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I'm a senior marketer. The short answer is yes, you can market without spending. The slightly longer answer is that time is money and those forms of marketing o

I'm a senior marketer. The short answer is yes, you can market without spending. The slightly longer answer is that time is money and those forms of marketing often take lots of time, and take time away from building the product. There's lots of free info out there, but it can be hard to separate the signal from the noise. Noise in this case often being gurus and blogs trying to get you to buy info products or make a purchase via affiliate link. Start simple by making a site to sell your product and add a way to monetize it. Get engaged in communities that have problems your product solves. You can then reach out to people to get product feedback and maybe a sale. But to be honest, at some point odds are you will need to spend money. If the issue is you simply cannot afford it, that's fine... bootstrap with non-paid channels. If your issue is that you don't want to pay for anything on principle, you're going to have a rough time. There reality for most businesses is that it takes money to make money. If you have any specific questions or want to chat, feel free to contact me via my profile. While I charge a consulting rate for hands-on work or analysis, I'm always happy to answer general marketing questions, point people in the right direction to reputable resources, etc. for free without any pressure to consult.

peterburkimsher 9y ago
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! And thanks for not using an affiliate link, unlike some commenters below. "add a way to monetise it" - do you mean Google ads? Affiliate links? The same thing we just said is "noise"? "don't want to pay on principle" is part of it. I have a maximum wage - my visa and work contract do not allow me to do other paid work. I'm not allowed to have any revenue, so I want to minimise my costs. My "portfolio" feels useless if I can't find anyone else to use it though, so I know I need to do marketing, I just don't know how.
- shostack 9y ago
  That's an interesting challenge--I've never encountered it. Monetization can occur through a variety of ways. Ads and affiliate links tend to be fairly low margin. Personally, I'd focus on productizing your offering, and trying to find a way to sell it as a service for recurring revenue. That said, I don't know how you can actually make a business if you're not allowed to have any revenue. Can you clarify on what your end goal is? I might be missing something with that.
  - peterburkimsher 9y ago
    My end goal is just to make my work useful to someone else. I do these projects because I want to. I'm going to keep building stuff, because that's what I enjoy. I just feel useless when I think how much time I spend on it, and then nobody cares. Existing Chinese textbooks don't have colours for tones, pinyin, and literal translations. So I decided to make my own software to do that. I can sit back and judge the textbook authors (saying their stuff sucks), but that doesn't help anyone. So I made my own better one! But the only person who is helped by my work is me. It's not going to change the world if I'm the only person who uses it. Do I have to be a business in order to give stuff away for free?
    - shostack 9y ago
      That helps me understand a bit better. I'm not clear on the legalities of your situation, but it seems like you might benefit from looking into educational institutions and other community resources to see if they could make use of your work. If you are giving stuff away for free you don't need to be a business, but if what you are giving away has costs associated with that, you need some way of covering those. If not by yourself, then with the help and sponsorship of another org.

peterburkimsher 9y ago

Thank you for your thoughtful reply! And thanks for not using an affiliate link, unlike some commenters below. "add a way to monetise it" - do you mean Google ads? Affiliate links? The same thing we just said is "noise"? "don't want to pay on principle" is part of it. I have a maximum wage - my visa and work contract do not allow me to do other paid work. I'm not allowed to have any revenue, so I want to minimise my costs. My "portfolio" feels useless if I can't find anyone else to use it though, so I know I need to do marketing, I just don't know how.

shostack 9y ago
That's an interesting challenge--I've never encountered it. Monetization can occur through a variety of ways. Ads and affiliate links tend to be fairly low margin. Personally, I'd focus on productizing your offering, and trying to find a way to sell it as a service for recurring revenue. That said, I don't know how you can actually make a business if you're not allowed to have any revenue. Can you clarify on what your end goal is? I might be missing something with that.
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  My end goal is just to make my work useful to someone else. I do these projects because I want to. I'm going to keep building stuff, because that's what I enjoy. I just feel useless when I think how much time I spend on it, and then nobody cares. Existing Chinese textbooks don't have colours for tones, pinyin, and literal translations. So I decided to make my own software to do that. I can sit back and judge the textbook authors (saying their stuff sucks), but that doesn't help anyone. So I made my own better one! But the only person who is helped by my work is me. It's not going to change the world if I'm the only person who uses it. Do I have to be a business in order to give stuff away for free?
  - shostack 9y ago
    That helps me understand a bit better. I'm not clear on the legalities of your situation, but it seems like you might benefit from looking into educational institutions and other community resources to see if they could make use of your work. If you are giving stuff away for free you don't need to be a business, but if what you are giving away has costs associated with that, you need some way of covering those. If not by yourself, then with the help and sponsorship of another org.