Promoting Your Stuff on Permies for FREE!

Nicole Alderman · Dec 27, 2012 07:00:25

Promote Your Stuff

You have a book you would like to promote? An article, or blog post, that you feel might be of use to the Permies community and would like to share? Maybe a workshop, conference or PDC to announce? Maybe you want our community to be away of your product for sale?

You can!

Permies is a site for the benefit of its members. So as a member of the community, Permies wants to help you promote your useful stuff. Promoting your useful stuff is not only good for you, but it benefits
everyone else in the Permies community that finds your stuff useful.

Guidelines

In order to be useful, your content should be:

Relevant to permaculture or homesteading;

Accurate and complete; and

In English (just like Permies posts).

If you are going to post a link to your stuff located elsewhere than Permies, please be sure to describe what you are linking to and why someone would want to click on the link.

Here's how to do it wrong when posting a reply to someone's question:

Hey, I wrote about that in my blog at http://attention-grabber.com/look-at-me.html

Here's one way to do it right:

Hey, I wrote an article on building a swale in cold climate at http://useful-content.com/cold-swale.html.

In the article, I describe how I levelled the bottom of the swale and what plants I planted on the swale. I also show pictures of the evolution of the swale over a 5 years period.

Notice the difference?

The first example is indistinguishable from spam. It doesn't tell anyone what the link is about, and all it does is to drive traffic away from Permies. It's not what a good community member should do.

The second example has two important differences:

It states what the link is about in close proximity to the link (good for searching); and

It follows up with a summary that informs the reader whether the content might be useful or not.

NOT A LICENSE TO SPAM

Your post will be subject to removal as spam if it can be:

Interpreted as spam;

Really is spam;

Is not deemed to be offered in the spirit of being part of the Permies community; and

Doesn't meet the posting guidelines.

Books or Movies

We especially encourage authors to promote their books or movies. See this page for a book and this page for a movie example of what we would like to see.

Some things we like to see on a book or movie's page:

An image of the book or movie's cover;

Author's photo;

Any other images appropriate for the book including: the back cover, sample figures or diagrams from the book;

Screenshots from the movie

The book's Table of Contents; and

Any other appropriate information.

We also like seeing links such as:

Link to the publisher's page;

Link to the Amazon page;

Link to free sample chapters or previews (if any);

Link to the Author's bio;

Link to the book or movie's Permies Staff review (if any);

Link to the Author's blog (if any);

any other appropriate links;

Where to Post

Depending on what your stuff is related to, you can post in the Global Ressources forum in the appropriate section (books, DVDs, movies, videos and documentaries,web sites, products,resources: seeds, plants, honey, consulting, etc.)

Many other forms of free advertising you can do:

make a media rich thread about your organization/website/book/thing/whatever
- if you buy a piece of pie, you can add your thread to more forums
- every reply to your thread, bumps it to the top of our home page!
- put our social media icon on your site and link it to your thread so it gets bumped more! More posts and more views also adds to the thread score, which improves the odds that it will appear on the "best" column and in the periodic digest "interesting threads you might have missed."
offering freebies to our pie people gets you listed to our heavily advertised pie program!
offering freebies through our daily-ish email
put a link to your stuff in your signature and write lots of excellent posts!
offer stuff in our book/dvd/event/pie promotions
get your stuff lined up for a review. Provide some of your stuff to our reviewers: book reviews
give your stuff to some of our staff and hope that they talk about it a lot
check out our paid advertising stuff below and arrange a media trade. Banner-for-banner, or mailing-list mention for mailing-list mention, etc.
if we like your stuff, and you set it up in our Digital Market forum with a 40% affiliate fee, we might advertise the hell out of it. (example)

We also have a list for paid advertising.

Dec 28, 2012 21:59:43

we need a permies rocks smiley... like one holding a sign that says that... lol

Dec 30, 2012 09:52:19

a good chuckle was enjoyed by all -

Hey, I wrote about that in my blog at http://attention-grabber.com/look-at-me.html

Here's one way to do it right:

Hey, I wrote an article on building a swale in cold climate at http://useful-content.com/cold-swale.html.

Dec 30, 2012 12:22:20

Is there a for sale/trading section on the forum?I have some mags and books that pertain to our preferred way of life.

Dec 30, 2012 13:57:06

@Ben

For books, you can post on the books forum and the magazines don't really fit well anywhere yet, but could be in the products forum for now.

Dec 30, 2012 18:25:32

Wait! Paul? You're not like every other tinpot internet dictator? You really believe in this sharing info stuff?

ARE YOU SURE? All the Evil Marketing People I've worked with won't think this is a good idea.

WHAT ABOUT BRAND PURITY? OMG OMG OMG!!!

(Seriously - you rock, you attract other people that rock, and that's why Permies rocks.)

Dec 30, 2012 19:19:29

Adrien Lapointe wrote:@Ben

For books, you can post on the books forum and the magazines don't really fit well anywhere yet, but could be in the products forum for now.

Thanks for the info.

Jan 06, 2013 10:17:43

I am often asked "will you run banners for my event/book/video/blog?" or "will you announce my event/book/video/blog on your daily-ish email?" and it turns out that what they universally leave out of their query is "for free".

