

Ask HN: How to generate interest/traffic for my open source projects? - sandbender

Just wondering what methods people have found success with for generating interest/traffice (read: usage) in their free and/or open-source projects/tools/etc? It seems like simply contributing to an existing, relatively popular project can be a little tough sometimes, as far as getting people to review/read and merge your patches, etc... it's often that much harder to generate any usage of a brand new project, and nothing is more de-motivating that writing something 'for the community', and then have no one use it... thoughts/suggestions/pointers/etc?<p>(shameless self-promotion: the current project I'm talking about is http://github.com/sandbender/antistink ... it's intentionally left as-is in a Minimum Viable Product/Alpha state, not because I don't want to spend time polishing it, but would rather spend that time on other stuff if no one is going to use it except myself anyways :s )
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patio11
Successful open source projects need to be promoted just like for-money
projects. They also need to be polished _much_ more than the standard, which
is "write half a readme file and throw it on github." In this, what users
_say_ they want is opposite from what they actually respond to -- which, if
you sell software for a living, is something you are probably prepared to
believe but may not have thought about vis-a-vis programmers.

1) Create a web page which promotes your product. Heresy: don't put it on
Github. It should have attractive, professional design, market your software
effectively, and have a clear call to action. Think "what would 37Signals do",
and copy liberally.

<http://rubyonrails.org/>

2) Get a unique visual identity for the project. Same reasoning as #1. Humans
are visual creatures, and projects with e.g. logos that do not look like they
were made in MS Paint by a drunk chimpanzee communicate professionalism,
safety, popularity, ongoing maintenance, etc.

See <http://www.abingo.org> (disclaimer: my site) for my take on doing this
for an OSS Rails project. Points of note: professional logo, selling the
product through benefits, 1-minute install guide, live demo, copious
documentation, video, etc.

3) If you build it, that means absolutely nothing about them coming or not.
"Make it so good they can't ignore you" is horsepuckey which engineers treat
as a magic talisman to ward off evil marketing demons. If you want it used,
you are going to have to talk to people and tell them to use it.

4) "Make something people want." Does it solve a problem which is preventing
businesses from making money, in a fashion much better than currently existing
alternatives? If not, it probably isn't going anywhere, since OSS adoption
among end users is close to zero outside of a few headline projects.

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ziweb
You need to network. Its not just about working on other people's projects as
it is about being genuinely interested, and part of a community. Go to venues
and conferences, or connect with people here, reddit, twitter, or irc. Its
slow, but its a great way to understand what others are doing and be able to
tell them what you're doing. Loic Le Muer, the founder of seesmic, has some
good advice: <http://bit.ly/91NzmR>

