Managing expectations is key as you suspect. It's important to remember that hundreds of talented people are putting out very high quality stuff every day, most

Managing expectations is key as you suspect. It's important to remember that hundreds of talented people are putting out very high quality stuff every day, most of it is noticed by someone, but very little of it makes it into popular culture. When you've prepared a good home for your material (I have no idea what it is, writing? Music? Software? Something else?) then the work of getting people to it begins. For me, that means tweeting, chatting, "forumming" and generally being annoyingly plugging my stuff whenever I get the chance (and sometimes when I don't). You will likely receive very limited feedback from doing this, but it does help, and people will pick up your stuff eventually. I expect very little, the things I make are also not very good, so that's probably part of it. I get "feedback" by searching for my stuff online, and I'm pleased when I find it popping up in linux distros or discussion fora, or youtube videos. But that's about it.