I'm a SysAdmin, not a dev, so things are somewhat different; still, the marketing is probably pretty similar. I wrote a book about some of the things I more c

I'm a SysAdmin, not a dev, so things are somewhat different; still, the marketing is probably pretty similar. I wrote a book about some of the things I more commonly SysAdmin. By far, this was the best marketing I've ever done. (It's also the most expensive marketing I've ever done. No-starch paid to have it printed, but god damn, that was a lot of work to write.) Now, as for an online presence, in my field, being visible on mailing lists and the like is pretty important. A nice website? much less so. Of course, if you are a frontend dev, the opposite probably applies. Eh, I do think that contributing patches back is pretty important. Good decision makers consult good technical people before making such a decision, and having some patches on public mailing lists shows that you know /something/ (which is usually good enough for a SysAdmin. Nobody expects me to be able to re-write apache, but I am expected to sometimes make some small change to mod_auth_*) Still, writing a book (and having it published by an established publisher) might not be the cheapest way to reach decision makers, but it's one of the more effective ways to do so, I think.