Ask HN: How to monetize side projects without marketing?

I hate marketing though. I'm sure this sounds familiar...

Is there any way to make money from a "side project" or open source development without needing to do marketing campaigns?

Not only am I terrible at it, even thinking about it corrupts my enjoyment of developing new stuff.

If you feel "corrupted" when writing docs, then I'm truly sorry. If not, then just try to reframe it in your mind as "writing docs" for your users. If your audience is technical, then they'll appreciate the emphasis on actual details.

Also, even docs often start with a "dumbed down" explanation of what something does. It doesn't mean devs are dumb. It's just important to communicate the value quickly so that people can decide if you want to dwell deeper.

Basically, your landing page is a summary and your deep dives are the "advanced" pages of your website. It's all possible _without_ marketing buzzwords too!

Beyond that, I'd say blogging is huge too. Just write about stuff you find cool and it'll help get eyeballs on your stuff. It doesn't have to be specific to your product. Just having content that people like helps you build your branding and get some early traction.

Obviously there is more to it than this, but that's at least a good way to help get you out of this "mental rut". Cheers!

I would posit that you might want to reconsider your definition of "marketing." That is to say, there is a (lot) more to marketing than just "campaigns" that spam people via email, phone, Twitter, etc. or FB ads, Reddit ads, Adwords, and suchlike.

Consider the following:

Marketing is currently defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA) as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".[1]

If you accept this definition, you are already doing some "marketing" simply by the act of choosing what to build, and by building it!

Maybe what you really find distasteful is "promotion" which is just a subset of marketing. If so, I'd still posit that you might want to reconsider your feelings a bit. "Promotion" includes everything you do to make people aware that you product exists, and to convey its value to people. If you tell your best friend "Hey, I make this $THING, do you know anybody who might like it", you're already engaging in (very lightweight) promotion. And maybe more to the point, it's very unlikely you're going to make money from your side project without some kind of promotion.

Maybe what you're really railing against is tasteless, generic, low-value, untargeted, spammy promotion? If so, the question is how can you promote your product without engaging in activities that are "tasteless, generic, low-value, untargeted, and spammy". That's tough to answer because it's kinda subjective, but give it some thought, you mind find that you can find a compromise position that works for you.

Another possibility - you might be able to find someone who is particularly interested in / good at, marketing and promotion activities, and partner up with them somehow.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing