Ask HN: What are effective ways to market a side project?
It's easy to see how projects like threewords.me will spread virally, but what about SaaS services that don't have social components? How do you get the word out? Conversion is poor from local blogs, and Techcrunch is not likely to cover you unless you're funded.
What have you all tried? What's worked?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2011 where @freerobby 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.
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HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 12 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 9 comments
Organic search, particularly scalable content generation: my bread and butter. This has worked fantastically well, including when I was just working on side projects, and requires no gatekeeper approval. It is also free to get started working on, and plays to many of the strengths of technical founders.
AdWords: other people execute better than me on this, but my AdWords has been routinely profitable for the last few years. I recommend a small budget while trying to find a mix that works, then blowing it up.
Facebook ads: like setting money on fire.
Facebook viral mechanisms: apparently not a great fit with my product, and ways I can see to improve this would make it difficult for me to look in the mirror.
One of my very favorite methods is creating plugin/add-on integration for various platforms/software. People who use the platform/software will tell other people that they can use your service with it. It also gives you license to promote yourself in the appropriate directories/forums.
Vinicius Vacanti listed some helpful tips in a recent blog post, "How To Get Your First 1,000 Users:" http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your-first-1000-users/
My stab at this (its still so alpha it hurts), try http://www.startupbeanbags.com - the idea is practical promotion for start ups via the medium of beanbags :)