Promoteing your archive

- Advertise it.
- Affiliate with people.

And more simply...

Word of mouth. 🙂

Or you know, get some pretty banners and buttons and get people to link it and spread the word around. 🙂

I got a lot of members by simply inviting authors to come and post their things. it's a little tedious, but good success.

Steer clear of generic link exchanges - i.e. you agreeing to link to some other archive if they link to you isn't an issue, but using link exchange organizations can lead to your site being penalized in the results on search engines if due to the link exchange you end up having links on your site to some other site that is dubious. If your site links somewhere that the search engine rates as spam/malicious/loans/porn/viagra etc. it will knock your site down the results page even if it was a good match for the keywords.

I got a lot of members by simply inviting authors to come and post their things. it's a little tedious, but good success.

And how do you do that without being too intrusive? What do you say?

Well most of the authors were people I reviewed their work before, every chapter so they should have been familiar with me. So I just sent them a note saying:

Hi, this is so and so from such and such (or I read your work awhile ago and liked it). I just opened a new archive I think you would be interested in. It's a blah blah archive (specialty, like maybe a Pretender archive with a specific pairing or genre) and I think you'd fit in there/like it. It's an open/closed archive so that means (meaning). You can find it by blah blah (if you use the fanfiction.net messaging system, they will strip out any urls), please check it out. We'd love to see you there. If you have any questions, just ask me. 🙂

Thanks!

so and so.

Sometimes I'd tell them something special that applied to their work, like maybe they liked Baby fics, I'd tell them that there was a baby category/classification where they could place their story, and also find similar stories.

It's best to make a message as personal as possible.

Sometimes the fact that you have an archive for a smaller fandom is enough excitement for people to join and use it, especially if it's the only one. Also, fans of it can advertise it on their profiles and such, and if they're a popular author, more people will join through them.

Sometimes when reading through reviews on a site I notice that someone reviews everything, and I'll send them an invitation to check out the archive because it has fics they'd like.

We're not for making money, we're for being useful and having fun, so every message I send out has that feeling. That's the best way to not be intrusive. 🙂

I do the same with my LOTR crossover archive. The interest for that kind of thing is small (as in, very few people are writing it), so the archive is more a place to find stuff than a thriving community. Most authors that end up there were invited by me, meaning I read their story, liked it and sent them an email. It's always personalized, of course with a little review attached to it.

There's a small number of authors who never respond (for whatever reason), but usually that "system" works quite well and authors are pretty thrilled to be invited to post.

I'm usually afraid that could be classed as spamming. 🙁 So I've never picked up the courage to do so ...

Jan's method, ftw. 😛