Yesterday, I wrote an article about How To Support Your Favorite Weblit Writer. In the comments, one of my readers, Carmen left this fantastic idea:

I thought this was such a good idea, I wanted to devote an entire article to it. You see, getting educators involved in the promotion of weblit is not only a great way to promote the format, it's integral to earning respectability for web-based literary endeavors. Here's why:

Academia Has The Clout Weblit Needs

There's something about the word "Doctor" or "Professor" in front of someone's name that commands respect. It suggests that you are an expert in your field, that you are among the upper crust of knowledgeable individuals when it comes to your subject of study. Even teachers without doctorates get their share of this respect: after all, if you're teaching, it's implied that you must know something!

Educators -- collegiate and otherwise -- have a captive audience. They can put our work in front of a classroom full of eyes and make sure that work gets read -- and more importantly, that it gets considered for its merit, that it gets discussed, even if only in undergrad papers that no one but the students in that class will ever read.

Educators are mentors, and the good ones want their students to excel. If we can show them that weblit is preferable to pursuing traditional print routes -- that weblit writers, on average, get more readers and earn more financially than traditional authors -- it's not unthinkable that they might start suggesting weblit as an option for their students' literary careers. I'm looking forward to the day when a professor tells a student, "You know, with your talent, you could be a very successful independent poet. Why don't you minor in Web Design and set up a site for your work?"

Educators don't just teach students. They debate amongst themselves in the vast arena of scholarly journals that the mainstream public rarely sees. They write reviews, sometimes scathing, sometimes glowing, of new methods and ideologies within their field of study, they participate in think-tanks, focus groups, give seminars, attend conventions and symposiums, and a whole lot more. And if you can convince an educator that weblit is a valid and viable method of publication, you've got a champion in that arena. You get enough of them, and you can change the status quo.

Academic professors can be some of the most stubborn luddites in the world. They can also be some of the best promoters of innovative technologies and methods, if you can show them why it's worth subscribing to those methods.

How do we do that?

Show Them We're Worth Noticing

When I was in college, a professor of my acquaintance (I never took his courses, but he knew my work) scoffed at the idea of serious poets publishing original poetry on the web. He told me I was wasting my talent, that I should stick to putting together a manuscript for a chapbook to send out to various university presses, submit to a few literary journals, do a low-residency MFA program and eventually land a day job teaching English courses and creative writing -- in short, to do the same thing as every other young poet.

I saw this professor the other day, and he asked me, not without a hint of a snicker in his voice, how "that website thing" was going. I casually replied that I'd had over 20,000 visitors last month, and that I thought that meant I was doing pretty well. He looked surprised, then he became very serious, gave me a terse nod, and said, "Well, keep it up. Maybe you're on to something."

I was grinning all day, because I know he knows that traditional publishing routes don't let poets -- especially no-name, fresh-out-of-college poets -- put their work in front that many eyes. And really, it's the eyes that matter, because it's no secret that there's no money in poetry (even less than in fiction or nonfic).

I haven't won that professor over to the point of convincing him to subscribe to this website (as far as I know), but I think it's only a matter of time. If there's one thing that academia likes, it's hard evidence: proof that the method works, and soon, I'll have enough evidence that he'll have to admit that weblit has made me more successful than I ever would have been had I pursued traditional publication.

Jan Oda over at ErgoFiction has a fantastic article with 6 Tips For Webfiction Fans that want to promote their favorite writers, but may not have the funds to support them financially. Hop over there right now and read it (and bookmark the main site for later -- ErgoFiction is turning into a great e-zine for fans of weblit and webfiction), if you haven't already, then I'll share a few tips of my own.

Ready? Good.

Get Off The Net
Every month, Eclipse Coffee and Books here in Montevallo hosts a poetry slam, and I've participated at the last three. Every month, four of my fans come out to see me perform and their support is invaluable. I've never won a slam, but their presence is really the reason I keep trying, month after month. Before and after the slams, they're often posting on their Facebook and Twitter accounts about coming to see me, and that's a great way to spread the buzz.

Obviously, the bulk of my fans can't come out to see me at the poetry slams, but there are plenty of other ways you can help promote your favorite weblit writer in the real world. Design a flyer or business card for them (or print off copies the writer has provided), and hand them out in your local area. If you're a cosplayer, consider dressing up as your favorite weblit characters. One of Irk & Char's fans cosplayed as The Peacock King at a convention and that's some of the best publicity a weblit writer could ask for.

Create a weblit readers group in your local area. It's a great way to introduce new readers to your favorite writer (and more importantly, to the weblit format itself, which helps us all) and you'll get to meet some local people that share your interest.

Translation Services
I speak English well and Spanish really poorly. I've always wanted to learn more languages, but I've never really had the time. But weblit is a global thing, and if my traffic stats are correct, I've got readers from all over the place -- Belgium, Japan, South Africa, India, France, Germany, and a whole lot more. I have to assume those people can read English, but I'd absolutely love to be able to offer my work to them in their native language. More importantly, translated copies would help me break into international markets easier.

