Promoting yourself is indeed tough. I'm not one to talk because I have a long, long way to go before I can call myself "popular" but I do have some advice to give you. The secret is being proactive. Do not expect getting exposure to be something you get automatically without you working your ass off for it. Well, I say "working" but some things you have to do to get exposure can be pretty fun anyway, so it may not be as bad as you'd expect.
To get exposure here on Newgrounds at least, contribute to the community. The amount of times I see music artists leaving Newgrounds because they're not getting any recognition is countless, and in many of the cases, I look at their forum posts and audio reviews, etc and I can count them all in two hands. Take part in the forums, give competitions a shot (you have no excuse, I bet this forum focuses on competitions more than any other forum on Newgrounds), review other people with helpful reviews, collaborate, and so on.
I can back up my claim too. I remember when I first joined Newgrounds, I used to occasionally browse through submissions and some particularly helpful reviews I'd find would sometimes have "-Review Request Club-" written under them. After a while, I checked out the forums and the first thing I did was investigate about this Review Request Club. Surely enough, I found a whole thread dedicated to giving reviews to other submissions. I joined, and was active there for something like 2 years, if not more! I can tell you that, other than being a really great experience, it got me more well-known across Newgrounds, got me more people listening to my music, and really refined my sense of musical analysis, which in turn helped me with my own music!
The club right now seems a bit inactive unfortunately; I've been thinking about maybe getting a programmer to code some applications for the club to streamline the member update process, gathering together some reviewers, and asking if I can remake the thread. BUT I DIGRESS.
Hope this helps!
At 8/15/13 09:19 PM, ZipZipper wrote:
Can't really say I can vouch for any of those because I feel like I don't do any of them! Hooray!
About that.
Create a style or niche for yourself.
I can say with absolute certainty you manage to pull AT LEAST that one off.