Short Story of the Day-11: "Golden Mongoose" by Swami Vivekananda

"Golden Mongoose" by Swami Vivekananda

A Brahmin, his wife, his son, and his son's wife had not tasted food for some time on account of a famine. The head of the house went out and after a search found a small quantity of barley. He brought this home and divided it into four portions, and the small family was about to eat, when a knock was heard at the door. It was a guest. The different portions were set before him, and he departed with his hunger satisfied, while the quartette who had entertained him perished.

This story is told in India to illustrate what is expected in the sacred name of hospitality.

Grateful thanks to The Vedanta Kesari, September 2008.

How To-12: "How to Promote a Story Online"

How'>http://www.wikihow.com/Promote-a-Story-Online">How to Promote a Story Onlinefrom wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
There are several ways to promote a story online. This could come as an aid to advertising short stories, or even books you've self published. Many sites allow yoou to. One of such is in the external links.

Steps

1. Pick a recent story to submit (story should be timestamped or somehow indicative of being very recent).
2. Use a catchy title that is concise and makes a strong statement. Relevant keywords should be used.
3. Write a short summary that is controversial. Eye-catching statistics are effective. Controversial stories evoke comments and heated discussion, which are favorable on websites which promote stories.
4. After submitting the article, appeal to your community to read it and give it good reviews. The faster and more coordinated you can do this, the better.
5. Remember to be part of the community -give reviews to other stories. Add friends, and review their stories. They will return the favor in the future.

Tips

• Build relationships with like-minded Digg users. You can also email/IM them if their profile contains contact information. Many Digg friends will email/IM their other Digg friends asking them to Digg their story
• Also consider submitting a story to other social news sites like Netscape and Reddit. Netscape, in particular, may be a better platform for non-tech-oriented stories.
• Email/IM your own community that may not be registered on Digg yet. Registration is quick and easy, and extra diggs from your own network can bump up the # of diggs
• AFTER building a relationship with a top digger, ask him or her to submit a story for you. Submissions from top diggers are more likely to get to the front page of Digg for 2 reasons: the algorithm weighs a top digger's submission more heavily, and a top Digger has a lot of friends on Digg who like to support each other by digging the same stories.

Warnings

• Do NOT send cold emails to top users on the website. A backlash can easily happen if the community thinks you're gaming the system - they can report your URL which can then get blocked by admins.
• Getting on the Main-Page of the website will guarantee 20K-30K unique visitors in a very short amount of time. Make sure your server can handle this load. An email newsletter subscription is a good idea to capture some of this new traffic - the vast majority of the new visitors will not return to your site.

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• How to Write a Comic Quickly
• How to Start Your Own Podcast
• How to Write a Novel
• How to Submit a Story to a Magazine

Sources and Citations

• http://www.digg.com/" rel="nofollow">digg.com

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on http://www.wikihow.com/Promote-a-Story-Online">How to Promote a Story Online. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons license.