Not so much promotional work as much as "if you post it you have to do it" but I am now approaching the 3rd annual Indiepocalypse Pledge Drive. The pledge drive is something I do every 10 issues (which technically means that in 2025 there will be 2 drives in a shingle year) to raise money and try my darndest to use the excitement of an event to try an get this thing to break even.
The Indiepocalypse Pledge Drive is an 8 hour (9-5 ET) livestream that is me, a rotating series of guests (with an open door policy), and ideally segments that keep it from being just me seeing if I can be On for 8 straight hours. In the past it's had the Sicko Showcase, Bad Game Triathlon, me screwing around in Ehrgeiz (god bless the ring), and much more.
During the drive there is a timed PWYW bundle of the (usually) last 10 commissioned with all proceeds being split between all past issues. It's both a great way to actually get closer to a sliver of profitability as well as a way to (hopefully) make sure a year doesn't go by with an issue getting zero royalty payouts.
A fun thing I did this year is after doing my normal break even calculation (total losses / .2) and seeing it was over $100k (truly unachievable) I decided I must be doing something wrong. The short version is that I was looking at royalties wrong in terms of breaking even. That also means that there are actually 4 issues that have broken even. (1,3,Tsushin,34)
This year I'm also thinking of starting a practice of excluding profitable issues from the pledge drive as a way of better, as they say, distributing the wealth? That is very tentative idea though.
(i talk about money a lot with indiepocalypse because it primarily relies on my uninteresting-normal-job money and having a better buffer so it doesn't immediately crumble in the face on unanticipated bills just makes me feel better)