I just started a roleplaying site that hosts my play-by-post game of Prometheus and want to attract players. The sites I've found that allow game advertisements want to be paid, they don't even allow me to put a little link anywhere without a constant fee.
I want to get a bunch of players together to play a fantasy/sci-fi game and I have nowhere to advertise it... How can I promote my game online without being charged for it?
A single PBP doesn't need all that many players, so "advertising" may not be the best approach. First consider all the techniques already listed on this site at Where can I find other RPG players? Even if the game is online, it might be nice to have friends, acquaintances, or even just people from your area in it. Here's an example of someone using meetup.com to advertise for a Demon: The Fallen PBP in the Denver area. This has the additional benefit of maybe turning into real tabletop at some point.
Also consider whether you really need to host your own PBP. There are a lot of PBP sites (and forums) out there already, like rpgcrossing.com and rpgm.com, and so PBPs on them are somewhat more self-advertising. Most are free and are simply forum-driven.
Speaking of forums - forums are still the #1 kind of site used by gamers. As a result pretty much every large RPG forum - rpg.net, enworld.org, etc. have places to advertise for games both in person and pbp, and often just run pbp there on the forums as well. Most every RPG publisher has a forum as well, and most will have dedicated subforums to these as well or at least be friendly to them in a general announcements subforum.
RPOL.net is for online forum gaming, but they do have an Offsite Gaming forum where they allow posts for other PBPs.
A lot of rpg forums have a sub-forum dedicated towards advertising to find players for a game. For example, rpg.net has Gaming Gatherings. You may want to look at some of the forum sites and look for similar sections - typically play by post is listed as "PBP" in the title.
If you have to email/post to ask someone about how to do it, it's important to phrase that you are looking for players for your play by post game - you're not advertising a site or a "game". If you look/ask to advertise a site/game, they'll assume you're a business looking to SELL a game, not a person looking for players to PLAY a game.
Since you've got Prometheus listed as the game you're running, I'd start here at the Onyx Path Forum in this sub-forum for game recruitment.
Try:
They have a game recruitment forum and place to run the game posts if needed.
Or this
Reddit naturally has a rather large community and has a dedicated subreddit for advertising games looking for players and/or GMs. http://reddit.com/r/lfg
The OngoingWorlds blog is accepting guest blog articles which could be a good way to advertise your game without being blatent about it.
I am registered on Obsidian Portal. I love it. You can browse others' campaigns and there are search options for recruiting in your area. They allow a lot of HTML for your campaign webpage for lots of customization. And I have never been charged for any of it. Basic accounts are free. Ascendant accounts are $40 a year.
Run your game at Myth-Weavers.com.
Hosted subforums with thread handling tools, a robust dice-roller, inbuilt character sheets for most game systems, ability to make a 'private' game that non-players can't see.
You can't advertise there for games on other sites, but assuming you're just trying to run the game rather than advertise your website, shifting it to myth-weavers shouldn't be a huge burden.