Of course, I don't have the time, the resources, or the know-how to do that myself. So here's my proposal to any of my fans out there with language skills: if you can create an accurate translation of any of my work into another language, I'll take care of hosting it and integrating it into my site, and you'll have my undying thanks. I think any other weblit writer would tell you the same.

In my experience, a lot of new readers to a weblit serial won't start participating in the forums of a site until they've completely caught up with the story, largely because forums are often jam-packed with juicy spoilers that could ruin important reveals and plot twists. One way you can encourage new readers to migrate to the forums sooner is by fostering an environment that takes care to prevent unnecessary spoilers.

One great way to do that is to provide tools to your users to easily hide spoilers within a topic or reply. Here's a Drupal module that does just that:

Drupal -- Collapsible Text
Collapsible Text is a module for Drupal that allows you to cordon off portions of a text and hide them within collapsible blocks. Here's an example. Click the "spoiler" link below to expand the text:

The module is an input filter, meaning you can make it available to users -- in my case, I found it useful as a way to contain spoilers within forum discussions.

Collapsible Text is available for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 5.

BBCode Spoiler Tag
If you don't use Drupal, you're probably using some forum software like PHPBB, vBulletin, etc. Nearly all of these support BBCode, a sort of HTML-substitution markup language. Since BBcode is extensible, you can easily add a spoiler tag. There are quite a few of them, and they all work in different ways. I suggest a Google search for 'bbcode spoiler' and find the one that works best for your situation.

There's a lot of tricks and gimmicks to boosting web traffic, and Twitter and the blogosphere are jammed packed with "social media experts" and "web marketing experts" and "SEOOMGWTF experts" that all claim they can give you the secret. I'm gonna screw all those guys over and give you the secret, right here, right now for free. Because I love you.

So here's the secret. Are you ready?

Write more.

That's it. The more you write, the more traffic you'll get.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Gabe, that's easy. I mean, jeez, we're weblit writers. We're like the A-Team of the literary world."

Yeah, we are, but you know what? Most of our sites are relatively small. They're 30-100 chapters of a web serial, an about page, maybe a few pieces of peripheral content, and that's it.

I Like Big Sites And I Cannot Lie

Picture for a moment a single red brick. Throw it on the ground in the middle of a field. Not very impressive is it? But what if you added another brick every day for a year? You'd have, well, a big freaking pile of 365 bricks in the middle of a field. That's not the point.

The point is that the bigger pile is more visible. People driving by are gonna be all like, "Whut? Why is there a big pile of bricks in that field? lol."

Okay, so they'll probably go on their way immediately after that, but you got their attention.

Take it out another year, but up your efforts. Throw two bricks out there a day. At the end of your second year, your pile of bricks contains 1095 bricks. Now people driving by will be compelled to new thoughts, such as, "My word, that edifice is growing at an alarming rate! Perhaps I shall convey this news to my addle-brained cousin Archibald!" and maybe addle-brained cousin Archibald really likes pile of bricks, so he starts coming back every day to see how much more you've added to the pile.

Congratulations! You've got your first reader/lackey/minion/zombieloveslave.

Here's where it gets sexy. Now you can start conniving persuading poor loyal Archibald into helping you build your pile of bricks. Get some different colored bricks and tell Archibald that these are special forum bricks that he can put on the pile himself! He'll be so ecstatic he might just pee himself, which is, you know, totally okay.

So now, between you and Archie, you're throwing out three and four bricks a day, maybe more. More and more people start sending you their addle-brained cousins, and soon, you've got the makings of your own cult community. People driving by are going to be like, "Holy Ziggurats of Babylon, Batman! That place is huge. Maybe I should check it out and see what all the fuss is about."

Mount some anti-aircraft guns on that sucker to shoot down trolls, stick a few concession stands out front to sell lemonade to the supplicants, and bam, you've got a successful website attracting readers from the world over.

The Bricks Are Posts

Every post you make to your website grows your pile of bricks. Each post you make is another page that Google can crawl. It's another page that one of your readers can link to. I mentioned in my post about how StumbleUpon grew my traffic by 1500% that a single piece of content can change everything.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Gabe, it's hard enough for me to publish 3 chapters a week. I tried writing more, and it burned me out."

I feel you. I've been there. But here's another little secret. Your posts don't have to be chapters. They don't have to be 2,000 word creative endeavors.

So what can they be? Anything.

You heard me. These posts can be anything -- new chapters, bonus stories, peripheral content, forum discussions, interviews, reviews, articles, reader spotlights, weblit-related news, guest posts, anything.

Once a week, make a post spotlighting one of your loyal readers. It can be less than a hundred words, just something to say, "Hey, you're awesome. Thanks for your support." At the end of a year, you've got 52 bricks -- and you've shown your community that you value them.

Once a month, write a 500 word review of another weblit writer's work and post it on your site. At the end of a year, you've got 12 bricks -- and you've probably accumulated a few reciprocal links or reviews of your own stuff.

Once a month, get another weblit writer to write a guest post. Have them take your characters and write a self-contained short story in that writer's proprietary style. Best part about this? You don't have to do a damn thing, and you've got 12 shiny new bricks. Since that writer will obviously want to show off their work, you'll get some links too.

