Ask HN: How do you market a side project?

I made the mistake of promoting my sideline on online groups 20 years ago. Some nasty responses. One random guy however told me to keep going and ignore the criticism. Groups are full of critics who couldn't make porridge let alone a product.

What got me started was sending out letters to clients, in my case schools. Old school I know. I have always worked full time. The sideline has made several hundred thousand dollars over the last 20 years.

Think about how companies advertise and copy with what you can afford.

The honest answer: 90% of marketing is consistency, not brilliance.

What's worked for me:

1. Be genuinely helpful first. Before you promote anything, spend a month just answering questions in communities where your users hang out. Not pitching, just helping. This builds credibility and teaches you what people actually struggle with.

2. Build in public. Share your process, not just the finished product. People love following a journey. Weekly updates on LinkedIn, a Show HN when you hit a milestone, short posts about what you learned.

3. Email still works if you do it right. Collect emails from day one. A simple "get notified when we launch" form captures people who are actually interested. Then nurture them with value, not spam.

4. The 100-user challenge. Instead of trying to reach everyone, focus on getting 100 people to really use and love your product. Those 100 become your advocates and do the marketing for you.

5. Don't spend money on ads until you can articulate exactly who converts and why. Ads amplify what's already working. They don't create product-market fit.

The pessimistic comment about marketing being dead is half-right. Lazy promotion is dead. But genuinely helping people in the right places, over time, still works.

Source: former Head of Growth at a fintech company