The Self Promotion Thread

Different things work for different people. My usual tactic at film festivals was to ask people about what they were doing and their work, long before even bringing up mine. I think people like to be asked about their expertise, and they ultimately like to share it when they can. That feels good, and it is also beneficial to hear an expert talk about a thing they have mastery over. So this feels win-win to me. Go to somebody, find out what they do, and make them happy by being receptive to their expertise. As hard and insane as people feel like they can be, most people have something they are passionate about or brilliant with. They'll like you if you let them tap into it, and be more prone to listening to you and absorbing what you say afterwards.

I hate to be a pest, but if anyone happens to be listening to my wife's and my podcast-- and if you like it --we'd surely appreciate a review or two on iTunes.

Also, thanks for listening!

You are not being a pest at all! Thank you for the reminder!

So I want to step up my self-promotion game. If wishes were candy then I'd be able to get enough of a following that I'd be able to get people to support my Patreon and help contribute at least to my College loan payment so that my upcoming living alone housing situation can be more affordable, but I highly doubt that'll happen. But, I know that there are two ingredients to this.

The first is to update more, which I've been working on. Blog, GWJ, podcast, and YouTube either have all been updating or all have updates in the works.

The second is sharing content and hopefully reaching out to new people. This is where I run into problems. I don't have people that share or retweet my work much, and in case of Twitter I'm... I don't know how to Twitter. I'm currently keeping my twitter feed a politics free zone to try and offer some levity, but as I am not really one for snark it makes it tough to come up with things to discuss on Twitter. Whenever I post something that's not a link to my work it feels like I'm just being narcissistic. Half the time I post something I get bots following me because of keyphrase bullsh*t. Then I have real people follow me that don't comment or say nothing, and so I don't follow back because I don't know who they are and it feels weird to just follow someone I don't know.

I've stepped up trying to interact more with others on Twitter, though, but that only helps so much.

What advise to people have in terms of Twitter? Should I comment on games I'm playing? Should I try and make more of an effort to share screenshots (which I considered doing more so I can have my own original photos to use for articles and such)? Or more specifically: how do other people use Twitter? When I joined around 2009, I essentially used it as an RSS feed for gaming news and such. No one else seems to use it as such, though. So if someone is following me, what might they be looking for?

I don't really use Twitter anymore as I got burned out on social media and just cut out a lot of it because I'd rather spend my time doing other things beside Twitter, Facebook, etc. However, when I was using it a lot I'd just post short comments about things I was doing in my games, books I was reading, maybe something I thought was funny or interesting about my day, and every now and again a retweet.

I kept my Twitter follower list carefully cultivated in the sense that I wouldn't follow back people who only posted links to other things. I'm not interested in reading pages of links. I want to primarily see tweets that are original. I want to follow people who seem like real people with real interests, not link generating machines. So when someone followed me, I'd look at their page and their bio and see if they seem like person and not a spammer, and I'd look at their tweets to see if they are posting comments I'd want to read. If so, then I'd follow them and it wouldn't matter whether or not I knew them.

Sometimes I'd follow companies like Bethesda (or their developers) to keep updated, but I kept those minimal so that my tweet feeds weren't clogged with company release updates and drowning out everything else.

I started a twitter account (@DoubtingTGWJ) solely for the purpose of posting puns and dad-jokes, and for occasionally promoting the podcast I'm on.

I try to do one dad-joke per day.

So I got a new video out and am working on the next one already. I think I'm reaching a point of figuring out what I enjoy most when it comes to writing and productivity and videos are up there. But now I gotta start promoting.

Today I tried something I always forget about: I contacted someone that curates content and sends out a newsletter with interesting, good reads based on video games writing and videos. I feel weird, but no one else is going to do it for me and it's a chance for some bonus exposure. Seeing as it's a list for deeper insight and dives on games, it should speak right to my core audience. So crossing fingers that will work, and if it does, I'll probably not have to contact the person again.

I looked at Reddit again and realized something: it's not helpful for people that are of few words (in certain situations) or don't have a lot of time or have high standards. Subreddits on YouTube video feedback and games journalism have rules about only 10% or less of your posts being self-promotion. Okay, cool. I get that. I was in there in the early aughts when everyone and their dog thought they could become a big webcomic artist like Penny Arcade, Megatokyo, Mac Hall, Real Life Comics or PvP. At one point I was drawing two different comics at once (I had pretty much checked out my senior year of high school and didn't even really need to try in order to get a B average anyway, and then I nearly failed out my Freshman year of College so...). I get how these scenes are filled with people that post nothing but their own work, or reference it in every post they make, or are desperate for cross-promotion or collaboration no matter the quality of each other's work or crossover in audiences.

