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Ask HN: How can I advertise my open source project for almost no money

2 points by qorrect ↗ HN
I have an open source stock trading journal https://stjou.com/ that I personally use, but I can't get anyone else to try/use it.

What are your tips on marketing open source apps?

How can I figure out WHY people aren't using it? Is it ugly? Do people not trust it?

Any advice on how to get this in front of people that trade stocks ?

Thanks HN

6 comments

[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 24.2 ms ] thread
mtmail
I would change the text on the homepage "StJou - Made for idiots By idiots" and "Let's see how much money you've lost" might be funny but IMHO not appealing for financial data.

Have you done a https://news.ycombinator.com/show post for the project?

qorrect
Yes I think you are right, it was funny to me but I see your point.

I haven't yet posted to Show I'll do that after I make those changes, thanks!

verdverm
It's unlikely open source matters to most of your target market. Any open source advice is typically geared towards developers as users.

Look at competitors products and what people say about them, then see how your project measures up.

I can say from experience, at this early stage, one or two users can give immeasurable feedback. Keep working on the product you want and a few will come along.

Writing posts can help. You want content that can be indexed by a search engine for the permanence. Forum / social / chat posts fade quickly into oblivion

qorrect
> Forum / social / chat posts fade quickly into oblivion

Where should I write posts at? All good advice thank you.

verdverm
On your website, do some very basic SEO (tags and other menial <head> content) (or something like medium? I self host everything)

You can then share links to posts at appropriate times and in appropriate context (like answering someone's question and giving them a place to learn more through a link, don't spam it around, always be genuinely helpful first)

keep in mind you are in a crowded market, lots of people try to build stock market tools, very few ever get used

My advice works better when you have a specialty or niche (generally specialties and niches do better)

noashavit
I don’t think your audience would care about oss, maybe focus on the free aspect and share it on hacker news show, Reddit, quora, and consider a product hunt campaign and LinkedIn promotion in relevant groups.

You’re going to write about it and link to it from forums your audience visits to learn, if you want to get their attention for free.