
Ask HN: Promoting a free niche online tool - fjsm
I&#x27;ve built an online tool that solves a real but niche problem. The tool is free, without ads (and even with ads it would likely make &lt;=$20&#x2F;month even at full popularity).<p>Clearly, I wouldn&#x27;t spend money advertising it. It&#x27;s also won&#x27;t go viral (it automates a boring bookkeeping task). It&#x27;s also not appropriate for &quot;traditional SEO&quot; (relationship building with bloggers, etc) - can&#x27;t justify the time investment. Basically, it&#x27;s barely even a commercial project, I&#x27;d be happy to just get users.<p>I decided then that organic search traffic is the way to go, but for that I need at least some links. My naive assumption was that highly-customized posting in appropriate niche forums was the way to go. I figured that since I am &quot;adding value to the Internet&quot; by making something free and useful, it would be well-received.<p>I was wrong. In most places, I see cold responses about &quot;self-promotion&#x2F;advertisement&quot;, and moderators delete messages in the blink of an eye. Even in places with &quot;nofollow&quot; links. I understand the frustration with ads, but (1) I am <i>very</i> careful to post in highly relevant places (2) I am convinced the tool is unique on the Internet right now - it&#x27;s not like &quot;yet another advertisement for X&quot;, and (3) it&#x27;s free and its status as a &quot;barely commercial&quot; project is readily apparent.<p>I could try tricks such as pretending to be unrelated to what I&#x27;m posting (&quot;Oh, look at this cool tool I found&quot;), but this feels dirty. I always disclose my affiliation - seems I&#x27;m being penalized for honesty.<p>So, question: What are good, legitimate ways to let people know about a new, free, genuinely unique, genuinely useful, niche tool, keeping in mind that I can probably devote at most a day or two to promoting it?<p>Not just asking for this tool: I have many other ideas and would like to make them a reality, but there&#x27;s no point in making them if there&#x27;s no way of making the target audience even aware of their existence. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
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Mz
You can post it on Show HN. You can self promote on Twitter. In other forums,
you can have a link in your profile and participate as a regular member a good
bit and once in a great while link to it in an answer where it is relevant. If
you are only answering questions where you feel "link to my Thing" is The
Answer, then, yes, you are frequently going to be in violation of some
community guideline.

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collingreen
I have a related anecdote but no advice for your goal of 1-2 days promo then
leave it.

Once upon a time I also made some software for a similarly real but niche
problem (recording, processing, and building timelapse videos of your work
during hackathons). I never promoted it or anything beyond talking about it
and using it within the community where the idea was born (in my case,
ludumdare when it was still very small). It has actually done pretty well
within that context; over the 8 years or so it has been around it has ~50k
installs, and it has branched far beyond hackathons -- it made its way onto
lifehacker when they still covered real products, there are a handful of
completely independent reviews out there, and I get emails from time to time
asking for features from a wide range of use cases (everything from
documenting cell growth to filming engine rebuilds to tracking video game
progress in a modernized arcade).

My only (admittedly weak) advice is to go to the source of how you knew this
was a need and share it openly and honestly within a community that is either
about that or clearly shares that. From there you'll get some feedback and, if
it really does solve a pain point, people will use it and share it. In my
story, the flexibility of the product to be useful beyond the initial problem
I was trying to solve was also key to its growth - maybe you can do something
similar with how your thing works.

I realize that 8 years of being available is the complete opposite of your
goal of promoting for only '1-2 days', but I think that amount of
participation may not be super compatible with any software these days,
particularly for small 'love' projects. How many github projects have you seen
that sound nifty but have an empty readme and no commits for 2 years so you
wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole? I think you'll get much better results by
trickling continued time into the product to make sure people know it is alive
- respond to posts/questions about it, fix bugs (or at LEAST comment on the
issues), etc.

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cdvonstinkpot
I have a similar problem wanting to promote a site I built recently. I know
some relevant forums have a 'self-promotion' section for new products matching
the markets the forums serve, but I haven't got much traction thus far.

My most recent idea is to offer free services some might want to utilize and
linking/advertising on those sites. I don't know if it'll work yet, but I keep
trying.

Hopefully this post will generate some new ideas, I'll keep checking back on
this to see what people suggest.

Best of luck to you.

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MegaLeon
Maybe you could approach some experts in the field, humbly present yourself,
briefly explain how your tool works and how it can make their life easier, and
ask them whether they'd consider a no-string attached test run.

If it's a real niche field like you said, they probably won't get swamped by
this kind of emails very much and will get curious.

Once you make a few fans, you could ask whether they can spread the word, or,
if they're really into it, they'll do it for you on twitter and such.

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tmaly
I have a similar problem with a free service I am releasing in the coming
weeks. I just asked a guy that writes a newsletter about startups. He
suggested I go where the users are of that niche. Maybe you could try Betalist
? Finding people in that niche on twitter would also help. Connect with them
then send a few PMs as ask for their feedback.

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ramon
talk on forums, communities where your product best fits. Get feedback,
engagement. You don't need a huge market, just one good enough that you can
get value and service to. Once you find what that's you can probably charge
for whatever is the value.

Best Regards,

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samfisher83
What is this tool?