So yeah, I get Reddit's rules, but that's the thing. Just looking at the videos and even written reviews asking for feedback, I... I can't spend my time on that. I don't like Let's Plays so my feedback would largely be worthless (obviously there's some value in the feedback of someone not deeply entrenched in a culture, but in most instances it won't be the feedback they need). Most YouTube videos on games have me sighing and thinking "Wrong, wrong, nope, shallow, citation needed, how much were you paid to omit one-two-and-three problems I know of, what sets your opinions on why Chrono Trigger is the bestest ever from everyone else's, etc." But then I'm not giving feedback, I'm basically saying "Go home kid, you're not big enough to play with the adults" and then I'm a jerk.

So basically: I have no idea how to give that initial drop to share, get feedback, and then let everyone else do the sharing for me. Because that's the real secret to this sh*t as far as I can tell. People just keep sharing it.

It's something I'd like to try and push to go faster, but right now top priority is just more content. In the end that's what is most rewarding. Less than an hour after I posted a video someone dropped a comment saying "Welcome Back". On YouTube I feel like that means a lot, because I haven't updated since July. If I keep prioritizing and working on my videos more than other content, then that fanbase will grow on its own (right now sitting at 398 subscribers, two more and I hit 400!). But I still want to be more active right now than putting work out there and then sitting there hoping for the views to come in.

I still don't monetize my channel and can't help but wonder if that really hurts me in the long run as well. After all, YouTube isn't making cash off me if I don't put ads on my videos, but I also just don't feel right monetizing (partially because I use licensed music still, and while it's not always tagged and I never challenge a claim on the music, I feel like it'll open up a lot of bad doors on me. I like to include the licensed music because I love the music I listen to, it's not as popular, and I want to help spread it out to more people).

Anywho, long rant. I think I'm gonna mostly relax the rest of the day.

It's kind of unsurprising that I was the last person to post here, and I'm the one reviving it. Perhaps we should all share what we are most proud of having worked on in 2017? After all, I came around because I'm actually very proud of the latest episode of my podcast.

Eh! Steve! has been a delight. It gives my buddy and I a chance to talk with each other in person and outside of Google Chat or Destiny 2, and by putting together topics we end up having something to think about and always feel like we never have enough time. The goal was to put together a podcast that's only about 35-45 minutes, and we regularly hit roughly an hour.

With this episode, I feel like we're both just so interested in the topic from our own perspectives, and we're both just being ourselves laughing about silly things. It's precisely what I wanted Eh! Steve! to be, and it's the first time in a while I wished I had a larger audience.

Is there anything you guys are proud of?

I got my first patent this year.

I’ve been on patents as a contributor before, but this year was the first time I’d gotten one as a principal inventor.

Also, the podcast that my wife an I run has a steady audience of around 25 people per episode, which isn’t bad for something that we’re doing as a larf.

EDIT:

I’m also pretty happy with how my photo-doctoring skills have grown doing the artwork for the week ahead.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I got my first patent this year.

If you're not going to tell us what it's for, then I'm opening up the floor to wild speculation.

Cat poop trebuchet?
Self-driving kettle?
Mechanism for casting aspersions autonomously?
Industrial reactor for turning earwax into usable fuel?
Dong dinger (a wi-fi enabled doorbell that activates vibrating underpants when someone comes to your door?)
Pogo pants ("don't get cold while you bounce!")

Any particular episodes of the podcast you're proud of, Greg? Or anything here on GWJ you've written that you'd like to bring extra attention to?

ccesarano wrote:

Any particular episodes of the podcast you're proud of, Greg? Or anything here on GWJ you've written that you'd like to bring extra attention to?

On the AMPcast, I’m pretty happy with episode 42 onward, which is when I started getting the audio quality nailed down a bit better. We took a two week break and lost about half our listeners between episodes 41 and 42, but it’s been worth it to finally get rid of that annoying clicking sound that my wife’s mic was making, and the awful reverb affect is a thing of the past.

