How do you advertise your VN?

[applegirl]

I began wondering again (yes, I know this happens a lot) about how people would begin to advertise their VN. Is it just by posting a thread on lemmasoft? Is there an e-mail listserv you use? An e-mail you send that people sign up for? A developer's blog? Youtube or other gaming sites? I'd like to hear from everyone (both free VN makers and commercial VN makers) on how they get people to even know about the VN they're making/publishing when it is such a niche product to begin with. Worse, it's a niche product and there are so many VNs being made now that it might be a bit hard to stand out (especially as a newbie).

[lordcloudx]

Pretty much the same way you'd do white hat link-building, I'd surmise.

Personally, I'd do the following if my main goal was to get a large number of people to notice my game within a short span of time (keeping said attention should be up to the quality of the actual game, which you should be sufficiently confident in if you want more attention for it.):

• -Use all available social networking sites without coming off as a spammer.
  -Build connections with other makers through these social networks. (especially twitter and facebook)
  -Make promotional videos and post them to youtube among other media sharing sites.
  -Maintain a well-updated development blog and get your blog listed at http://planet.renai.us
  -Join message boards where your target audience may congregate and actively post there.
  -Use CNET download.com as one of your main hosts. (legitimate hosting plus free publicity and your game gets mirrored in all kinds of places on the internet)
  -Get your VN listed at all available VN listing sites if possible. (do it yourself or get a friend to do it.)
  -Send a link to your blog to all popular search engines
  -Surreptitiously use keyword-targeted articles in your blog to build up your Google PR
  -Try to have your game reviewed by game review sites. Even relatively bad reviews are fine as long as you get more exposure (bribe or blackmail some journalists to do the review if you have to. If you can, get a disproportionate mix of 1:5 bad vs good reviews, this would be the golden ratio to aspire for.)
  -When blackmailing someone, always use their baby pictures or an embarrassing essay they wrote in Grammar school as your bargaining chip if you can.
  -Swallow your pride and spam chan boards with news of the release of your game with absurd resolution screenshots and links.
  -If you can get a general hobby/anime news site that's a little bit controversial, such as Sankaku Complex, to even mention your game with Artefact's trademark sarcasm and witticisms, do it.
  -Try to get a mention in a well-respected gaming news site such as Kotaku -- even just one in passing related to a larger article about the indie scene in general.
  -Discreetly exaggerate every single positive aspect of your game when you advertise.
  But also don't forget to write about personal moments of self-doubt in one of your blogs (especially the ones with the largest number of followers) so that your readers understand that you are only human -- an awesome kind of human. Empathy is important.
  -If you feel that you have ruined your reputation in LSF or other similar forums, do not be afraid to abandon your old account and register a new one in order to start over from scratch with a clean slate. With the dynamic character of the internet, chances are that everyone will have forgotten that a person with your previous account ever existed within 1-2 months.
  -Associate yourself with the top names in the EVN industry and make sure you let everyone and their dog know that you're the best of friends with em. Don't forget to imply that they learned everything they know from YOU!

Additional tips:

When doing all these things, remember that when in Rome, you should do as the Romans do. Posting intelligently in 4chan will quickly get you labeled as an attention-whoring writefag and attempting to make a retort will result in being called out for being a grammar-nazi. Learn how to use memes when in chan boards and make liberal use of classic as well as modern chatspeak. Also, remember that everyone loves Hatsune Miku and Touhou, so use this to your advantage. Try to ensure that everyone is aware of how much you are a mikufag plus a touhoufag. This is especially true in more niche boards such as iichan.

Colored text is making a comeback. Make sure you use only primary or otherwise eye-catching and visible colors. Also, never use more than three different colors in a single post. Always use the same font, however.

If you can, use consistent UK spelling and grammar and syntax rules when you are posting/writing. This will give people the impression that you are sophisticated and well-educated and thus, any games released by you will automatically be received with a positive mindset.

If all else fails and money is not an issue, hire three or four professional link builders or the services of a well-established SEO company to get backlinks and unique hits for you.

Although this is considered blackhat SEO practice, don't be afraid to simulate a following for your game by making several dummy accounts. Always make sure to use an anonymous IP, however.

