I've noticed something interesting while reading posts from other indie developers. Some people seem to genuinely enjoy marketing. They publish something almost every day, participate in discussions, build their personal brands and always have another idea for attracting attention. Sometimes I look through their profiles and can't even figure out what product they are actually building. Maybe the product is somewhere in there, but the marketing seems to be doing much better than the development.
And then there are people like me, somewhere on the opposite side of this situation. I'm a QA engineer and indie developer, and I genuinely enjoy building things. I can spend an entire evening fixing a bug that probably affects three people, improving some small feature or writing tests for something that was already working. It might sound strange, but I find this much more interesting than trying to convince someone to look at what I've made.
The problem is that I'm not building applications just to keep them on my computer. I actually want people to use them, find problems, suggest improvements and maybe even enjoy them. But somehow, while I'm developing a project, marketing always feels like something I can deal with later. First I need to finish this feature, then fix a few bugs, then improve the interface, then make sure everything works properly. There is always one more thing that seems more important than telling people about the product.
Eventually, the application is ready. I publish it, check that everything works, look at the store page and feel reasonably happy with the result. Then comes the uncomfortable part. Nobody knows it exists, and apparently Google Play doesn't send a personal invitation to every potential user just because I finally finished another project.
So I start thinking about marketing, usually much later than I should. I open Reddit, LinkedIn or some other platform and try to find a discussion where I could contribute something useful. Maybe I write a comment, maybe publish a post about the development process or try to explain why I built a particular feature. Sometimes I get a few reactions or an interesting conversation, but most of the time it feels like I'm leaving little traces of my existence around the internet and hoping someone will eventually notice.
The funny thing is that I can spend hours investigating a technical problem without getting tired, but trying to write a promotional post can take an entire evening. I keep wondering whether the text sounds too much like advertising, whether anybody actually cares and whether I'm just annoying people who came to discuss something completely different. By the time I've finished thinking about all this, I could probably have fixed another bug.
I also understand that this approach isn't particularly smart. Marketing probably shouldn't begin after the product is finished, and waiting for people to discover an application by accident isn't much of a strategy. But knowing that something is important and actually enjoying doing it are two different things. I know exercise is useful too, but that doesn't mean I wake up every morning excited about running ten kilometres.
Sometimes I wonder whether I'm approaching this from the wrong direction. Maybe I shouldn't think about marketing as a separate activity that starts when development ends. Maybe it should be a normal part of building a product, just like testing or collecting feedback. The problem is that I still haven't found a comfortable way to make it part of my routine without feeling that I'm spending more time talking about software than actually creating it.
And of course, I don't have a budget for advertising, so I can't simply pay someone to solve this problem for me. I'm building several projects independently, and any money I could spend on promotion would have to compete with plenty of other expenses. For now, my main resources are time, patience and a slightly unreasonable belief that if I keep making useful things, someone will eventually find them.
I'm not looking for some magical growth formula or advice about becoming an influencer. I'm genuinely curious how other developers deal with this, especially those who enjoy programming much more than marketing. Do you promote your projects while you're still building them, or do you also leave everything until release? What has actually helped you find users without paying for advertising, and how much time do you spend on promotion compared to development?
I'd be especially interested in hearing from people who were terrible at marketing in the beginning but eventually found an approach that worked for them. Because right now, I'm pretty good at building applications that nobody knows about, and I'd like to improve at least the second part of that equation.
Top comments (11)
Same problem from the other side. We built 14 small data tools in two days, then spent a day on "marketing": about 25 posts and replies, and one like in total.
What we learned so far: posting into a feed where nobody follows you does almost nothing, and the build-it part really is the easy half. What we're trying next is replying with one specific, useful number under posts that already have readers, and pages that each answer one exact search question, since search doesn't care about follower count. Too early to say if either works. Happy to compare notes in a month.
14 tools in two days and 25 posts for one like is a pretty painful result. And I understand it very well. Sometimes writing the actual software feels easier than explaining why anyone should care about it. I also like your idea about answering specific search questions instead of just posting into an empty feed. But how are you planning to measure whether it works? Views and likes are nice, but I'm more interested in whether anyone actually starts using the product. Comparing results in a month sounds interesting!
Good question, and it's the one we got wrong at first. We were counting views.
Now we track three numbers each week: people outside our own account who run one of our tools, how many of them pay, and how many come back for a second run. Likes don't enter into it. A post counts as working only if outside runs go up in the days after it.
So far it's small but real: two outside paying users this week, both on tools that answer a narrow, searchable question. That supports the "answer specific questions" idea more than anything we posted into the feed. I'll report back in a month, numbers good or bad.
Same struggle here as a solo founder. What finally worked for me was breaking marketing into tiny daily tasks instead of "launch day" — like 20–30 mins: one useful comment, one reply, one small post a few times a week.
It stops feeling like ads when you're just sharing what you're learning while building. People follow the journey first, then check out the product on their own.
Start before release — even a "here's what I'm building and why" post gets you early feedback.
I think this might be the most realistic approach for me. Spending 20-30 minutes a day sounds much less painful than suddenly remembering after release that I need to promote an entire application. My biggest problem is that whenever I have free time, I automatically open my IDE instead of a social network. I probably need to treat marketing as another regular task, even if it's not my favourite one. How do you usually decide what to write about? Do you plan your posts in advance or just share whatever happened during development?
Same here, the IDE always wins 😄 What helped me was putting marketing after coding. I spend the first 20 mins on it, then reward myself with the IDE.
On topics, it’s a mix:
Loose plan: I keep a notes file with 5–10 ideas (problems I solved, mistakes, tools I tried) so I never start from a blank page.
Dev log: anything that annoyed or surprised me that day turns into a quick post. Those usually do better than the planned ones.
A simple rule: if you’d explain it to a friend over chat, it’s worth a post. Bug fixes, “why I picked X over Y” and small wins all count.
What are you building, by the way?
The line about fixing a bug that affects three people is the one I'd build a post around. Those three already care, and a short write-up of what broke and how you found it is easier to publish than a launch post. Do you ever ask the people who hit a bug what they expected to happen before they reported it?
That's actually a good idea, I never really thought about turning small bug fixes into posts. As a QA engineer, comparing expected and actual behaviour is basically part of my everyday work. But with my own apps, the difficult part is getting people to report anything in the first place. Sometimes I discover a bug myself and wonder how many users already faced it but just closed the app without saying anything. Maybe writing about these fixes would also encourage more people to share their problems. Definitely something worth trying.
This hits hard. I used to treat marketing as a separate, scary task and just kept coding instead. What finally worked for me was reframing it: I don't "market," I just share the specific problems I'm solving while building. One short dev log per week, zero budget, feels like documentation rather than promotion. People who need the tool find it naturally. You don't have to become a salesperson—just make your build visible.
This hits hard — I’m also happier fixing a three-person bug than writing a launch thread. What’s helped a little (still not “marketing personality” level) is treating discovery like a boring checklist: submit once to a handful of free launch directories, then go back to building. I keep a curated free/freemium list for that so I don’t spiral into eighty paid queues: github.com/sherotree/free-backlink... Curious if a low-effort “ship, then list” ritual would feel less awful than daily posting.
This hit home. The line about marketing always feeling like something you'll deal with later is exactly where a lot of builders get stuck. I'm Aaron at Founderless. We're building toward a small private beta of an AI team that plans launch work and has you approve each step. I'm not selling anything. I'd love to ask you two questions about how you decide what to promote. Is it okay to message you?