You will promote your work, and nothing happens.

Someone else will promote your work, and nothing happens.

Someone else will promote your work, and nothing happens.

Someone else will promote your work, and it’ll go completely viral.

Someone else will promote your work, and nothing happens.

I’ve seen this happen over, and over, and over again. Where people often get stuck is thinking about that fourth time, and trying to reverse-engineer it. This becomes a sort of cargo cult marketing, or apophenia; they’re constantly trying to make a clear pattern out of extremely noisy complexity. 

In my experience, there’s too much noise to actually get a clear signal. Instead, the most practical takeaway is to try to promote your work as often as possible, and build relationships with people (or allocate the ad budget) to do the same.

Promotional work is probabilistic; the more tickets you have to the lottery, the greater your chances of winning.

See also on self promotion, HN on self promotion, and overidentification.

P.S., Often it probably looks more like:

You will promote your work, and nothing happens.

You will promote your work, and nothing happens.

You will promote your work, and nothing happens.

You will promote your work, and it’ll go completely viral.

You will promote your work, and nothing happens.