As for my writing, since you asked, there’s my Graham Rowat Reading, which hit me out of the clear blue sky. (Original here)

There’s also the fact that I’ve almost become a regular (regular guest? Guest regular?) on the GWJ conference call, which has been fun. Also, Prime-time shout-out to my wife, who somehow managed to keep the kids quiet through all of my guest appearances (regular listeners to the AMPcast know that they’re a regular feature for both guest comments and background ambience). I’m very proud of the fact that I managed to not embarrass myself too much.

How about you? Any scribbling you want to call attention to?

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

As for my writing, since you asked, there’s my Graham Rowat Reading, which hit me out of the clear blue sky. (Original here)

Holy cow, I knew you were appearing on the podcast more frequently but I missed that episode. It looks like they don't have the recording uploaded as a separate Graham Rowat Reading yet, either.

Gonna admit, dude, that's awesome. Congratulations. It was an excellent piece, too. I'll also have to listen to episode 42, or one of the ones onward. I don't listen very often to podcasts these days despite my efforts to get back into them, so when I'm next looking for something I'll have to prioritize yours (I have it bookmarked, though!)

How about you? Any scribbling you want to call attention to?

My efforts to be better with content production in 2017 has been a bit of a wash, but year, there are some things I'm proud of. Protocol Three is, I think, still a relevant glimpse at Titanfall 2 that I'd like to revisit one day. However, the things I'm really proud of weren't really scribblings. On top of the Sonic Forces episode of my podcast, I was really happy with our recording on Nier: Automata and Sucker Punch. But the best thing I put together this year is undoubtedly my video on Toren, despite all the little details I didn't catch until editing or couldn't figure out how to make it fit in the video.

Despite all the things this year I've shared, I'd say those are the ones really worth checking out.

Oh, and I got published on Unwinnable, something I'd love to see happen more, but that's a whole other can o' worms.

My SO and I (mostly her, I primarily do some art for production) started a company this past month:

WeGlyph!

OUR MISSION
The WeGlyph Co. creates fun and inspiring, changeable magnetic images that help you stay focused on the good things because we attract, just like a magnet, what we focus on the most.

It's pretty exciting and we're having a fun time doing and creating.

Oh wow, that's actually really cool cartoonin. And having read the About page, congratulations to her for not only starting her own company, but in getting to record music of her own. That's some awesome stuff.

Thanks ccesarano! We truly appreciate that. We both stay pretty busy these days, but I am really happy that we were able to get this off the ground.

I just had my first big gig as a public speaking coach. An investment firm based out of Arizona and California decided to run their internal sales desk through some training.

I had done a little bit of this kind of work in my old firm - it was a side project I did while there. It was the one thing about that job that I really enjoyed because it took advantage of my theater skills. They eventually pulled me from it because the desk there was part of a different department, and the department I worked for didn't want me to spend hours doing this thing for another department. Even though it had directly impacted the bottom line in a positive way. They actually told me to not do this thing that I was an expert in and instead had me walk around the office and refill printers.

As bummed as I was about that at the time, the work I did get to do there made an impact, and some of the people from that desk moved on and got put in charge of different desks and lo and behold, a new opportunity emerged.

I was nervous but excited. It couldn't have gone better. Getting to put in two full weeks of work at varying offices was an incredible experience, and the entire desk improved dramatically. The management loved and respected what I was doing (which was a nice change of pace, considering how my previous firm had handled it) and I've never - in my entire life - felt better about a job.

So, that's what I'm doing now. Making the dive to fully transform that into my primary income stream.

If anyone has a company where individuals or teams need to sharpen their presentation or public speaking skills, please reach out. I'll give a Goodjer referral discount.

I'm going to go ahead and plug this here, even though it might not be the right venue for it, because I don't know if people skipped it based on the title or if people just stopped caring about the front page.

I've decided to do this year's TLDP feature as a weekly, serialized fiction in which a hapless gamer gets thrust into various game worlds and must find out how he got there and, more importantly, how to get back. Think Stranger Things meets Ready Player One, if that's not too ambitious and self aggrandizing for you.

Episode 1 is Dark Souls, naturally.

For those of you who stopped checking the TLDP column because of my format change, I’m sorry.

I’ve changed it back. There will be no more fiction in the TLDP slot.

