Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Ask HN: Do developers dislike marketing their own projects?
14 points by mijustin on Feb 22, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 26 comments
I've had a number of conversations with other developers who seem to have disdain for marketing their own projects (apps they've built, open source projects, etc...)

Are you a developer that dislikes marketing your own stuff? What don't you like about marketing?




I can't speak for everyone but I feel like a large part of why I'm not very excited by doing marketing of a project is because I feel like the project should be good enough to market it's self.

I think developers have a sense that if I focus on making a good product everyone will want to use it so I don't have to worry about marketing. Even though a lot of us know that marketing is very important we feel that by focusing on marketing there is a sense of my work isn't good enough to stand up by it's self.


I wonder if this is because there's a difference between how developers discover "new things" and how consumers + businesses discover solutions.

For example, developers hear about new technology, open source projects, and products on HN, on mailing lists, etc...

Businesses + consumers are generally reached through marketing and promotion.


Maybe, but I feel it's a little more the result of developers feeling like marketing is pushing their product on someone. I think the perception of posting something someones done on HN is more here's something I did, what do people who know what they're talking about think about? Where as they see marketing a little more like, how can I tryick this user into using my product.


What's your favorite restaurant?


Local restaurants in my area, depending on the type of food I feel like.

When I want sushi: http://www.dakesushi.ca/

When I want Chinese: http://chinalegend.ca/

Steak: http://www.charcoalgroup.ca/main2.cfm


As a developer, I definitely feel much more productive if I'm coding rather than cooking up some scheme to market my apps better.

But it is definitely a struggle. I know marketing is super important, because if I don't do it, I won't get enough customers. If I don't get enough customers, then I can't test cool new product ideas and actually see if I'm building the right product for people.

Even if I dislike it, I have to do it. Otherwise, I'm doing myself a disservice.

So, after saying all that... :-)

<marketing>

I make iPad/iPhone apps called Tiny Piano and Tiny Guitar. Tiny Piano has reached 7.9 million (free) downloads, and you can check it out here: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id477014214

</marketing>


What's your biggest struggle with marketing?


My biggest "struggle" is basically what you identified: that I (as a developer) don't like to do it.

But I force myself to, since in the long run, I know it will be worthwhile. So I occasionally write blog posts [1], very occasionally tweet [2], and sometimes I even tend to my Facebook page [3].

I guess one real struggle is that I have no idea whether marketing works, or how well it works. It's pretty hard to quantify (sure, there's google analytics, etc). But when I add a feature to my code base, it feels concrete. Spending a day doing "marketing" doesn't feel as concrete or quantifiable.

[1] http://blog.squarepoet.com/

[2] https://twitter.com/squarepoet

[3] https://www.facebook.com/tinypiano


That's a great point. Not being able to measure short terms results is keeping you from achieving then over the long term. Fascinating. Though I think that you are missing insight into getting short term marketing results. They do exist. You can actually get too many of them. I reason that you have not been properly introduced to real marketing. It's quite the same as software as it requires you to engineer scalable systems. It's as challenging too because it requires a lot of data analysis. I wonde if hackers like you would benefit from an introduction to marketing from the POV of data.


Do you have any pointers for us hackers? One thing I've used in the past is posting bit.ly links, which can give me some data. But it seems like I'd have to participate in many many different forums & blogs for these links to my products to start having a noticeable effect on my sales.

I'm sure a 3-day crash course on marketing my products would be very valuable for me.


May you email me?


I have no interest in marketing. I have no where near enough time to develop things, let alone market them. Not to mention, I'm a terrible salesman. To me, it's not about "How much can I trick someone into paying for this?" but "Meh, how much is it worth I guess?". Also, I'm way too honest about what something does, and tend to forget (or take for granted) the things that I assume it should do (and as such, forget to market those things).


Tell me more: have you tried building and selling your own apps?


I have one app in the apple app store that never really had much potential, but I just wanted to get something released. I have a few things in progress but haven't really started thinking about marketing past setting up a website. Knowing which review sites to contact, writing up catchy descriptions and e-mailing vital people in the app business is it's own little expertise at this point.


A lot of programmers do not like or do it because they simply see no value to it. It's not that they don't "get it." They do. The problem arises when they decide to build a business. Their apathy towards marketing ends up killing their startup. A business is not the code but it's marketing. And programmers fail hard with that reality. That's why patio11 says that a programmer who can market is an unstoppable force. It's true.


I don't have enough time to deal with marketing. I have a limited amount of free time as it is and I'd rather spend it doing something I love (developing) rather than something that is required to make money off the the thing that I love. It's not that I _hate_ marketing necessarily but there are 1000 other things I'd rather be doing at any given time.


Are the projects you're working on "for profit" (as in, is your aim to make money with them)?


Yes, they're intended to be "for profit". Some of them even make a profit.


Interesting: and have you done marketing for those? Or was the traffic largely organic? (if it was organic, how did folks originally hear about it?)


Once you market it and take money for it, you have to support it. It may not be worth it to market it if 24x7 support costs outweigh any revenue. Non-developers are never going to do any support or development so of course they are going to seem way more eager to market.


Are you a developer that dislikes marketing your own stuff?

No, we[1] don't mind marketing our stuff[2] at all. We post links[3][4][5] to our stuff on various forums, answer questions on Quora[6] that promote our stuff, write blog entries[7], share stuff on LinkedIn, Twitter[8], etc., etc., etc. as we go about our business of "putting the Enterprise in Enterprise Social Network".

If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me at prhodes (at) fogbeam (dot) com.

All joking aside, I guess some developers may have an aversion to marketing. Probably more just don't know a lot about marketing and promotion. I'm no expert at it myself, but I try to learn more every day. These days I spend as much time reading marketing books as I do technical books, and terms like "SEO", "positioning", "differentiation", "value proposition", "unique selling proposition", "solution selling", "SPIN selling", etc. have entered my lexicon.

What don't you like about marketing?

It's hard. And I'm a n00b at it. Therefore it sucks. No, really, it's kind of fun in a way, and I enjoy learning and stretching myself in new directions. But it can be frustrating dealing with so many things that I haven't had to worry about in the past.

[1]: http://www.fogbeam.com

[2]: http://www.fogbeam.com/products.html

[3]: https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick

[4]: https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy

[5]: https://github.com/fogbeam/Heceta

[6]: http://www.quora.com/Who-are-Jives-competitors

[7]: http://fogbeam.blogspot.com

[8]: https://twitter.com/fogbeamlabs


I love marketing my own applications. Sadly, it results in more emails, phone calls and other "work" that add stress because the product is not finished. I really need a developer but they want more than I pay myself!

Tell me what you think? http://goo.gl/PkUWP


I'm not sure of the reasoning, but this is partly true for me. If the interest in my app/site is organic, and not solicited, my reception is much warmer.. but otherwise it just feels fake.. so, I leave the marketing to the marketing folks.


I wonder if there is a general aversion amongst developers towards "self-promotion". For example: even organic traffic is somewhat "self-promoted". What do you think?


Maybe an extreme case. I've known a developer who kept marketing his work non-stop to everyone and the fact that he worked/works for Google.


Marketing is a different job than developing that reuqires tottally diffrent skills. One is logical and one is usually based on soft skills.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: