Ask HN: How do you market your side project?
5 comments
There are tons of different ways to market your side project and what works for someone else may not work for you, of course.
I think it really just comes down to where your potential customers may be hanging out / searching. For my side project, I've had decent success responding to posts/questions on sites like Quora, where someone is looking for exactly what you offer. It's free too (besides for your time!).
The book Traction (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...) gives a pretty solid overview of different marketing methods/strategies.
I think it really just comes down to where your potential customers may be hanging out / searching. For my side project, I've had decent success responding to posts/questions on sites like Quora, where someone is looking for exactly what you offer. It's free too (besides for your time!).
The book Traction (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...) gives a pretty solid overview of different marketing methods/strategies.
Tapping into an existing, niche community seems to be a pretty common and successful method. Does your project help solve a common problem for a narrowly defined group of people? If so, is there a forum where this problem is commonly discussed? Become a helpful member of this community. Ask and answer questions there without only constantly pushing your project in a spammy way.
That is a very good idea. The side project I am working on does serve a very specific function, so I may try taking this route. Now, do you answer old questions, or do you find new ones and answer those?
It's an easy fit for the information-focused sideprojects I've typically created, providing the content needed to rank with no additional effort, but it can work for any project creator willing to put a little effort into creating content about their project and promoting that content (to gain links to their domain). And most importantly, it keeps me focused on creating something people want, because I'm typically expanding the project in areas where I see there's a high volume of searches (through keyword research tools).