Ask HN: Successful marketing channels/forms for your startup/side project?
For those who have successful startups what has been the most effective form of marketing?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2014 where @ericthegoodking convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:
Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
CATEGORY Ask HN Roundtables →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 8 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 2 comments
If you haven't already, I can recommend reading the book Traction - http://tractionbook.com
Gabriel and Justin have done a good job of not just identifying marketing channels loaded with successful case studies, but providing the business framework for testing them on an ongoing basis to keep "moving the needle".