
Ask HN: How do you market your blog/articles - mraza007
Dear HN 
What are some best ways to market your blogpost to the right audience and gain visibility
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mrjivraj
Last year, I started a Substack for fun.

It is about investing in stocks but with a venture capital mindset (my
background is in tech and vc)

For me the audience seems to come in waves because right now I work full time
and I haven't focused on marketing much.

but here is what has worked for me so far:

1) write high quality content (i think it's better to write fewer articles but
more high quality). This is your best marketing.

2) To start off, tell your family, friends, and co-workers about it - I find
them to be supportive and will sign up if you ask, but frankly only the ones
interested in the subject matter will actually regularly read the emails. That
said, they will give you real feedback.

3) Interest based groups like fb groups can help sometimes

4) twitter - when i participate in the conversation regularly, this can help a
lot actually.

5) Rmr what I said about high quality content - Some people actually contacted
me about my SS and wanted to talk on the phone/zoom etc. They usually shared
the site with their friends/audience after our conversation. One linked me
from their blog which drove a lot of traffic. I think this is a great way if
you can make it happen.

Overall, I find I have a good sign up rate from folks interested in investing
+ innovation, and people interested in investing with options.

If you're interested, check it out:

[http://playingfordoubles.substack.com/](http://playingfordoubles.substack.com/)

Anyway good luck!

~~~
maverickJ
Checked out your substack. Well done.

------
nickfromseattle
\- I unfriended all of my friends from HS and college I would never connect
with again, or we're on the same career path, this got me down to a few
hundred. This step is important because when FB shows your post to people, and
they don't engage, it kills reach.

\- I joined all of the relevant Facebook Groups. Maybe 25% of the ones I
joined were worth staying in.

\- I added thousands of people doing cool stuff in the same space

\- I optimized my Facebook profile to get link clicks to my blog

\- I created an in-content CTA to download a template

\- And a bottom bar that promoted my Facebook Group

The more I add value in relevant groups and on my own profile, the more of my
target audience investigates who I am, sees my FB profile CTA, click my link,
get on my email list and join my Facebook Group.

Then all these people engage with my new content.

------
maverickJ
I started a substack one month ago after a couple of friends asked me to share
my ideas and insights. I read a lot of books and have a wide interest across
business, finance, technology and personal development. This has enabled me
create content so far.

For the time being, marketing my blog has been through friends and family
members.

I also get views straight from google. I think the title of a post sometimes
brings more organic views from google.

For me right now, my goal is to output great content to the world. Great
content comes from an intersection of reading a lot, observing the world and
interacting with the world.

If anyone is interested, check it out.
[https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/](https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/)

~~~
mraza007
Really cool newsletter

~~~
maverickJ
Thank you. Please share it with your friends and family that might enjoy it.

------
clintonb
I mostly write for myself. The few times my posts have gained traction have
been through hashtags on Twitter, or being retweeted by a relevant account.
For example, Netlify retweeted my post about moving from WordPress to Jekyll.

I have an older post on Medium related to Django migrations that seems to get
passed around on Reddit. If newer posts are relevant, I will occasionally post
them to sub-Reddits.

------
artembugara
I began writing my substack[1] less than a month ago.

Have about 159 free subscribers + 10 paid.

I just write. Then, I post it here + subreddits. Sometimes, it got noticed (or
not).

Surprisingly, I see much traffic from Google.

I have from 1k to 10k views within the first 24 hours. Nothing huge so far.

[1][https://codarium.substack.com/](https://codarium.substack.com/)

~~~
blackrock
Interesting premise.

How to sell your work when all you know is a backend.

------
frompdx
Some articles I have authored are about specific questions related to things I
am interested in. I subscribe to subreddits related to these subjects and when
someone asks a question related to a question I have already written about, I
point them to my article in a comment.

------
blackrock
Is the advertising revenue still worth it?

I read a while back, years ago, that you need something like 100 blog
articles, before your site reaches critical mass, and where you can make some
decent advertising revenue.

There was a blog website that just talked about things like space launches,
and stories about outer space. It only published like 3 blogs a week. And most
of the articles were rehashes of what Reuters published, so it wasn’t anything
really insightful or investigative. It was just some random person’s
individual opinion on the matter.

And it was pulling in something like $250,000 to $400,000 USD or so, annually.
This is not significant for a business of course, but it might be enough to
sustain one person, maybe two. And possibly gain yourself financial
independence.

~~~
thunderclunt
400k usd is a really large amount of money.

------
technics256
I like Ahrefs for things like this:

[https://youtu.be/C5ddo63kHHI](https://youtu.be/C5ddo63kHHI)

------
DrNuke
Know your niche, feed them targeted ads, outsource the spam?

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Vincent23
Okay

~~~
Vincent23
Hola

~~~
Vincent23
Yoo

~~~
Vincent24
Yellow

