Ask HN: How to monetize side projects without marketing?

Partner with someone who does love marketing and split the proceeds.

You dont have to do marketing. Think of marketing as a force multiplier. You can have a product returning $40k/yr and if you happy with that and dont care that marketing might make that $200k/yr or get to $X there faster, that's great. Squeezing more money from something isn't meaningful to many and is fine to leave more on the table.

I think the best options is one of 3:

1) If your building for fun, do above and the earnings are what they are. You can always bring in marketing down the track if your feeling on this change.

2) If focused on driving a better income, as a the couple people already said in thread, find a marketer that suits you and what you expect from the business. Maybe less product input and they do their thing separate from you. Make that expectation clear in the beginning as it could be a point of friction if its not the expectation.

3) Find a B2B distribution channel. This can be super effective if you find the right one e.g. if your product complements a business and they are happy to recommend it for kickback or because it improves their offering. Hard to find but if you do it can be a one time deal and you keep doing your thing while the product gets pushed in the background.

Good luck with whatever!

Plenty here on HN. You have forums like /r/marketing on reddit but guessing from comments that tends to be less experienced people than here.