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.

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.

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.

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.