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Marketing is scary for a solo developer

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Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#151

Post by Nemi »

XCSme wrote: post #76

I struggle with marketing so much. I built an amazing product, existing customers love it, but spending any time on doing marketing feels like either wasting development time or spending time to try to force people into buying something they might not want. Most ads are trying to trick you into buying stuff you don't really need. I know there are cases in which you actually see a relevant ad for something you really…

I think you are confusing marketing with advertising. What you are doing IS marketing. Marketing is about understanding the market’s problem you are solving and figuring out ways to connect those people with your product.

A great way to market your product is to use “content marketing” where you create truly useful information on how people can solve their problems that may or may not even need your product to work. This combines being altruistic (they may read your content and figure out how to solve their problem without your product, and that is ok) with being business savvy (they may be so impressed with your knowledge and articulation that they want YOU to solve their problem, so they hire you/buy your product).

Advertising is just one very small aspect of marketing. A really good marketer understands this and finds the best way to expose their product and reach customers that really need your help.

Probably one of the best examples of altruistic content marketing was Joel Spolsky. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/

He never even tried to sell his company’s software FogBugz, but the exposure FogBugz got through his blog was so much greater than he ever could have gotten through advertising. He created a reputation that eclipsed his product several times over. You don’t have to go to the length he did, but hopefully you get the point.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#152

Post by CommonGuy »

Man this hits home... We have similar marketing problems with our product (https://kreya.app), even though we think it is much better than competing products.

Our "marketing attemps" such as using Show HN (never reached the front page) or publishing blog posts didn't amount to much. Posting on reddit did gain us some traffic, but that went over pretty quickly.

We currently rely on organic traffic, but growing this way is just soooo slow.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#153

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

tymm wrote: post #43

As a solo developer ( https://simplepush.io ) that hates marketing as well, I often find myself trying to make use of paid ads. Probably because it is easier to spend some money than writing a good article. However it hasn't really worked for me so far. Wondering if other solo developers had some success with paid ads?

Some suggestions for your site. Explain what a push notification is. I'm a developer and I only have a vague idea of what you're talking about. Why would I want to do a push? What benefit does it have? Am I possibly already doing notifications a different way that's less efficient/less effective/slower than your method?

Right there are a bunch of blog articles you could write and share that provide free marketing for your product.

Also nothing should be priced at $4.99/year, I don't care what it is, if it's worth $4.99 a year then it's probably worth at least 20x that.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#154

Post by Swinx43 »

magicroot75 wrote: post #26

I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…

You are absolutely correct. I have been working as an engineer with marketing departments of organisations and the degree to which these two sides can benefit a product or company when working together is phenomenal.

"If you build it they will come" is a sure fire way to have your hopes and dreams dashed on the rocks of reality. Marketing is as important as the dev skills to make a product happen. They are two sides of the same coin of success.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#155

Post by matwood »

chadash wrote: post #104
xwdv wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Developers should be asking themselves during the development process: "Is this feature going to excite a group of users, and do we have some statistical mechanism to predict that excitement?" This is such a user-facing mindset. I’d say most of the development work I do isn’t even something the user will know about and definitely not get excited about. Also, I do not care about what happens after a feature gets bui…

> my job is not to make sure the right things are being built, it’s to make sure things are being built right If you build the right things the wrong way, then you have technical debt. If you build the wrong things the right way, then you have nothing (except maybe an aesthetically pleasant code base that won't get used?). Every developer should try to have some part in making sure the right thing is being built.

> Every developer should try to have some part in making sure the right thing is being built.

Bingo. For as much as developers hate technical debt, it seems many miss the obvious way to avoid it is to not build something at all.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#156

Post by dahart »

> But how do I get over the fear of exposure?

For me, it really helped to have A/B testing in place and literally watch relatively easy marketing efforts bring many times more people than a new feature or a technical or educational post. Marketing was (and still is) pretty scary to me, but seeing it work does ease the fears. Another motivator in my case was spending my own money, which was maybe a mistake, but watching my savings drain while I code certainly lit a fire to try and make things work.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#157

Post by cortesoft »

hluska wrote: post #56
enriquto wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not the optimal means to delivering a high-impact product. This is just a single data point, but for a view "from the other side", my honest and immediate answer to this question is: "I don't care". When writing programs, my concern has never been "to deliver a high-impact product". In fact, I find this language very annoying; and saying that my program is a "product" feels like a very offensive insult. The…

That’s the marketing mindset. Marketers are not builders and they are incapable of understanding why we build things. Sometimes we build something to solve a problem that we have. Sometimes we build something because we want to learn. Other times, we build things because we’re bored. We don’t need a product placement meeting before we type git -m commit “First commit” and if we did, the bast majority of cool things w…

Look, I am a builder at heart, too. I love writing software for all sorts of reasons.

When I am working for someone who is paying me, though, I am only building for one reason; to deliver value to my employer. That is the entire reason I am being paid. I build for other reasons at other times.

I really hate working with other developers who think like you do. It is so hard to work with people who care more about the code itself than what it is for. We aren’t working for the same goal, and sometimes the beautiful code actually makes it harder to accomplish our actual goal.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#158

Post by aembleton »

NickSingh wrote: post #101

I'm a Software Engineer turned Marketer, and the gap between the two worlds is pretty big. I recently wrote about the #1 Marketing Mistake I made (which I think many other devs might fall into when thinking about marketing), which I think HN might like: https://www.nicksingh.com/posts/the-1-marketing-mistake-i-ma...

I enjoyed that. By the way, the expression is "couldn't care less". If a robot could care less about a celebrity, then there would be some value in them as it would be possible for the robot not to care as much.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#159

Post by matwood »

fny wrote: post #52
magicroot75 wrote: post #26

I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…

No. Marketing and sales should be siloed away from devs. This is why you need a product person to intermediate. Marketing and sales has very different incentives from developers. Marketers are often trigger happy with features because they "sell" despite the fact that these feature may have a short shelf life and may take resources away from developing of more essential product features. Developers are similarly alle…

All I can think about while reading your comment is "I'm a people person, dammit!" from Office Space. It was not a playbook on how to run an actual software company.

All employee incentives should be aligned around selling more product and lowering cost of delivering said product. The closer that marketing and software work together the more they can empathize with each groups challenges.

Using your example, what makes a product feature essential if it does not in fact sell?

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#160

Post by tymm »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #153
tymm wrote: post #43

As a solo developer ( https://simplepush.io ) that hates marketing as well, I often find myself trying to make use of paid ads. Probably because it is easier to spend some money than writing a good article. However it hasn't really worked for me so far. Wondering if other solo developers had some success with paid ads?

Some suggestions for your site. Explain what a push notification is. I'm a developer and I only have a vague idea of what you're talking about. Why would I want to do a push? What benefit does it have? Am I possibly already doing notifications a different way that's less efficient/less effective/slower than your method? Right there are a bunch of blog articles you could write and share that provide free marketing for…

Really appreciate your suggestions! Some things are just hard to see from the inside.

> Also nothing should be priced at $4.99/year, I don't care what it is, if it's worth $4.99 a year then it's probably worth at least 20x that.

Would you still increase the price if the main competitor with the biggest market share is already cheaper (one-time payment of $5)?

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