Remember, the goal of this post is to not only provide you with a good mix of practical tips as well as ridiculously absurd ones, but also to make you smile! C:

[Wright1000]

If you are not a professional VN maker, then I see no profit from advertising.
But if anyone wants to advertise:
Why not just put up a signboard in front of your house like this:
Name: ----
Profession: ---- This, that, Game maker .... (with the link to your website.)
All the passersby will see it.
You can also advertise in small-time newspapers or magazines. (I never do that, though. Just a suggestion.)
The best way is- You can write an article in a newspaper about visual novels. You can say that there are many kinds of visual novels. Then you can give the link to your site as an example.

[applegirl]

While there is no money profit for advertising as a freeware VN maker, you would get a lot more recognition/comments. I stumbled across DTIPB due to a review written by a blog long after it was published. If I hadn't read that review, there's no way I would have read it or even realized it existed in the first place. In a way, it'd be like making a thread in lemmasoft. Sure you could just set up a download link for your visual novel without the thread. But if no one knows it exists, who cares? Then it's like all the hours/days you poured into making the VN meant squat. Unless you never meant for anyone else to read it.

I've seen quite a few freeware VN maker turn commerical as well. Their name brand recognition made this transition a lot easier. For example: Sakevisual. I really like Re:allistar (I heard a lot about the VN). So when they came out with Jisei, their first commercial work, instant buy. So, I guess it depends what you want out of a VN when you make it.

EDIT: While I do agree a blog would help, how would you get people to your blog? I'm guessing somehow linking through a forum? Argh, thinking this all out makes me realize how complicated this is orz

[lordcloudx]

Getting people to your blog can be done through a combination of increasing your Google PR (using any or all of the SEO tips outlined above), posting consistently well-written development articles with your RSS feed connected to http://planet.renai.us (this site automatically shows all VN development related articles for RSS feeds added to it and is used by a large majority of perfushenal as well as hobbyist VN devs), and making friends with other game devs within and outside the community. Post once or twice a week if you can, but never on a daily basis. Remember that you could wear out the novelty of your game long before its intended release date if you make tl;dr blog posts every single day.

Remember, don't forget to post gaming development-related articles with YOUR personal insights and perceived shortcomings every now and then. You don't want people to think that you're trying to be Mr./Ms. Perfect Game Dev -- you want them to believe that you are an awesome, kind and compassionate human being who deserves a break due to the honest effort that you have put in and the potential that you possess. You want your game to be perceived as the hidden gem -- the underdog vs the AAA game development houses/publishers.

Additionally, if you have trouble maintaining your blog, get a professional content-writer to maintain it as your ghost writer (pretending to be you). Just make sure you brief him/her properly as to the actual contents of the blog, your game, as well as the nuances of the EVN development community so that he/she doesn't step on the wrong shoes.

[Kura]

I'm actually considering getting a small web ad for my VN when it's done, just because I noticed that with a particular website I can get one for a single day for just $1. Spend a single dollar to get more people to check out this thing I've put lots of effort into making? Sure, why not?

Otherwise, I figure the best way to advertise is just to list it on VN catalog sites and announce the release in the appropriate communities--LSF, the visual novel group(s?) on deviantArt, probably others. And then, yeah, there's announcing it on general social networks.

[AxemRed]

-Use CNET download.com as one of your main hosts. (legitimate hosting plus free publicity and your game gets mirrored in all kinds of places on the internet)

Oh download.com, you so silly

[lordcloudx]

@AxemRed: That article is quite true. What it doesn't mention is that it's still legitimate hosting plus free mirrors at other locations, however. For example, zdnet (which still has direct downloads) and brothersoft. In the end, you will have to decide whether the hosting plus free exposure is worth the potential "bad rep" your game might get from being associated with cnet. I really doubt it, though. You'll find such beloved Ren'Py classics such as this game there: http://download.cnet.com/RE-Alistair/30 ... entBody;1d as well as this one http://download.cnet.com/Songs-of-Araia ... ag=mncol;1

Direct downloads without the cnet downloader are still available for those who choose to freely register, however.

