use tags! talk to people! be social! the friends you make now will be your advocates and champions in the future and you never know where they'll end up, too. almost all of my big breaks happened without any algo whatsoever because they happened in spaces where that isn't a thing. all it took was just the right friends looking at the right time.
I worked on Deltarune because I sent Toby a forum PM in 2010.
The snowball effect of keeping up with the creative friends I made in fan art spaces, along with sheer word of mouth tumblr reblog power, is responsible for 100% of the commissions I receive. I give algorithms absolutely no credit in the trajectory of my career. Make friends who make things!! That’s all it comes down to!
One of my most recent commissions was a thing where I saw the artist had limited slots open for something because someone I knew shared their art, threw a DM at them to see if they still had slots open, got the picture back and immediately started sharing it in discords - the artist had four slots left and two of them went specifically to people I'd thrown the link at when showing it off to friends
absolutely no algorithm involved it was literally just "hey check out this cool picture I got" "wow I love it I'd like a picture like that too" "they've got a few slots left here's their @"
word of mouth gets you more business than some techbro's engagement-optimiser ever will
