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Ask HN: How do you get the initial traction for your web side-project?

52 points by thakobyan ↗ HN
You had the idea and you've built it. You share your project with your friends on Twitter and Facebook for some feedback. But what's next, how do you make your side-project be accessible for a larger audience?

14 comments

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sharemywin
find bloggers to give a free trial to. also, blogging yourself.
csallen
My site https://IndieHackers.com has in-depth interviews with lots of developers who've launched their side projects. There's definitely some good information there!

I also wrote a post about my experience launching Indie Hackers itself: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/launching-to-300000-pagevi...

To answer your question more directly, I think it really depends on what you're building! If your project does a good job appealing to a niche and, ideally, solving a prickly pain point of theres, that makes it easier. The next step is to find places where those people hang out online, and then learn the rules of those communities so you can respectfully introduce what you've built.

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joshontheweb
I got my first few hundred users (aside from friends) by searching twitter for people complaining about the problem I was solving and showing them my solution. Luckily I had stumbled onto a good product market fit and It worked really well. Also posted on relevant subreddits. Everything since has been organic growth.

Edit: my hn clent is buggy and keeps replying to your comment and not the parent thread. Sorry.

rndstr
Your SaaS' text to background contrast is quite low in some places, makes it very hard to read even with good eyesight
joshontheweb
I agree, Im in the process of a complete redesign that should help. Thanks!
siquick
If its B2C then you can't go wrong with some highly-targeted FB ads to validate your idea, and gain some initial interest.
xiaoma
The options depend pretty heavily on the price point, how much you can invest per user and how much traction you need to fund future growth.
00taffe
The problem is the target of the project. If friends on Twitter and Facebook fall within the target, then send your project to try.

But if the project solve a problem away from you, try to think the best channel through which sponsor your project. You study your competitor and find which channel they use because it's better choose a different channel.