I've shipped a handful of side projects over the years. The building part? Love it. The "getting anyone to care" part? Still figuring it out.
Here's what I've tried:
What kinda worked:
• Product Hunt (spike for 2 days, then crickets)
• Getting 2 YouTubers to cover my app (best ROI ever, but took 40 hours of cold outreach)
• Reddit posts that didn't get removed by mods
What flopped:
• Facebook/Instagram ads ($50/day into the nothingness)
• Cold emailing creators (2% response rate)
• Posting on Twitter to my 26 followers
What I'm still unsure about:
• SEO (feels like a 6-month game minimum)
• TikTok (do devs even do well there?)
• Paid newsletters
The creator marketing thing actually worked insanely well when it worked / one video drove more downloads than my entire PH launch. But the process of finding creators, pitching them, getting ghosted... super brutal.
I actually ended up building a tool to solve this for myself (happy to share if anyone's curious), but I'm more interested in hearing what's working for YOU.
So, Dev.to folks:
- What's your go-to channel for getting eyeballs on a new project?
- Anyone had success with creator/influencer marketing? How'd you find them?
- What's the most underrated marketing channel that devs sleep on?
Would love to hear war stories / the wins and the failures.
Top comments (1)
Great questions. Just went through this exact journey with my Telegram Mini App over the past few weeks. Here's what actually moved the needle:
What worked (in order of impact):
dev.to technical articles — wrote 3 articles about specific technical problems I solved (Telegram Stars payments, referral systems, Mini App architecture). Each one drives consistent traffic because they rank for long-tail keywords. Way more sustainable than a PH spike.
Reddit comments > Reddit posts — posting "check out my thing" gets removed. But leaving genuinely helpful comments on r/SideProject, r/webdev, r/node threads with relevant technical details + mentioning your project naturally? Way better conversion at zero effort.
Startup directories — Fazier, SaaSHub, Uneed, IndieHackers. Most are free to submit. Individually small, but collectively they create solid backlink profile for SEO.
Hacker News Show HN — hit or miss, but even a Show HN that gets 3 upvotes sends a few people who become actual users.
What resonates with your experience:
Your point about YouTubers having the best ROI is real. For tech products specifically, I'd add that dev.to articles = the text version of that. One well-written "how I built X" article is basically a permanent ad that keeps showing up in search results.
Most underrated channel devs sleep on:
Building a referral system into the product itself. My users share their personal links to receive anonymous messages — every share is essentially organic marketing. Built-in virality > external marketing spend every time.
SEO is absolutely a 6-month game, but starting with a landing page + structured data + a sitemap from day 1 pays off. Google noticed my site within 10 days of launch.
TL;DR: Write technical content about real problems you solved. The rest follows.