[Wright1000]

-If you feel that you have ruined your reputation in LSF or other similar forums, do not be afraid to abandon your old account and register a new one in order to start over from scratch with a clean slate. With the dynamic character of the internet, chances are that everyone will have forgotten that a person with your previous account ever existed within 1-2 months.

I think it doesn't take that long.

-When blackmailing someone, always use their baby pictures or an embarrassing essay they wrote in Grammar school as your bargaining chip if you can.

I don't see how that will be useful. Why do I have to blackmail someone to advertise my game?

By the way,
You forgot to add this one: Add as many screenshots as you can.

[Strum]

Whether you like it or not, someone will eventually come along and add your game as an entry to the VNDB (Visual Novel Data Base http://vndb.org/) Good or bad, quality doesn't matter. If it exists, it's going in. There seem to be people out there that trawl through the internet, visiting forums, IRC, etc just looking for new entries to add. Although some people opt to add their game to the database themselves. So don't be surprised to see your game appear on the database.

Once there, your game will remain on the front page until people have added enough newer releases to push your game off the list. VNDB allows anyone to discuss and rate your game, the ratings from all users are then averaged to give an overall score.

[lordcloudx]

@wright1000: good one. Use at least 10 mini thumbnails and 4 oversized screenshots with a custom oversized logo with cute character sprites pasted all over it.

[leon]

@lordcloudx:
Those are some valid tips, but I must disagree with a few things. Submitting your blog to popular search engines is waste of time. Posting on your blog does not effect PR at all; however it does effect your ranking a little. Posting to your blog once a week is a must, but to build PR, you should post more articles to other places, than your own site/blog; I use a ratio of 2-3 articles elsewhere, per one blog post my own blogs - usually for 1-3 months, which results in good enough ranking to test the actual traffic and hopefully get 100-200 visits a day. Ezinearticles, Squidoo, Hubpages, Scribd, Wordpress.com, Blogger, Tumblr, Weebly are all good places to post to get some strong link juice. Google doesn't trust us, webmasters...

@Kura:
I offer a similar service for $5. Easy money! Don't expect relevant traffic from me. But people usually don't bother to ask, since it's just $5...

@Wright1000:
While blackmailing was a joke, bribery is sadly sometimes necessary to remain competitive. If you want to be listed in free directory DMOZ, bribery is a way to go. Marketing is a dirty business...

One could write a book about general traffic generation tactics (I have) or spend thousands of dollars on things that don't work. But what are tested and cost-effective tactics specific to VNs?

So we have CNET, VNDB, 4chan, LSF, DeviantArt. What else?

[lordcloudx]

@leon: read the fine print in my post
Also, fine if you disagree. I don't really care to seriously discuss link-building techniques here. Whatever works for you.

[Voight-Kampff]

-Swallow your pride and spam chan boards with news of the release of your game with absurd resolution screenshots and links.

I've pondered this one before. Any ones you'd recommend? I forget all the abbreviations, but I believe there's one for "Games" and one for "Artwork". Those are the only two where making a post about a VN might make sense. And even then, I'd expect the reaction to be...less than cordial.

As for the OP...

Have you considered that maybe the name of the game isn't necessarily "advertising" one's VN? Perhaps it's more about promoting the universe in which one's VN takes place? I think lordcloudx actually touched on the concept a bit already.

If one makes posts to LSF, or Teacup, or the Megatokyo forums about one's VN, then the only people who will be reached are the people interested in VNs. Perhaps what should be done is cross promotion into other media.

Perhaps pen a short story based on one's VN. Maybe a section of the story that didn't get a chance to be explored in the VN. Then post that to a forum/site that promotes short stories. With any luck, new people—people who would have never even LOOKED for VNs—will now be interested in the story, and seek out the VN.

[leon]

@lordcloudx: I did read the fine print. I'm just saying - it's not just a joke. It's a sad fact. I do this for a living and it's a sad fact, that I have to sometimes bribe people, to get my clients sites listed, to services that were supposed to be free, but are often ran by corrupt volunteers.

It's not that I disagree, I *know* your techniques work. it's just that there is so many ways to do it, that it's hard to find the most cost-effective ones. One link may cost you as little as a few cents to a few dollars in time or money, but with 1000s of options out there, I do care to discuss link-building techniques. Testing everything to see what will work for me, is simply not something I can afford.