s actually unusual that i can discover these a dynamic discussion of which drives my personal curiosity. The up-to-date data is mainly highly preferred. You fellows seriously seem to know what you’re talking about. This is because of everyone that your chosen internet conversations such as these maintain to keep their reliability. Appreciation for article!!! The text I obtained from these reports really assisted me out!
Michael Fokken
Saturday, August 27th, 2011 08:41
Now I just need to get my but in gear and design my site better to feel like I can submit my site to all these. Thanks!
Runeneo
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011 10:12
Very useful article, thanks! I’ll look into the use of StumbleUpon and Digg :)
Nikunj
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 21:01
Thanks for sharing such great resource was searching for such websites for while. Thanks
Media Dew
Sunday, February 28th, 2010 05:48
Nice collection of resources. There are a couple of sites that I didn’t even know existed, thanks for the heads up. Looks like I have a bunch of more reading to do. Thanks.
steve
Friday, January 15th, 2010 12:05
Nice list there, some new sites i’d not seen and some old faces. Thanks :)
Albert Lie
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 15:26
thx for this Wonderful info! I’m gonna submit my article to all of this website! Thx a lot Dainis! Nice knowing you! I mean your website…
Dan
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 05:50
Wow a lot of these I never heard of which is great so I can now take advantage of more sites to try and gain more traffic. Thanks so much!
Webtoolfeed
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 03:57
Just created a design news website check it out!
http://webtoolnews.slinkset.com/
Loic
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 02:33
Hi Dainis,
that’s such a great list of awesome websites where we will be able to engage with our audience and add value.
Thanks a million, the team at advisor websites
Mabuc
Friday, January 15th, 2010 17:29
you can include mine in the list if you want : http://designartwall.com/news/
thanks for the share..
Kuswanto
Sunday, January 17th, 2010 18:57
Awesome list. I just started new blog, and your article sure help me a lot.
Subscribed!! :-)
Bent Christensen
Sunday, February 7th, 2010 11:32
Great list. Even though I live in Denmark some of them are useful for me. Thank you :-)
Joe
Saturday, February 6th, 2010 02:43
You forgot a really good one, http://zero3computers.com/user-submitted.php, they let you submit a community link without signing up.
Erotik Sohbet, Webcam Şov
Monday, February 1st, 2010 17:25
heyy
thankss sure… :)
Benjamin Rama
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 17:16
awesome tghis is v interesting to me – I try to submit to teh top 20 that bring traffic – I’m only just working out which ones do – Do you post to all of them?
best ben
@ lars hello
anjar
Friday, January 29th, 2010 19:36
very good info, I think I need to register at all that the websites. :D
thank