The Newb's Do's and Don'ts of CMoN Posting

DISCLAIMER - Everything presented here is the viewpoint of a newb.  If you believe that I don't know what I am talking about, you are probably right.

So I had been lurking on the coolminiornot.com (CMoN) for over a year now and I've only recently been bold enough to post any of my work on there.  I hadn't built up enough confidence with my skills and I lacked the proper setup to make quality photographs for presentation on there.  Just recently I posted pictures of my finished Inugami and was surprised to see it get a rating of over 7.0.  That's not too shabby for a newb!  If you are interested, you may find my gallery post here.

I mainly attribute that success to my observation of how the CMoN community operates in general and over the past year I've gotten a very good feel for what does well there and what does not.  To that end, I've compiled a list of my own do's and don'ts for a successful CMoN posting:

1. Finish painting the damn thing!  There are a lot of what are tagged as works-in-progress on there.  Based on my observations over the past year, these are generally not well received in the gallery.  Feedback in the gallery tends to be very sparse at best mostly because it seems the majority of people on there do not seem interested in writing up meaningful critiques.  They generally just want to see pretty pictures. There are exceptions but in general comments are only made on the extremes of the quality spectrum.  So if you are looking for feedback, go to the forums or network with other artists if you can.
2. Understand what the gallery is, why it's there, and what kind of audience you are presenting to.  It primarily functions as a source for inspiration for other artists.  If people like what they see in an image post there, they will generally rate it favorably on their 10 point scale.  It's also important to note that there are a lot of biases for/against different artistic mediums, styles/genres, and manufacturers.  This really is a function of how saturated that audience has become of a particular item.  For example, I think space marines are boring and there are way too many of them to keep my attention.  I really don't bother rating most of them and that's just my own bias.
3. Get a halfway decent camera and lighting setup.  Mine was fairly makeshift but moving forward I will be using my mark II light box which should yield better results.  There are a lot of tutorial resources out there on how to do this so I suggest you check them out.  You may be surprised how affordable such a setup can be if you know what you are doing.
4. Get as many angles on your work as you can.  Take shots of the front and back at least.  Doing so demonstrates that you have given attention to the whole model and not just the front.  Also, if you've painted some really intricate details that you are proud of get a tight close-up shot of them to show them off.
5. Do not post the same model as different posts but at different angles.  I know CMoN only allows you to upload one image to a single gallery post, but the problem with this approach is it doesn't give you an evaluation of the work as a whole and some people just get annoyed when they see that.  The best rated artists work around this by merging the multiple angles/close-ups into a single image file.  You can do this in just about any image editing program that's worth its salt (you don't really need Photoshop for this).
6. Get the highest quality picture that you can.  Make sure the model is well lit, in focus, and accurately shows the colors.  There are a lot of decent posts on there that lose points simply because of poor photo quality.
7. Put a good descriptive title on your work and say something about it.  Nothing says "I don't really care about this" more than when the title is nothing more than a question mark.  If you don't care about it why should someone else?
8. Be responsive, respectful, and friendly to those who do comment.  Do not feed the trolls.  Any online community will have them and CMoN is no exception.  Also it goes without saying... do not be a troll either!
9. Do not apologize upfront for anything and do not self-critique.  If you have to say you are sorry for something (poor photo quality, for example) it becomes an automatic red flag.  Doing so alerts the audience that something is off and its simply asking for a lower score.  Same thing goes with self-critique.  No matter how bad you think that one problem is, you really shouldn't draw attention to it.
10. Be open to criticism and be realistic of your expectations.  But at the same time, allow yourself to be optimistic if your only real critic so far has been yourself.  Chances are you aren't going to get any comments unless you do something exceptionally awesome or horrid so don't let this hold you back.
11. Keep everything in perspective and don't be obsessed with the rating.  It can give you a very definitive measure of your skill level but at the end of the day it's just a number.  Don't let it take away from the joy of the hobby!