Here's me engaging

I was very opposed to self-promotion personally. I'd been conditioned by family and 'mentors' that tooting your own horn was always bad and that it was just good manners to be modest and self-deprecating. This metastized into hiding throughout school followed by playing it safe career-wise and never really stretching myself.

As the tech world continued to evolve and social media became prominent, even participating in discussions could become a minefield. I was a late adopter on most platforms and never really understood enough about using them to network. Suffering from anxiety and depression further complicated anything resembling reaching out or sharing contributions.

Some therapy and experimentation later, I started blogging. I'm pretty sure my mother was the only one who read it for the first year, but it gave me time and practice producing and shipping. Before long, I'd get the occasional comment from a colleague about having read it and I get a couple dozen page views a post now.

Over the past 12 months, I branched out into presenting. I was a speaker at a local user group and at a global conference held in the US annually. This led to recruiters spamming me almost daily but I'd get the occasional interesting offer or proposal that always turned into a new business contact, whether I accepted or not. Eventually, I left my safe staff job for a more prestigious and lucrative consulting gig offered to me by someone in the audience at one of my talks.

The most recent evolution here was being approached by a tech publishing company to write a second edition of a technical book in their library. As writing a book was always on my bucket list, I jumped at the chance. So, as of this week, I'm a published author! In addition, just this week, I had a colleague at my previous company tell me that reading my blog inspired her to start her own and to take the next steps in her career.

I'll echo the sentiments upthread about link bombing and spamming random forums with no intent to engage. But I will say that 'Build It And They Will Come' is terrible advice if no one sees what you've built. Produce and promote, in that order. Attend or join groups and find ways to contribute. You never really know what doors might open. Even if you're static for a time, you'll continue to improve in your chosen field by rote practice.

Link to the book please!

Yeah, I think its hard to get used to taking space you deserve. There's a balance in give and take in any conversation, and as long as you are attentive to others and show up, there's no harm in putting yourself out there. I'm glad you overcame that initial socialization and anxiety, and congrats on your accomplishments!

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

Link to the book please!

Hahaha.. Here it is - It's on Amazon too but I couldn't get the link to work. Not anything I'd expect to see anyone outside of my niche specialization take an interest in, but I'm proud of it just the same.

And I appreciate the reinforcement. I had a lot of experiences of going into complete vapor lock when being expected to speak to an audience. And sometimes I gloss over the mental illness piece of this because I treat it as private though not necessarily secret. But honestly, if I hadn't asked for help and done the work, I'd likely never had done the above.

Cross posting from the Game Creation/Design Catch-All.

After 5 years, a new baby, and loads of work turmoil, Agent of Fate has been released! It's a silly little game I made that features the voice acting of a friend of mine. It has flaws but I am very proud of what I'd manage to do with my limit skills.

neat! I'll give it a look a bit later

OMG, you kept your amazing artwork! So excited!

Seems a bit a pricey, will it be going on sale during the Summer Sale?

SELF PROMOTION...ENGAGED.

So I'm thinking I might run a limited run of commissions specifically to (a) hopefully generate a little cash over the summer break and (b) test my commission 'guidelines' to make sure they're workable - see below and (c) get more practice in and hopefully get more comfortable putting myself out for commission work in general.

Here's what I'm thinking of running for the moment. I thought I would try this exclusively here for the time being as a test case, but if I don't get enough responses i'll expand it to facebook/instagram, etc.

* * * * *

This will be a limited run of commissions for exclusively 'head and shoulder' watercolour portrait paintings as follows:

Mixed Media Artboard
approx A5 (148 x 210 mm)
Watercolour, pencil with a little ink.

Example:
(portrait version)
IMAGE(https://smackfolio.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/img_5383.jpg)

(alternative version!)
IMAGE(https://smackfolio.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/example1.jpg)
(Please note that the images lose something in translation from the physical painting to a snapshot or scan and appear more washed out than they actually are in real life).

The painting will be on a plain background but can either be a straight up portrait, a character (maybe a character you play in an RPG or online) or a mix of the two!

if it's a character / fantasy version of yourself, please provide a reasonably detailed description of what you are looking for (remember this is mostly just a head and shoulders dealie for the time being!)
I am perfectly happy to attempt pretty much anything your imagination can think of (providing it is not promoting right wing politics, hate speech against minorities/LGBTQ, etc).

