
Ask HN: How do you drive traffic to your side projects? - aryamansharda
Over the last few years, I&#x27;ve built dozens of side projects and I feel like I always drop the ball when it comes to marketing them. I&#x27;ll release them and maybe make a post on Reddit, Medium, and ProductHunt about it, but after a small spike in traffic, it&#x27;s radio silence. I&#x27;ve tried running Google&#x2F;Facebook Ads for some of my projects and they usually have a high CTR and generate a lot of impressions. Which makes me think that it validates - at a basic level - the side projects and confirms that they&#x27;re at least a little useful to the right audience. Though, I&#x27;ve found the Facebook&#x2F;Google ad costs a bit higher than what I&#x27;d like to spend on a side project.<p>I&#x27;m not really trying to make money from any of these projects, I just want the satisfaction of them being used really. I don&#x27;t have much of a social media presence besides your normal Facebook&#x2F;Instagram accounts, but most of my friends are non-technical, so no sense in advertising the projects to them.<p>I&#x27;ve been posting all of my side projects under the same domain, so I don&#x27;t have to build up a backlink profile from the ground up every time I release a new project (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitalbunker.dev&#x2F;). According to Ahref&#x27;s my backlink profile is pretty mediocre.<p>How are you all able to get traffic to your side projects, news coverage, shares, high Google rankings, etc?<p>I&#x27;m not interested in becoming a marketer or SEO wizard, I just want to know enough to jumpstart my projects.
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pawnednow
Some self-promo before I start, I just started -
[https://hackerspad.net](https://hackerspad.net)

Here is my plan

    
    
      - First code out the part of the site relating to alternatives. About 80% there
      - Next slowly start listing in startup communities that will like this project. I started with small subreddit , then Show HN, then some more startup communities before I go to indiehackers and producthunt
      - Focus on organic traffic. Improve internal linking on my content which dramatically improves crawl rates
      - Submit sitemap to google,bing and Yandex. Don't forget the latter two. They help big time.
      - Next leverage some traction I will have gotten to reach out to atleast 50 people on linkedin. Offer them something for free or ask for a review for a free trial. I will make this as targeted as possible.
      - Look at FB communities which can be a huge source of traffic. Entrepreneur, startups communities are all worth their time.
      - If i was running a saas focussed on a specific audience, I would develop content on the site via those topics that may interest the audience.
      - Build a community around the site. I have just coded a hacker news like option on my site under news and now will improve engagement via emails I have collected so far.
      - I do intend to list at some competing sites but that is after I have some traction just for the backlinks.
    

Its not very hard. For content specific sites, organic traffic is still the
best. Don't add cloudflare if you wish Google to crawl your site aggressively.

~~~
jonpalmisc
As someone who just set up Cloudflare on their site, can you explain the
negative effects of doing so?

~~~
pawnednow
Cloudflare aggressively deters bots and Google's bot usually get caught out in
this due to their automated behaviour. I have seen cloudflare strangle and
limit Google bots activity leading to lower crawl on most sites using
cloudflare.

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semicolonandson
I can offer some advice from the perspective of an indie-hacker who has been
independent about ten years via an e-commerce thing for law students (Oxbridge
Notes).

I view each marketing activity — be that a reddit ads campaign, a series of
responses on Twitter, an SEO play, etc. — as an experiment: You test the
waters (ideally at limited cost to yourself) and emerge with data about its
success. This data you document religiously, analyze, and integrate with
previous findings. Slowly, but surely, you hone in what's effective for you
and the double-down on it.

This is time-consuming, risk-laden, and laborious. You will face utter
uncertainty. But every so often you strike gold — some repeatable, profitable
marketing technique — and can milk that opportunity for years — perhaps even
building a stable business atop it.

I recorded a bunch of screencasts on what I went through to get traffic to my
site (up to 200,000 sessions/month). These might give you a nuts-and-bolts
feel for what goes into the process:

[https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/seo-strategies-
for-...](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/seo-strategies-for-web-apps-
part-i)

------
0xdeadb00f
Probably not the answer you're looking for but: I don't.

I don't particularly care how "well" my side projects do - I write them mostly
for myself.

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alexmingoia
People share what they find remarkable and recommend what they find useful.

Instead of focusing on web traffic, consider making something that just 10
people find remarkable, get excited about, or can’t live without. Chances are
if 10 people find it remarkable they will tell others. And then you can
accelerate that process by sharing it with others like them.

~~~
Roybot
I think this ignores the fact that building something that gets spread through
word of mouth is remarkably difficult and doesn't happen on the first
iteration of the product.

All while those initial visitors have come and gone - how do you replicate
traffic? I think OP needs to take a hand to hand combat route and just find
those initial users himself while he searches for at least a semblance of
interest.

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crobertsbmw
I have this same question. I usually do the same thing. Post on reddit a few
times, ShowHN, product hunt etc. I got lucky and one of my side projects,
deckofcardsapi.com, really took off because of HN, but I haven't been able to
replicate it.

~~~
srndh
I have not seen your project earlier. I just checked it out.

Here is my feedback, hope it helps you.

First off, instead of showing off an api calls & response, show a use case.
Make a simple site that utilises the API, then in the details page show the
calls & response. Don't make api details your whole site.

I am someone that plays cards with my friends and I didn't understand the use
case of the API.

API is the backend that you developed for some reason. Its nice you are
sharing it. Show the reason. So that other can addon or make their own spin.
Make a demo project using the API.

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kilroy123
For my side project: [https://randomdailyart.com](https://randomdailyart.com)

I've been the most successful by going directly to artists and art lovers.
Posting on artist sub-reddits was the most successful. Targeted ads on
Facebook works as well, but like you said, it's expensive.

Posting on HN or product hunt is sometimes a waste of time if that's not your
audience you're going after.

So know exactly who the audience is and go to where they are.

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mkbkn
Read about 1000 true fans: [https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-
fans/](https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/)

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mindhash
Find out exact segment or group of users that are converting. Locate similar
people online. In fb, Reddit groups or Quora or wherever. Write articles or
courses to help them.

Try research oriented newsletter

Get audience and rest will follow. Also try to look for viral loop within your
app. For eg drop box had a auto viral loop when you share files with others.
Look for such opportunities.

Since you are not going to spend on ad, viral loop and content are only ways
to grow.

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tmaly
If you have a well structured blog, it helps. Think about how you would create
a table of contents for a book on the topic your side project covers. Break
that out into the structure of your site. The Google bot can get a good idea
that your site has good coverage of a topic.

Combined this with technique in the book They Ask You Answer by Marcus
Sheridan and you should have a good starting point.

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anmolparashar
With my own side project[1], a lot of people still find us via Product Hunt
(even 1+ year later), I personally try to engage with people on Reddit,
Twitter and IndieHackers. I don't necessarily promote our website but answer
their questions and they follow the username.

The site's also listed in a few directory tools for Podcasting (I had nothing
do with it)

[1] [https://useCastup.com](https://useCastup.com)

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ZinnZirconium
I join forums where I neglect to cultivate the necessary social capital
required for anyone to care about anything I do. Then I get banned.

Coding is 99% marketing and 1% actual coding. You should give up and start a
band that plays covers of songs by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.
Musicians have a better chance of success than coders.

