I self-hosted an instance a when I got here a few days ago. The server costs me the same whether I use it or not, so I’d like to let as many people sign up as I can. I had a few people sign up already before join-lemmy.org was changed to require 5 monthly active users, but now my instance isn’t shown there because it’s below the limit.
Any idea on how to attract a dozen or so users so that I can show up on the main join-lemmy page again?
Post it on relevant Reddit threads?
Aren’t people getting banned on Reddit for promoting lemmy?
Use a throwaway to be safe. Some communities have been open to it, others haven’t. If you don’t have a throwaway I hate suggesting create one (because it tells their investors that they’re growing), but you could make one that’s named something like “FollowXOnLemmy” or something
I’ve mentioned it on threads without being banned. I think it depends on how you do it. Some people just post it with no relevance to the thread at all, so… You have to be abit smarter and get it into the conversation naturally.