Tips for Rookies

So, you finally received your invite and signed up as a player on Dribbble. What’s next? Here are a few tips for you, my young padavans, that will help you on your path.

First of all, I want to warn you, that everything written bellow is only my opinion. It’s not a strict rules or dribbble etiquette. Follow these tips or not—it’s up to you.

First shot is important

It’s your firstborn! And your first shot will appear in the “Debuts” section. There are also many first shots by rookies like you. Dribbble developers kindly made this section to help new players to promote themselves and earn some followers and fans. So, don’t post something like lonely label “Thank you, Henry for inviting me!!1” on 400x300px canvas. Make your first shot look amazing and distinguished from other shots on the debuts page.

Focus on New York and San Francisco timezones

As you have noticed, most of the players are from U.S. So it’s good to focus on their timezone. For example, difference between Moscow time and San Francisco time is -11 hours. So, for those who live there is good to post new shots at evening or even at midnight.

Promote your work on Twitter with adding “@dribbble”

Many people are watching for “@dribbble” search query, so it’s good to tweet about your shot even if you have not so many followers (you can use “Tweet” button inside your shot for it)

Use english language

Yeah, it’s a bit obvious, but…dribbble is a worldwide community and if everyone start using their own language, then comments will become to chaos. So, use Google Translate or your friends who know english to write something on dribbble.

Weekends are not good time for the new shots

On holidays or weekends, there are not so many visitors on dribble, so your shots likely will have small amount of vews/likes.

Use your 24 shots per month wisely

Dribbble is not a portfolio-service platform. So, don’t post all of your works at once. It’ll not help you to gain new followers or likes. Spamming following-stream will rather help you to lose them.

Love your dribbble-mates

We are not competitors or enemies here. We are all a big family. So, don’t try to catch other players or insult them with non-constructive criticism. Give advice how to improve shot. And be polite and courteous.

So, that’s it for now

Hope it’ll be useful for you. If you have any additions to this, please feel free to leave them in comments :) Cheers!

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