rubberninja:

This is a hard one to answer.  Self promotion can be anywhere from organic and seamless to being irritating and obnoxious.  Just establish a broad personal “brand” for yourself and let it be easily found in the public sphere (YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Newgrounds, Tumblr or wherever).  The harder you work, the more your skill set will improve and the more your abilities will be a beacon of light amidst a million other voices.  Which is really where my point of “not stopping” comes from, this takes years, probably close to a decade.  Sometimes people will have their works aimed at a niche they’re heavily involved in themselves and regardless of what a lot of people think, that’s totally fine.  Any audience or following you can establish doing something you care about is as valid as any other.  That following is so valuable to your development and will likely follow you onward to other ventures.  To keep yourself accountable, try and establish a group of like minded individuals online, stay close, collaborate and share your work with one another.  For example, I’ve been friends with Arin from our Newgrounds days since we were 17.  Same goes for a lot of my other art friends, while some have left my life, a lot remain and have found success.  We all grew and developed our skills together!  Something like that will really drive you to move forward and always better yourself.  Sometimes having collaboration with your close friends can bring the eyes of people that previously weren’t following you.  That’s also totally fine, if the eyes stay on you, you most likely have something of value that they’re looking for.  In short, what I’m trying to say is let your work speak for itself, but also make it easily available for people to find it.