Ask HN: How much time do you spend on “marketing” your open source projects?

https://github.com/warpspeed/warpspeed

The project started because I had a need to get my code deployed quickly and easily with an affordable VPS provider like Linode or Digital Ocean. As a developer, I wasn't a fan of devops so I figured I would script everything so I only had to do it once.

The project has been through many iterations. I once had the whole thing written in ansible, but I went to bash since it is neutral ground. I released it open source because it feels good to share and get feedback. I now have sample projects in a lot of popular frameworks based on contributions of some friends.

I have done almost no marketing, but the project has seen some adoption with code schools since it makes the deployment process so simple. It also models development best practices by using git (push to deploy) and having a development environment that matches production (using vagrant).

I think marketing is hard for a lot of developers and creators, myself included. Everybody has something they are good at and being both a good creator and marketer is a rare combination it seems. I don't think this should stop us from creating, but perhaps it would be a good idea to partner with a friend that has marketing talent.

Thanks for offering me the opportunity to share here. :) If any of you give WarpSpeed a try, please let me know what you think.

Apropos, this book may be of interest. I had come across it a while ago; I have read part of it:

Producing Open Source Software

How to Run a Successful Free Software Project

by Karl Fogel

(Consulting: Open Tech Strategies, LLC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Fogel

Excerpt from his Wikipedia page:

[ Karl Fogel is an author, software developer, Executive Director of copyright activist non-profit Question Copyright,[1] and former board member of the Open Source Initiative where he served as the Board Treasurer.[2] His work, Producing Open Source Software, is a well referenced source of information about the human side of open source software.[3][4] Fogel is currently updating the Creative Commons licensed (CC BY-SA 4.0[5]) book to a second edition following a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.com.[6] ]

I created it because I had a need for such a component, and there was almost no such component available. The only one that was available had no documentation.

After I created, I primarily posted in reddit, HackerNews and few react specific websites. Now, I get some organic traffic from search engines and some steady stream of downloads. Among the websites I posted, reddit was the single source of major traffic with some react newsletters/websites coming second.

Personally, I created this component for myself. But after releasing I made couple of major and minor changes based on the use cases for some real time users. That is gratifying for me.