As it turns out, I will often do that sort of thing for free. There are a lot of criteria for what is persuasive to me. 90% of the requests come from people that have never posted anything at permies besides advertising their stuff. If they are some source of information, could they not answer even one question from somebody trying to learn this stuff? The same 90% have zero links to my empire.

At the same time, I know of people that have been big boosters of my empire, and their site is loaded with links, and they have over a hundred posts on these forums.

So who do you suppose gets my freebies?

Apr 02, 2013 11:44:13

Good day,

I am co-facilitating a PDC at our farm in Costa Rica that features a Kid's Camp and Eco-adventure tour called Permaculture in Action... I am a PC designer, teacher, and implementer, not as good with marketing... yet. I am wondering if you may have some advice on where to promote it and the best way. I made a flier and have put it up on facebook as well as made another page on our website. I am wondering if possible, where I would post a course here in permies.

Thanks,
Alana Bliss

Apr 02, 2013 14:36:11

Do you have a website for the event? If not, you should post a thread in the central american forum about your event and that can be your web page.

Then set up your signature to point to that web page.

Then try to answer a few questions about permaculture in general and people will be awed by your answer and follow your signature link. These threads will be viewed thousands of times over the years so that for each new workshop you can change your signature.

Mar 27, 2014 08:59:14

I very much want people to openly advertise their site and their stuff when it is relevant to permies. But it has to be done within our comfort zone. Currently we delete a LOT of spam. As a result, the whole staff is pretty much on auto-pilot when you see a short sentence and a link to delete it without really reading it.

I like to think that if somebody has a blog and they post the way adrien suggested in the first post, then I like the idea that we find ways to send lots of traffic to your site. And in the case of the "bad post" then we will probably delete that and no traffic will go to your site.

Further, some people that wish to bring attention to their site and/or product have come to the conclusion that this is fucked up and I am the king of dicks. To respond to that, I have two important points:

1) If you think this, then why do you spend even one more second on my site? Do you find pleasure in being miserable? Go find a community that fits your idea of awesome.

2) I take great pride in being the king of dicks based on your standards. Naturally, by my standards, and the standards of a few others, I am fucking awesome. And this site is dedicated to those people.

Nov 27, 2014 06:57:37

Yeah,a good chuckle was enjoyed by all...

Nov 16, 2015 21:18:58

Paul sets the example of letting the community know what he has available in his signature line. If you make lots of informative posts and comments it gets exposed to the members in proper way.
I had not considered posting in the regional threads because on first read I thought they were reserved for Paul.

Jan 14, 2016 07:42:03

I added a bunch of stuff to the bottom of the first post. Namely this:

The paid advertising options on permies.com right now:

banners at the top of the forums, plus get in on the big list which is linked to from every page
sponsorship in the podcasts
a paragraph or so in the daily-ish email
a "tiny ad" in the daily-ish email
in-forum links
banners/offers throughout the content at richsoil.com
producer credits/mention in upcoming youtube videos
run your video at the top of our forums
we might be convinced to add a bumper sticker for you

I suspect that this is not the complete list. I suspect that there are lots more free advertising things for businesses, blogs and the like. What am I leaving out?

Feb 21, 2017 11:25:19

hi

I was looking to make a video\ picture log for records so that myself and later my daughter knew what was done and where and why on the property. House stuff and of course the planting and earthworks etc. i thought about posting it to you tube because its trendy there and other people might see something usefull, but if its possible to upload vidoes here and not just embed them then i could do that here . It would one less account and website to check in on and I get more out of browsing these forums than sifting through youtube. Its sort of advertizing because I run a little tourism business but im not really expecting to find people here, most are based in the states. If i can post videos should i make a thread for the project or put things in place under the other threads that are already there? Also, whats the difference between watching a post and bookmarking one?
-Taryn

Feb 23, 2017 16:51:17

We are not set up to manage video files. We can, however, embed youtube and vimeo videos.

May 05, 2017 10:04:28

Watching a post will give you a heads up whenever new information is posted to the thread. Bookmarking will let you find that thread in the future, but it won't send you a message ever time more discussion is added to the thread.

Mostly I bookmark topics that are full of information on complicated topics that I will some day (hopefully) be prepared to take the time to learn. Building my own solar battery array, for instance. It will probably be some years before I'm prepared to tackle this, so I'll read all the discussion at that time.

Jun 21, 2023 16:11:13

Our readers are unlikely to click on content that looks like spam, so if you are linking to a blog or other Website, it's well worth putting the effort in and share some of the content so the readers feel motivated to learn more and give it a click.

Jan 18, 2025 12:33:03

Jan 27, 2025 05:51:52

If you are a great contributor to permies and put a link to your stuff on your signature line, it shows up on every post you make - awesome!

Jul 10, 2026 10:24:59

I have a merch store geared towards Homesteaders, and am an ambassador for Fast Growing Trees, would those 2 work here for being safe to advertise?

Jul 10, 2026 11:05:33

Ashley Redding wrote:I have a merch store geared towards Homesteaders, and am an ambassador for Fast Growing Trees, would those 2 work here for being safe to advertise?

Please reference this link - Concise Guide to Promoting Your Stuff on Permies

As long as you follow that guide, you should be good to advertise.

Jul 10, 2026 11:15:56

Thank you!

It's a tiny ad. At least, that's what she said.

100th Issue of Permaculture Magazine - now FREE for a while

https://permies.com/goodies/45/pmag