Do your part by getting your associates to at least install the mod, and then ambush four of them at once to get a whole gang into a server. Advertising everywhere to everyone is the only way to get noticed in the short-term. I think we will do okay in the long run; though at the moment we are suffering from being backstabbed by Valve.
If a server gets to four people, it fills up. If it is at 3 it can go either way. A two-man server only stays alive if the players are of comparable skill. Needless to say, I have a poor history of helping seed a server that is at 1 or 2 when I join. >_> But if I push a 3 to a 4 it's up to 14 by the end of the round and I am forced to move to another machine.
We are also competing against established games like TF2 and L4D and CSS, which has trained people in the exact opposite gameplay of what we enjoy. That makes it difficult to draw someone over since they go straight to being a noob again, when they can just go back to being a bigdick in their old game.
SSL: Which is why I kept and keep saying we never should have released it...