Ask HN: How do you drive traffic to your side projects?

Some self-promo before I start, I just started - 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.

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

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.

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-...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Same :/

I had 2 "successes" 5 years apart. Most recently, ProductHunt got me 30K views in one day on this site, http://lowpolygonart.com/ and I think the backlinks that I got as a result have carried the site for a couple years, but any of the other projects I've released have been dead on arrival.

Stop doing this. Okay no keep doing that but stop depending on them. Not always but more often than not products that get spammed on these platforms are built without a specific end user in mind. Pause and be a little more thoughtful on who you're targeting, find out where they hang out, and reach out directly. e.g. email, twitter, reddit, whatever.

Read about 1000 true fans: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

For my side project: 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.

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

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.

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.

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.