1. In the beginning, it's very slow. But just iterate and make your project better and better.

2. Use your README to grab the attention of the user. I have a list of features, videos, etc. at the top.

3. I regularly post on various subreddits, Hacker News, etc. trying to support new Nix users. Sometimes I link to my project as an example of code that may help them. I've done this over a couple of years, so there's now a collection of posts people are finding and driving traffic.

4. My experience was that in the beginning, I had to grind out each star one by one. The project never went "viral". But after a certain growth point, Github will pick it up and start recommending it to others.

5. Reddit and Github are now my biggest sources of traffic.

Hope this helps!