- Goodies
EF has a growing page of goodies that include things like 88x31 buttons as well as bars and banners for signatures. You can post these, or even just a plain text link, in your signature on any other forum or site that allows it (eg. other rps, deviantART, roleplay directories, etc etc).
- Profile Information
You could also link to EF in the "Website" field of your profile on other sites. It doesn't have to be just roleplay sites, either - I have links to EF on my Facebook, Twitter, deviantART, and even my Ravelry profile!
- Talk about Us
To your friends, to people you think would be interested in joining, etc.
- Vote for Us!
Some of the sites listed in our affiliates box on the forum index let you vote/rate our site or even just post to give your opinion (and bump the topic).
- Post our ad
The most common method of advertising within the roleplay community is to spam a game's ad on as many roleplay sites as possible. If you're not sure what to do, here's a checklist!
- Go to any other roleplay site.
There are plenty listed already in the Billboard, but I'd suggest going through the ads on their site rather than ours to be sure we haven't already advertised there (since I always advertise on the games that post here right away). You can actually work up a massive list of sites to post on by following a link to their ads, then following those links to more ads, and so on.
- Find their ad section. It's usually at the bottom of the forum index, but not always.
- Check their advertising rules to make sure they allow ads.
- Check that we haven't been posted already. Normally you'd only have to check the first page of ads in their ad forum(s) since we allow advertisers to bump theirs once they've fallen off the first page of our Billboard, but some places are stricter. (You can use CTRL+F to Find "elysia". If there are no results, our ad isn't there.)
- Check their forum software. For free hosts, this is usually evident in their site's address (eg. invisionfree.com or proboards.com) but if it's not then the copyright information at the bottom of any forum page will usually give you the information you need. If all else fails, try the different codes provided (above) one by one and preview until you get it right.
- Copy the appropriate ad code (above). You can choose which ad you want to use (preferably the image one, but not all sites allow images in ads).
- Post it in their ad section. (Some sites have subforums for ads with something like "First Links" and "Link Backs". You'll want the "First Links" bit, since I always link back to sites that post here as I mod their threads.) As well as the code for the ad itself, please note the following:
Name: should be either your main EF character's name, or your EF alias.
Topic Title: Elysian Fields
Topic Description: An original fantasy
- PREVIEW!!! I can't stress this enough, because it looks entirely unprofessional if we post ads where the codes aren't working properly.
- Finally, keep a record of your ads here (including links to them) as evidence for when you want to claim your rewards.
- Go to any other roleplay site.
So now there's no excuse not to help me spread the word!