Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Shilling!

So yeah, I'll admit I haven't exactly been the most active blogger in the last week or so. I've been pretty busy with lots of things; computer problems, wedding planning, football and last but not least, shilling my ass off for the TEAM Invitational Tournament.

I see a lot of people shilling stuff on various boards in the advert forums. I don't know how successful they are. I'd imagine the ones with snazzier presentation at the very least snag one or two guys from the main boards, but I can't imagine that most of them are that successful. The reason I think that is is because in order to be a successful shill, you've gotta know people.

Knowing people alone, though, won't get you your desired results. For one, you've gotta know your market. What's the supply of handlers? What's the demand for a certain event or fed? If you're looking to start a hardcore narrative written angle fed, you don't go to A1's Efed Smarts and Marks forum or to FW. If you're looking for longterm committments to a fed that involves a lot of writing in short intervals, you don't go to Sean Williams, Dan West or myself first. However, if you're looking to start a long-form storyline RP fed in a community such as PTC, where two feds recently closed, one went on hiatus and another one is looking to close in about 15 months, then you might get a response.

Another thing would be intestinal fortitude. You can't be intimidated by names or think that people on your buddy list aren't going participate in your fed or event because it's just not prestigious enough. Everyone you know should be a target. Who knows, you might get many of the names on your wishlist. It's all in asking. The worst they can do is say no.

But what if they don't say no, but don't say yes? You have to be persistent! You can't let the people who say "I'll get back to you" not ever get back to you. Get back to them regularly until they give you a yes or no. Now, you can't be too persistent. I mean, if you bug someone like a blue-assed fly, they're more predisposed to say no. Also, don't keep bugging someone who's already said no to your invitation. If they don't want in, they have a good reason probably. Maybe they don't have time, maybe that kind of RPing isn't their bag or maybe they're just having a rotten spot of health in real life.

If you keep all those in mind, you'll be successful recruiting for your happening. I mean, I thought I was going to struggle to equal last year's number of folks for the TEAM Invitational (32), and as it stands right now, I only need five more to double that total.

You just gotta know how to work the crowd ;)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I read this post AFTER I PM'd you today on FW. Hopefully you'll see that I learned about shill LONG before this post! :)