Sexy/kink positive things are totes' cool if that's what you're after but again, keep in mind the context and that it remains respectful (I'm sure I have nothing to worry about from anyone here, but just to spell things out). Not quite sure what you could fit in to a head and shoulders setup like this but I thought it was worth mentioning as an option just in case. Also make sure to spell out exactly what you're after in the description so that there are no unfortunate misunderstandings!

PRICE

Price will be £40 (around $53) per image. One image per customer (for now).
If you happen to be in the UK then I'd cover any postage charges myself but for overseas I will probably have to factor any postage costs into the final invoice. International posting seems crazy expensive at the moment so I'll need to double check to make sure of the added amount before finalising a price with any customers, depending on their location in the world.

I think I can pretty much trust most people on here to pay promptly upon completion of the work, but if you are someone I am less familiar with, especially coffee grinders, please don't be insulted if I ask for a deposit up front. Either way, the full balance plus postage will need to be cleared prior to sending out the finished physical artwork (although a digital version can be provided immediately on completion) invoice will be emailed upon receipt of payment and a physical version will be included when the painting is dispatched.

I generally don't like using paypal for various reasons so payment would ideally be a direct international bank transfer. If it's really, REALLY, REALLY too much of hassle to do that, then I can figure out something with paypal but, ideally, i prefer to deal directly with banks.

AVAILABLE SLOTS

Until I get a better idea of the timescale involved, I'm limiting this to FOUR 'slots' for this first test run, on a first come first served basis. If I get through that faster than anticipated then I'll add a few extra 'slots' to the next run!

If there are more people than slots available then I'll let the remainder know, and keep you on a waiting list so that you are at the top of the queue next time around should this prove successful/popular.

If I don't get enough interest here, as mentioned, i'll open it up to social media too until the four slots are filled, but anyone already included will still get their painting regardless (whether that's one person or more than one, up to the four).

* * * * *

OK, I THINK that covers every eventuality for now! :O Please note that the above may be subject to change if any weird obstacles or problems i haven't anticipated surface, but I'm pretty sure that will all be workable.

If anyone has any questions or want to commission a slot, fee free to PM me here with your photos and information.

So I've got some creative goals in 2019, and one of them is to no longer be afraid to shill my own work.

I've been driven so much by what others think of me, at first being so obnoxious about who I am and demanding I be accepted. When that didn't seem to work – at least, not to the grand extend I had always desired – I became nervous about every little thing I did. I couldn't be too boring. I couldn't be too unpolished. I needed to watch what I said. I needed to make sure I didn't sound like an idiot. As a result, I was not only nervous to self-promote because it felt trashy of me, but I was never really happy with anything I produced.

This has made it a huge struggle to move forward with creative projects, and while I'm seeing a therapist to better learn to deal with this "worried about what other people think", it's a slow-going process to better improve my outlook on life.

With that said, I've already got some ideas about moving forward from here, writing what I want to write and creating what I want to create, regardless of how others may respond. I need to be happy with my work first and foremost. But no matter how happy I am with it, no one's going to know it exists without my letting them know.

So my goal for 2019 is to stop being so afraid to let people know I'm working on things, and to do so beyond my own social media. But I don't want to share because I want people to love me and what I do. I want to share it because I love myself and as a result love what I do and therefore wish to share it.

That's the change I want to see in myself in 2019.

I applaud all of that and wish you luck on your creative endeavors.

Been thinking about some stuff adjacent to all of that as I struggle to make ends meet and get my work out there:

Society is structured to preserve the power of the people who have the most. That's why there are weird social barriers around things like talking about salaries, or sharing the things you are working on. Anything that has a chance of challenging a status quo is made awkward or socially uncomfortable or inappropriate, because if we all just shared this stuff openly things would change. New people with good ideas would get more power. People with power and no ideas would lose power.

When it comes to creative work, capitalism is particularly cruel. I know I'm expected to work my ass off for free for the mere privilege of doing "something creative." I've had to find bizarre ways to monetize my creativity because my acting skills are a "joke" to capitalism, unless I present myself as a "public speaking coach" and use that same toolkit to provide a service to corporate professionals. Its the same exact skill, but one I'm told I should be grateful to do for deferred pay / credit and the other I can charge something closer to what I'm worth.

Anyway, all of this is to say I feel you and I wish you luck. Looking forward to what you have to share!