
Ask HN: How did/do you promote your side project? - romes
Hello everyone. I myself, as a lot of you, have an ongoing side project (I&#x27;m an independent musician, recording from my room). However, I haven&#x27;t been able to drive people to hear my music. I&#x27;ve seen many of you talk about successful side projects with lots of users---I wonder, how do you find your first users, how do you promote your project so people see it? I know all projects are different, I&#x27;m looking for common steps one takes to get their first audience.
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biermic
This is a recent list of promotion opportunities:
[https://postyourstartup.com](https://postyourstartup.com)

Good luck!

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jamil7
Becoming involved and contributing to my mobile app's niche on relevant
subreddits. I try really hard not to be sleazy and am actively interested in
the topic so I try to contribute in earnest while occasionally steering people
to my app. I also setup my own subreddit where I post about my development
progress during the open beta, this way if people follow it feels more like
"opt-in" and gives people a chance to feedback and feel like they're properly
involved during the beta period. I also have a standard landing page
collecting emails, have tried throwing a few dollars at search ads but didn't
really know what I was doing. HN and the other tech related sites don't do
much for my specific area.

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lmiller1990
My side project is a course about Vue.js [0]. I advertise it by putting a
backlink on all my free content, including blog articles/free book I wrote
about Vue testing [1] and videos I upload on Vimeo, and via my Twitter.

I also joined some discord channels, and help out people with coding problems.
If something in my book/course is similar, I drop a link to that (after
resolving their problem).

[0] [https://vuejs-course.com](https://vuejs-course.com) [1]
[https://lmiller1990.github.io/vue-testing-
handbook/](https://lmiller1990.github.io/vue-testing-handbook/)

The best way to advertise is providing some useful, valuable content for free.
If people like it, they might also buy your paid content.

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paulorlando
In the past I lucked out by people with a following finding it and linking to
me. I've had less success making that happen on purpose. The thing that works
for me is being consistent (posting your new music every week, etc) so that
people who are true fans learn to expect you. It also took me a while to get
comfortable telling people what I was working on (well, I still am getting
comfortable with that). I suggest telling 10 people you know, seeing how it
goes, then another 10, etc.

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scottporad
[https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com) has a ton of
resources for this type of thing.

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econcon
Here's is my side project:

[https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-
ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-
cheap-6c908bb09922)

I blog about the side project and share it with others who are looking to do
similar things.

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ainasurfs
My side project is a blog and I use social media and SEO mostly. I also share
my content to relevant groups (ie Facebook groups, Linkedin groups) and
forums. I did some paid ads too, mostly od Facebook, but invested very little
money so it didn't bring much traffic.

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cercatrova
Rehashed advice, but presumably if you're solving a problem, you should know
who has that problem, right? Then you go contact those people, whether through
LinkedIn, cold emails, Twitter DMs, etc.

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adnanaga
I usually post on my social channels, as well as on reddit and Hacker News to
try and get some momentum.

