I would like to tell developers about something I have built. Every time I write a content that slightly mentions it, it gets flagged and removed immediately. I've tried posting articles on multiple platforms and subreddits. The content does fine on its own but the moment I mention my project it gets killed. As of now, my platform/tool is completely free and I want to keep it that way. I've built it for fun, as a hobby, not as a business so I don't want to have to run paid ads because that means I would have to charge people to cover the costs. So my question is, what do you guys to to get the word out about your projects without spending money on ads?
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Top comments (6)
The content-that-gets-flagged problem is real and frustrating. I've been dealing with it too — I run a multilingual programmatic SEO site with 100k+ pages.
Here's what's actually worked for me without spending a cent on ads:
1. Write about the process, not the product. Instead of "check out my tool," I write articles like "here's what I learned building a 100k-page site" or "how I use a local LLM for content generation." The project comes up naturally as context, not as a pitch. Platforms don't flag that because you're genuinely contributing knowledge.
2. Cross-post strategically. Dev.to, Medium, and Hashnode all let you cross-post with canonical URLs. One article becomes three distribution points. Each platform has different discovery algorithms, so you reach different audiences.
3. Engage in communities before you ever mention your project. Comment on posts in your niche. Be genuinely helpful. When people see your name enough times adding value, they check your profile on their own. That's how organic discovery actually works — not by dropping links, but by being someone worth following.
4. SEO is the ultimate free promotion. If your tool solves a problem people search for, write content targeting those search queries. It compounds over time and you never get flagged because Google rewards useful content.
The key insight is that promotion and content creation aren't separate activities. Every article about your experience building the tool IS the promotion. The project link in your bio does the rest.
What's the tool you built? Curious what Apixies.io does — with 39 endpoints hitting page 1 of Google, sounds like you've already cracked the SEO part.
Thanks! Apixies is a collection of 52+ small utility APIs for developers: SSL checker, DNS lookup, email validation, JSON/YAML/XML converters, regex tester, that kind of stuff. All free, all usable in the browser without signup or through the API.
The SEO part is honestly still a work in progress. I'm ranking well for impressions but clicks are a different story. Still figuring that out.
Your point about engaging in communities before mentioning the project is something I'm learning the hard way. Dropping links gets you nowhere.
That's a really smart niche — developer utility APIs are the kind of thing people Google for constantly ("SSL checker online", "DNS lookup tool"), so the long-tail SEO potential is massive even without trying too hard. The impressions-but-no-clicks gap you're describing is super common with tool pages — I've seen the same pattern. Usually it's a title tag or meta description issue where Google shows you but the SERP snippet doesn't compel a click. Have you tried testing different title formats in GSC to see which queries have the worst CTR? Sometimes just adding the year or "free" to the title tag doubles click-through on utility queries. The no-signup angle is a great differentiator too — that alone could be your positioning in title tags.
Good point about the title tags actually. My CTR is terrible despite decent impressions so that's probably worth looking into. Thanks.
You need to be active on social media if you plan to advertise your product there. More specifically, if it's blatant advertising, no one will care. Instead, I'd recommend writing not about the product, but about the algorithms it uses, how you solve certain problems, and, as @apex_stack said, about the process.
That's fair. The articles i've been working on are exactly that: writing about the problems (like dev/prod parity gaps) rather than the tool itself. The tool comes up naturally as context. Still getting the hang of the balance though