Hello guys, it's been a while since my last post on dev.to, and I am happy to share with you again some tips & strategies that helped me to make 1200+ stars on a Github repo as a 20-year-old maker!
You can see it here -> https://github.com/horizon-ui/horizon-ui-chakra
Here is how I made it and how you can do it too! Let's get into the subject!
1. Launch your idea on Product Hunt
I started with this since Product Hunt is one of my main marketing tools, so the first tip is understanding how product launches work in this platform.
It has around 4.7m users per month, so if your idea is good enough to be featured, you will get a good amount of users (and stars too) for your project!
A great tip for increasing the chances to get featured is to focus on explaining the project as well as you can, this will help the user understand your idea easily and better. Also, spend some time on making good presentation images, a good design can make a huge difference too.
I launched the first version of Horizon UI on Product Hunt and I had the luck to finish as the #3 Product of the day with my project.
This helped me get around ~400 stars on my repo. (Here is the link to the launch post, I am sure that it will help you a lot)
2. Reddit posts
Another strategy that helped me to receive more stars was to share my project with Reddit communities.
I posted on the following subreddits: r/reactjs, r/javascript, r/webdev, r/selfhosted, r/SideProject, and r/InternetIsBeautiful.
These posts helped me get ~300 stars to my repo.
Tip: Do not spam. In the beginning, I had a bad habit to do this by spamming on communities and my account got banned and suspended. So try to make a flow with 1-2 weeks between each post, and try to be respectful and give some real value to the community with your project.
3. Post some useful blog articles or try to connect with other developers on this awesome platform (dev.to)
This community is so underrated. Here you can find a great community of developers that can help you and share with you some good stuff!
My posts/articles helped me get more than 300+ stars on my repo.
4. Organic / SEO optimization
Optimize your repo details and project presentation website with specific keywords that define your project/idea. If it's well optimized, SEO and organic traffic can give you a huge amount of stars (but require some time to be validated).
Organic traffic helped me get around 200 stars on my repo.
These are the most important sources and strategies that helped me achieve more than 1200+ stars on my Github repo. If you find this useful, I would appreciate sharing it with your dev friends!
Github repo -> https://github.com/horizon-ui/horizon-ui-chakra
Website -> https://horizon-ui.com/
Top comments (44)
I have to ask: what's the end goal here?
Will GitHub stars pay your rent or something?
I think it is nice to know that people like what you have created by starring it, no matter if there if money involved or not. 😉
I fully get this. But then it's not the goal, it's merely a side effect. It's important to distinguish if you don't want to be lost in vanity metrics.
We all know that GitHub stars are a vanity metric. But they're still a good proxy for awareness about the project, and excitement by the community.
If you're a venture-funded start-up, it's also a metric investors will pay attention to. Even though they may tell you otherwise, they all care about GitHub stars.
Even public, mature companies like HashiCorp still measure their GitHub stars, and use a growing star count as part of their investor narrative.
The next step though is to show how you can turn these stars into usage of your software, via bottom-up adoption. And then if you have a commercial offering, show how and why users upgrade. I guess the fancy term for that is "PLG - product-led growth".
Anyhow, great little summary!
It doesn't necessarily mean they like it. I've starred repos to use them as examples of bad code for students/junior devs
Sure, or simply that :)
@jonrandy I feel personally attacked 😰😂
Wanted to ask the same tbh.
I mean, it’s an achievement which cannot be underrated but the effort should have some goal I suppose. Future monetization?ah, sorry, I have found now that it’s a paid product so it makes sense 👍Ah thanks a lot.
Then indeed it totally makes sense and good job Fredy
Thanks a lot, Fyodor, for clarifying the situation! Hope these tips help you guys! 🚀
yes, the more stars you have the more impressed people are with your work the more likely you get hired the more money you make, causality bro
🤣🤣🤣
Thank you for sharing and congrats on your stars gathering!
I will try a couple of these tips for Front Matter CMS - frontmatter.codes. Hoping to reach 1000 ⭐️'s by the end of the year. 🙏
My pleasure! Congrats on your amazing product! I just starred it now! 😍
w00t - thanks 🤩
Amazing UI Fredy, I really love it.
But $59 is a little too high for a UI that doesn't come with some essential features like authentication etc.
Do you have plans to offer at a low price? I would love to buy it, but my currency nowadays is not on my favor. (I have to multiply it by 5)
Hello, Rafael!
Thanks for your feedback! I think that the price is already quite low for what Horizon offers, it's a product that comes with more than 42+ premium UI pages and multiple features.
You have around 10 pages made especially for auth steps. Here is one example of them: horizon-ui.com/chakra-pro/#/auth/s... .
You can access all pages from the sidebar on left.
I hope this helps! Have a fantastic day! 😁
congrats @fredy, huge achievement \o/
Thanks mate! Looking forward to great results on your project! 😁
thanks, not the top priority for now, but it's very inspiring work.
nice
Thank you! 🤩
Nice. Great project. Also, can you please give me some suggestion to achieve more stars on my project?
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Hello! Congrats on your project! You can try the tips mentioned in this article, I am sure that it will help you a lot! 😄
You did a good work. You deserve that stars.
Thank you so much! 😄
Great work. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much! 🚀
The design is really great.
Happy to hear that! Hope it helps you! 😍
You deserve those stars! Incredible project!
Thank you so much mate! Hope it helps you! 😃