Your work is great! You spend a lot of time on it. You edit it. You upload it with the hopes that everyone will see it. But sometimes it doesn’t get the community reaction you had hoped for. What follows is a guide for selling your work, increasing your diamond reception, and getting the attention you deserve.

There are five phases that people go through when they look at your work. The first phase is the title and header thumbnail. This is what people see when they are browsing the ‘recently updated’ page on PMC. A simple title that describes the build and a photo, presumably, of the build. However, as simple as this may seem, some people fail to execute at this critical juncture.

I can’t tell you how often I see work that has a totally irrelevant header thumbnail. A picture of the builder’s skin or some inane drawing that has absolutely nothing to do with the build. This is not an effective header, and it fails to draw people in at phase 1.

When you go through the process of posting a headline picture for your project, there are some simple things that you can do to maximize its effectiveness. Firstly, the picture should be 4x3 to maximize the size of the image (thanks to eagoy for pointing this out).  720p (16x9) is also effective if you want to use a Youtube thumbnail as your header image.  Secondly, the most effective picture to use is simply a screenshot of your build. Be sure to take the screenshot in proper lighting (not at night) so that it is discernible to the viewer. If you so choose, you can do post-screenshot modifications to the image. Adding the title to the photo, a branding image, or even a number associated with a series are all good ideas (though not necessarily required).

Now that you have an effective header thumbnail, be sure your title is a powerful statement that both engages and intrigues the audience. This will increase the chances that a viewer will click on your project and move on to the second reactionary phase.

Phase 2 is the project description, as well as the rest of your project’s images. This serves as your opportunity to give your audience further information about your project. It is quite common for people to exclude a description and additional images. Please refrain from doing this, as it’s a great way to lose the audience’s interest.

Your description should be personal and engaging. Don’t just tell people what the project is. Tell them how long it took you to build. Tell them about problems you encountered in the building process. Be funny and give the audience something to laugh or smile at. Ask people to toss you a diamond or a sub if they liked your work. Post links to other projects, or even your youtube channel (this will become important in phase 5).

If you’re wondering how many pictures to post with the project, the answer is always this: More is better. If your build is larger than a 10x10 house, you should be posting 20 images. The more you post, the better you communicate the build with the viewer. This will also intrigue the viewer and make them more likely to move on to phase 3.

Phase 3 is downloading. Persuading the viewer to download your work is tricky and is dependent upon how well you executed phases 1 & 2. If you choose to allow your audience to download your work (and I strongly recommend that you do), be sure to give them choices. Upload a schematic (which will allow viewers to further engage in your project via WebGL) and a world save.

World saves are more difficult to upload than schematics. To upload a world save, you must first have a MediaFire account (don’t worry, it’s free). Once you have this, you must then compress the world save and then upload it to your MediaFire page. Once you’ve done this, you can simply enter the link to your world save into the prompt when you’re creating/updating your project.

Having both the schematic and the world save available is important because some people prefer one or the other. In providing a variety of choices, you increase your chances of getting viewers engaged in phase 3.

Phase 4 occurs when viewers subscribe to your PMC account. If you have impressed the viewer in phases 1-3, they may subscribe to you. When they do this, it gives them easy access to your older projects. This is very important.

The reason why subscribers are important is not only because it gives your future work exposure. It also gives your past projects exposure. A mere day after your project is posted to PMC, it will commonly appear on pages 8-10 on the ‘recently updated’ page. This means that your project will likely not be found on this page anymore because most people won’t browse that far. The only other ways your project remains alive on PMC is through the ‘What’s Hot’ page (which requires a high diamond to time ratio), updates, or through subscribers.

Subscribers have a link to your page and to all your projects that they can look at whenever they want. It’s a powerful link that immortalizes your work in a way that the ‘What’s Hot’ page can never replicate. The more subscribers you have, the more common that link becomes.

There is another micro-phase (we’ll call it phase 4b) that is reliant upon the tags you include in your project. Tags are what determines what search phrases can be used by viewers to locate your project. If you include the tags ‘rustic’ and ‘house’ in your project, then your project will likely appear when a viewer searches for ‘Rustic House’ on PMC. Use your tags wisely, as it will determine how many additional viewers you get even years from now.

Phase 5 is the final phase. I’m going to refer to it as the ‘Youtube phase’. This is the hardest phase to get viewers to participate in. When you post a project to PMC, you also have an option to post a Youtube video along with it. A video tour, time-lapse, or tutorial are all good options when you’re creating your video. If a viewer has been impressed and engaged throughout all four previous phases, they may watch the video you post.

If they like the video, or if you post links to your Youtube channel in the description (phase 2), they may subscribe to your Youtube channel. This final phase, a transition phase, allows you to grow other platforms as well as your PMC account. You can post links to DeviantArt, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and if the viewer is impressed with you, they may visit and provide stimulus to those sites as well. In this sense, PMC can be used to advertise your work all over the internet.

When you create a project, keep these five phases in mind. Be aware of how your audience interprets your work. Be aware that failing an early phase will fail every proceeding phase. Put time and effort into your description, your pictures, and your links. Be sure that everything’s perfect before you post your project. Do this, and I promise your future will be brighter here on PMC.

Thank you, once again, for reading this article. I hope it has been of some small help to you and I hope you enjoyed.