1KM1KT: Expose Yourself
So you're an internet diva and you want to take advantage of the web to leverage your newest work online? Here are some ideas to get you started:
Get it up. Find a home for your work ASAP. You can publish your own website, or you can submit it to a publishing group like 1KM1KT to put it online for you for free. Either way, your work needs to be posted somewhere where people can check it out.
Tell your friends. Start with the people closest to you. Most of the time, they'll be happy to pass it on to anyone who may be interested. Think about all the people you know who have never met each other. Chances are you have a huge network of people at your fingertips that you don't even know about!
Give yourself credit. Take a moment to add credits and a link to your work as a signature line for e-mail, online forums, or anywhere else you may have that option. Here's what I use:
Keeton Harrington
Director – 1KM1KT
One Thousand Monkeys, One Thousand Typewriters
http://www.1km1kt.net
Get Googled. Take 15 minutes to submit your webpage to the big search engines. If someone else is hosting your work, just submit the URL where your work is located. It would look something like this: http://articles.1km1kt.net/expose_your_rpg_online.php
Here are some of the most popular search engines to get you started:
# Google
# Yahoo!
# Ask Jeeves
# AllTheWeb
# Hotbot
Read more about search engines here
Find the collectors. Lots of sites collect links to free RPG's, RPG's in a specific genre, RPG's based on movies or books, etc. Browse the internet and see if anyone is collecting your kind of work. Don't be shy about contacting these sites to be added to their lists. Most of the time, they're hobbyists like you and will be glad to post your link. Publish an article. RPG and publishing websites are always looking for fresh new material for their readers. Write and submit an article with a tagline linking the work you'd like to promote and a little information about yourself. 1KM1KT currently publishes a syndicated news feed that can potentially go to hundreds of websites. You can learn about writing for the 1KM1KT news feed here
Exchange Links. Contact other websites with similar content and ask them if they'd like to exchange links. Link exchanges can boost internet traffic and offer sites a chance to tap into new viewers. If 1KM1KT is hosting your work, just let us know who is linking to your work, and we'll add them to our links section.
With the examples above you can see that the internet offers a variety of free resources for aspiring authors. Using some of these simple techniques you can greatly increase public interest in your work and advance your career as an independent author. We wish you the best of luck and we look forward to seeing you online!
Keeton Harrington is Director of the 'one thousand monkeys, one thousand typewriters' online publishing group, where they accept open submissions and provide publication resources for artists and writers in the roleplaying game, fantasy, and science fiction genres. His site can be found at: http://www.1km1kt.net
