Monetizing, check, your, check, passion, check, kills it, period.
Side Project Marketing Checklist
31–40 of 70 posts
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#32Hello this list is too comprehensive and exhausting. Could somebody filter or sort this list by importance of each task? Ie you must absolutely do these tasks but if you skip these other tasks no big deal.
The problem with filtering the list to only what is most important or necessary is impossible, but none of them are required. I have launched hundreds of products for myself and clients, and followed a formula for each one, and I believe it had about as good a chance of a successful launch as having a monkey throw darts at a wall. You always end up analyzing what you did when your launch succeeded, and your resulting…
I suspect you are right, there is a large component of luck, timing, and built in audience.
A lot of these types of tips are almost cargo cult type checklists.
OP is thorough though and fairly comprehensive - it is interesting to read your thoughts on this too as someone who has used these techniques.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#33It starts off nice, but past the blog part, it seems to just be mixing some low quality things with the high quality stuff. Something like "Attend meetups or conferences for your target market" can be extremely dangerous because this is a great way to spend a lot of time accomplishing nothing just to tick something off the list. Whereas something like "cold calling 20 customers" is so important it should be in bold.…
it depends from the market. Cold calling can be effective in the us but should be done with a lot of attention in Germany for example, or Europe in general. Here we are all much more skeptical towards companies or individuals that call you to offer something. Most of the time, even if the call is perfectly crafted and polite you would be perceived as an obnoxious spammer. Didn't want to diminish your comment, because…
Yeah, you will get shot down anywhere but sometimes you just have to do the least comfortable thing.
I mean for example if your project is some plugin that makes pretty graphs. What you can do is email strangers screenshots between your plugin's graphs and the graphs they're using now. No pressure to buy, just a cold email suggesting it could help them.
That is just going to be way more effective than putting up some ads on Instagram.
I guess what I was trying to say is that if faced with something in checklist format, you tend to do the easiest things first, instead of the scary ones with the most impact.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with filtering the list to only what is most important or necessary is impossible, but none of them are required. I have launched hundreds of products for myself and clients, and followed a formula for each one, and I believe it had about as good a chance of a successful launch as having a monkey throw darts at a wall. You always end up analyzing what you did when your launch succeeded, and your resulting…
I suspect you are right, there is a large component of luck, timing, and built in audience. A lot of these types of tips are almost cargo cult type checklists. OP is thorough though and fairly comprehensive - it is interesting to read your thoughts on this too as someone who has used these techniques.
I agree, it is a very thorough.
But as I have found in consulting many "side-project" developers is they want a condensed list of at most 5 things they can do to guarantee success.
Since on top of building the product themselves, they are also the ones having to build the email list, build the marketing campaign, etc. Like grandparent, they are looking for a faster list to check off.
So my fast list is:
[ ] Piggyback on an existing audience.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#35Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14942902
"6 days ago"... I'm not sure about HN rules, but isn't this submission considered a repost?
Reposts aren't considered bad automatically; sometimes a story didn't get the traction it deserves, wrong time of day or competing stories crowd it out.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A/B testing landing page and newsletter ? Is that difficult to get honest feedback from people who care ? Individual feedback doesn't replace large-scale A/B testing. If you're getting feedback from people who care (possibly implying they know you personally), it's also possible that they could deliver biased or unrepresentative feedback.
For large scale A/B testing you need a certain amount of visitors first to get the necessary statistical significance, otherwise its feedback is unrepresentative as well. A lot of side projects probably don't have enough visitors for that.
I disagree, if a person has to make a decision under uncertainty, and a priori favors neither group A or B, then they might as well use any visitor information available to them to guide their choice.
They just shouldn't be too confident they've made the correct choice.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
For large scale A/B testing you need a certain amount of visitors first to get the necessary statistical significance, otherwise its feedback is unrepresentative as well. A lot of side projects probably don't have enough visitors for that.
I disagree, if a person has to make a decision under uncertainty, and a priori favors neither group A or B, then they might as well use any visitor information available to them to guide their choice. They just shouldn't be too confident they've made the correct choice.
You are just using noise then. It's not a matter of opinion, it's statistics.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#38I'm always unsure about marketing. I do think that the balance between the thing you're creating, and the marketing of it is a clean 50/50 split. Creating something great is extremely important, but telling people about it is equally so. One of biggest lies is "if you build it, they will come." You actually have to grab them by the necks, and show them what you've built.
I think the second biggest lie is the opposite of the first one - that people don't care. My side projects are in game dev, and sometimes it feels like people are actively trying to ignore your stuff. The truth is, there's so many amazing, next-level games out there that being just great, isn't enough. I used to price my games at $1, because I was desperate to be heard. But the fact is, this isn't the real cost for most people. For most people, the real cost is oppurtunity cost. Yeah, I could play your game, but I'd rather spend my time playing the game that's 10x better.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#39Monetizing, check, your, check, passion, check, kills it, period.
Agree and disagree. Monetization is on one axis, passion is on another.
I think if you start off just making something for yourself, it may be hard to monetize it, because it's only optimized for how you do things. On the other hand, if you do something only for monetization, it's super easy to get demoralized and just stop. Furthermore, monetization isn't an easy to thing to optimize for - it's very hard to see where the sweetspot is.
But if you can find a right balance between creating something that you find a lot of interest in, and that a lot of other people would value, you can find a great balance of personal satisfaction and something sustainable.
Re: Side Project Marketing Checklist
#40I would like to see a side project finance checklist.