Building a following for your writing is crucial to your publishing success. Without readers, you have no one to read your writing.

Although I know most writers hate marketing, if you take the time to market your writing, you will build your following more quickly and see results.

Your first step in building a following to your site should be to add a list. This can be a simple autoresponder script where you add a subscription box to your site. This way, readers can subscribe to your list to get updates, read your newsletter, as well as any announcements you may make about future writing.

Once you've create your list and add it to your site, you need to promote it. You can start by submitting your list to ezine directories.

These days, there are about 10 to 20 good directories where you can submit your list. Once you've submitted your list, then you need to find other directories to submit to.

Start by submitting to general directories. Many will ask you to exchange links, so you'll need a links page on your site. Once you've linked to the general directories, you need to use the search engines to help you find links pages on your topic.

For example, if you write poetry, then go to Google and type in "links: poetry". This will help you find sites on your topic that may offer links pages. You can then visit each site and exchange links, or better, get a backlink.

To be honest, this is very time consuming. However, if you do this every day, and link to five sites a day, at the end of one year, you'll have over 1,500 links for your site.

There are other ways to build a following for your writing. Writing articles is an excellent way to do it although some writers don't think you should ever write without getting paid for it.

I choose to write free articles to promote because one article can make you thousands because of its viral nature. If you get paid for an article, you can only publish it one time. This may make you $25 to a few hundred dollars.

When writing your articles, remember you have two audiences: other writers, and readers. You may choose to write about certain writing techniques for writers, whereas with readers, you may choose to tell them the history of a place.

For example: you've written a romance novel on Medieval Scotland. What better way to introduce readers to your work than to write an article on Medieval Scotland, i.e. what it was like to live there, the clothes, or something else?

Remember, you only have a few hundred words to communicate your message. Narrowly focus your topic for best results.

Finally, participate in forums. Make sure you join forums for both writers and readers. Many writers are readers, so they'll definitely be interested in what you have to say. I've found some of my best reads this way.

Regardless of what type of writing you write, if you want to make a living doing it, somethin most writers only dream about, then consider your audience. Build a relationship with them, and they'll buy everything you sell.