You have that ideal mod in mind ? You think it's really interesting and open a brand new thread in the workshop.. but nobody else seems to find it so interesting. Why ? Is it your fault ? Partly; yes.

It may be a weird subject, but I'm sure a lot of mods die due to lack of interest - after all, who wants to work hours on something nobody seems to care about. So here's what you're doing wrong and what you can do to fix it.

I've split the tutorial in 2 Major Issues and General Tips and info - the 2 major issues are seperated because they are oh so frequent and practically all of them share the same problems.

Issue 1.
The Problem
"People are meenies and they say bad things about you and your mod. Why ?"

Explanation
First of all, you are most likely a person with a weird (and unknown) name. You have low or no rep at all, and you miss any form of avatars or signatures. Secondly, your mod is probably extremely ambitious.

It's not weird for people to have doubts about you when they see you're new, and you're trying to do stuff better modders couldn't.

Solution
Change your name to something decent. A name like 'TotalWar' is better than for instance 'franky12456cool'. Get an avatar and a signature - you can request these in the Graphics Workshop subforum. Try to increase your post count and visit some hosted mod forums. Having a well-known name in the modder's milieu will greatly increase the attention and the trust in you and your mod. Also, try to make some smaller things before your big project - release some small mods (maybe submods for the big mods like TATW or SS) to increase your experience and the trust people put in you.

Issue 2.
The Problem
"I have a project that looks really interesting but nobody seems to care, even though I find it interesting"

Explanation
First of all, the interface of your mod thread is extremely important : having a well-structured interface where you make use of different sizes, different fonts, colors, titles, sub-titles, etc wil greatly please the eye and keep the reader interested. Having a huge block of letters filled with typos will give low hope - after all, if you can't even create a structurised piece of text, how can you create something that requires a lot of structure ?

Secondly, it's not because you find your mod about your homeland (for instance Azerbeijan) interesting that everyone else does. Don't think like you would but how others would. Do people even know where Azerbeijan is ? Does it have an interesting history ? Did it play a big role in history ? All those things are important, and you shouldn't underestimate it.

Solution
Easy enough - get a good interface, perhaps also accompanied by some images to spicen it up. Also make sure your subject is interesting, perhaps add some background information ?

General hints and tips
It's good to have a routine for your mod : An update each week, a screenshot of a new unit each month, .. Also, get a good structure for your mod, and stick to it : Have the same background image, image size and border when you're showing a preview - take for instance the mods 'All under Heaven' or 'The Last Kingdom'. They each have the same background, borders, structure, image size, ... for their previews. Which makes it look extremely professional and great. AuH has the same image dimensions and the same border on all their images, The Last Kingdom has the same background image for their previews, take a look at this one for instance.

Secondly, do know that people love images - it's always better to have a lot of images to accompany a lot of a text, to keep it balanced. Also keep it simple - don't give a history lesson in your previews. It may be interesting background information, but do know that most people just scroll down until they arrive at the units' section and just watch at the images. After all, the eye also wants something. Having lots of eye candy (drawings, High-Res renders and models, ..) will impress the people, even if it's not added to the mod itself. People like images, whether or not they are part of the mod.

Lastly, it's always best to post something, even if you say there's been no progress - lack of updates will make the readers think the mod is dying, so even the tiniest of update like 'Added 1 new region' is better. You gotta keep it going.

That's about it. I hope you'll have learned a bit or 2 about the subject after reading this. I also hope there will be less noob-threads, even though I know this tutorial probably won't help at all due to noobs not reading it

Afterword :

While creating several mods, I found lack of interest very discouraging. So I started thinking about why and what. I'm also not saying I do all of this stuff (just the opposite in fact ), but just that it's handy to do this, to keep everyone interested.