FYI, re: "I have 1,000 views but only 2 people followed me" -- Neocities' view counter doesn't distinguish well between real followers and bots like Internet Archive or the ones that index pages for web searches. I also think the count on your site profile might count every time someone loads a page on your site a view, like, it'd count 5 "views" if someone loaded 5 different pages on your site.
Don't stress too much about the numbers -- if you've got interesting stuff on your site, folks will come. Webrings really help with discoverability, as does linking your Neocities on other sites you might be on -- I've gotten several mutuals from Flight Rising, for example.
Good luck with the event. My eyes got wide open when I read the $300 to be honest haha. God bless you
FYI, re: "I have 1,000 views but only 2 people followed me" -- Neocities' view counter doesn't distinguish well between real followers and bots like Internet Archive or the ones that index pages for web searches. I also think the count on your site profile might count every time someone loads a page on your site a view, like, it'd count 5 "views" if someone loaded 5 different pages on your site.
Don't stress too much about the numbers -- if you've got interesting stuff on your site, folks will come. Webrings really help with discoverability, as does linking your Neocities on other sites you might be on -- I've gotten several mutuals from Flight Rising, for example.