Except for posting to HN, how do you tell the world about your projects that you are working on? If you don't have funds for adds how do you spread the word? Only through personal social media accounts?
Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
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Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#2Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#3Submit it to Hackaday, post on HN, post on reddit. Do this everytime your project has a major update, not just once. People may scoff at this, but you can buy reddit upvotes on Fiverr. You don't beed to buy thousands, just enough to make sure your post doesn't get buried. Also start an IRC, Slack or Discord for your project.
Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#4Build a network. Contribute to things. Cultivate friendships. Help people. Do that for a few years and then people might listen to your ideas.
Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#5From my own experience with building Mockoon:
I submitted the project on various places: HN, Reddit, Product Hunt, and lots of directories like Beta Page. HN was the best, by far. Lots of interesting feedback. Reddit was okay, but you need to post at the right time of the day, and present your project so it doesn't look like an ad (like "I created X using Y framework, feedback welcomed"). Still it helped, but it really depends on the sub on which you are posting. Product Hunt was average, Mockoon wasn't at the top during the day, more like no. 4 or 5, just under the fold. And all the directories helped only for the SEO. They didn't bring any significant traffic.
After the launch, I started writing articles, tutorials, having a good readme file on GitHub (it's an open-source project), make sure things are cross-linked and polished (the Docker image page, the NPM page, etc.). Today, the primary source of new users is word of mouth and SEO.
I have a Discord, Twitter and LinkedIn page, but I am rather bad at creating a community. Also, it requires posting very frequently about anything and everything which is time consuming with very random results. Sometimes I post an update on what I am working on, and I get 10 likes, sometimes 0. Very frustrating. Then, the post is lost forever. LinkedIn is showing way better results for me though. I would say invest in SEO. It is a long term game, you still depends on Google, but if you do things correctly it pays.
Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#6Depends on the product. Go to where your (prospective) customers are.
Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#7Build a network. Contribute to things. Cultivate friendships. Help people. Do that for a few years and then people might listen to your ideas.
I've been contributing to various open source projects for years. Because I believe in them. I'm just one of the contributors, so I don't even know how to approach someone with "Hey, can you help me with...". I guess that I need to go out and hang out more. Thanks :)
Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#8Submit it to Hackaday, post on HN, post on reddit. Do this everytime your project has a major update, not just once. People may scoff at this, but you can buy reddit upvotes on Fiverr. You don't beed to buy thousands, just enough to make sure your post doesn't get buried. Also start an IRC, Slack or Discord for your project.
This hackaday is new thing to me. Will take a look at it.
On reddit I've been told that I' a "spammer" since I've cross posted one announcement to few relevant subreddits.
IRC, didn't hear about it for a long time. I need to check out which servers and channels might be relevant for me. thanks!
Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#9From my own experience with building Mockoon: I submitted the project on various places: HN, Reddit, Product Hunt, and lots of directories like Beta Page. HN was the best, by far. Lots of interesting feedback. Reddit was okay, but you need to post at the right time of the day, and present your project so it doesn't look like an ad (like "I created X using Y framework, feedback welcomed"). Still it helped, but it real…
Product hunt seemed always like a lot of effort to get a good position. You need to have coordinated action across lot of channels to get the word out at the right time. Am I right about this?
Re: Ask HN: How to tell the world about your project?
#10i have come to the conclusion over the past 10 years that it is now all about buying ads. seo doesn’t seem to work anymore and on social media nothing gets reach organically. i am wondering how other people are dealing with this. i cannot afford to pay for ads in my business. if i did i would have no margin left to work with.