Post a gallery with half a dozen images of you and your cat. That's six bricks right there and it takes 20 minutes. And it puts a face to your name and makes you more recognizable and boosts your credibility.

Make a forum topic once a day. Ask your readers a question. Encourage them to answer it. Forums can generate a lot of bricks in a short amount of time, but you've got to encourage your readers to use them.

Be Patient and Persistent
Don't get impatient. Web traffic doesn't usually grow by leaps and bounds. It grows in trickles -- a reader here, a reader there. If you start posting a new piece of content every day, I don't mean that you'll suddenly see a huge boost in traffic. But a year from now, when you've got 365 pieces of content more than you do today, I guarantee you'll also have more web traffic.

No, that's not a typo.

In November 2009, I had 1,508 unique visitors.
In December 2009, I had 22,507.

And I did it with just one poem: How To Greet Death.

I published that poem sometime in late October, and to be honest, I kinda forgot about it. I thought it was a good poem, but certainly not one of my best.

Fast forward to the first week of December. I'd published a half a dozen more poems, but otherwise, I hadn't done much with the site. I was talking with a friend, weblit writer Travis Martin about our respective websites and he asked me something about my traffic. I remember telling him I didn't get very much -- a couple dozen views a day -- but near the end of our conversation, I decided to check my stats, since I hadn't checked them in over a week.

I had to do a double-take, because my stats were telling me that my site had logged 7,000 unique views over seven days. Two days later, I was over 10,000. And my traffic kept growing from there.

So What Changed?
Sometime in the first few days of December, someone found How To Greet Death through StumbleUpon and gave it a thumbs-up. StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking website where users can browse random websites based on their interests. When StumbleUpon directs the user to a website, that user can give the page a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, or simply move on. When that first user gave How To Greet Death a thumbs-up, StumbleUpon put that poem in front of every one of that user's subscribers.

Some of them liked the poem enough to give it thumbs-ups, feeding the poem out to their subscribers, and some of those users gave it thumbs-up, feeding the poem out even further. In just a few days, How To Greet Death had accrued more views than this entire site had earned in the previous six months.

You've heard the term "going viral"? This is what they mean.

It Snowballs From There
A few days later, I started noticing something else. I was starting to get more and more referrals from StumbleUpon -- but they weren't pointing to How To Greet Death. They were pointing to other, older poems like Human Noise, Amorphia, and Soldier's Love Song.

People that were discovering my site through StumbleUpon were clicking through to the rest of my poetry, and some of the pieces were earning thumbs-ups of their own. It's a little like watching small fireworks explode all over your website -- one day, the traffic to a specific poem would barely break out of the double-digits, and the next, it might be receiving hundreds of views.

The Long Term
It's mid-January, and StumbleUpon is still my biggest source of traffic, pulling in several hundred unique visitors per day. Many of them probably look at the site for a few seconds and then click elsewhere -- such is the fickle nature of the Internet -- but several of them have stuck around, becoming fans of my Facebook page or following me on Twitter, and that tells me something: they liked what they saw and they want more.

For a writer, there's no better compliment.

How Can Other Weblit Writers Use This?
I'm really not sure. I don't know what it was about How To Greet Death that resonated so well with people, and there's certainly a bit of luck involved in getting the snowball effect to start. I think if there's any lesson to be learned, it's that a single piece of content can change everything, and when it does, you want to capitalize on it.

I think my site's structure helped a lot with the success of my poetry on StumbleUpon. This site is built to dynamically show a list of links to other poems in the sidebar whenever one of my poems is being read -- that gives users a convenient way to browse other pieces in the collection, and the Facebook fan box in the right sidebar makes it easy for someone to become a fan without ever leaving this site.

There's also something to be said for the nature of the content -- most of my poems are fairly bite-size. How To Greet Death is only 36 lines long, and many of the poems on this site are even shorter. Most StumbleUpon users probably decide within the first few seconds whether or not a piece deserves a thumbs-up, so small pieces of content fit well with those sorts of snap-judgments. I'd imagine self-contained short stories would do similarly well.

Of course, most weblit still falls into the realm of long serialized works. I don't really know how well those types of pieces would do on a site like StumbleUpon. I'd imagine a snappy first chapter could do well, but later chapters probably won't get many thumbs-ups, since users will be finding them out of context. That said, stories like The Peacock King that frequently produce self-contained shorts and mini-series might find those pages doing well on StumbleUpon.

If you want to try to capitalize on StumbleUpon's viral capabilities for your own serial, I'd suggest writing a handful of self-contained short stories that can serve to introduce readers to your world without requiring them to get bogged down in the primary story-arc. Keep these stories short -- 1,000 to 2,000 words max, and make sure that they're linked in such a way that it's convenient to get from one to another. Don't forget to include a link to the main story for the people that want to read the whole thing.

Obviously, you'll need a bit of luck for the snowball to start rolling, but be patient. I firmly believe that talent always get recognized -- if you write well, and many of you do, you'll get picked up.

Tell Your Own Story
I'd love to hear some other weblit writers' stories about their experiences with traffic from StumbleUpon or with other social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, or Reddit. Got something to add? Drop me a comment.