It starts with the reference list, not where you wish your references were. Where they actually were. If eighty percent of your citations come from three venues, your shortlist is three venues.
- Sort by selectivity and be honest: everyone overestimates their paper by one tier, so consider one step down - Cross off deadlines you cannot hit with a finished manuscript; this kills more bad decisions than all prestige analysis - Read two years of proceedings; if the venue drifted from your topic, take the hint - Ask a human who has reviewed for the venue; ten minutes of gossip saves ten months of regret - Run a checklist app over the package before uploading: anonymized PDF, correct format, supplements attached
VenueFit is free: it pre-sorts hundreds of venues by topic fit and selectivity, so your shortlist starts at twenty instead of two hundred.