How do you actually get people to notice your side projects?

Ben Thomison — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 15:33:41 +0000

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.

DEV Community: Ben Thomison

How do you actually get people to notice your side projects?