4 ms·
Ask HN: How to start up as an individual developer?
I have been trying to become an individual developer for a period, and have developed several tools or little projects (mainly open source). Some of them actually are very helpful at least to me, but unfortunately I am the only one to use them.
No pull requests, no issues, even no stars except the only one from myself. I found it hard for them to be seen. I feel down because if there are no users, I can't get any feedbacks and it's hard for me to improve my projects. I feel trapped into a hole and can do nothing but to stay at the origin and get drowned.
How can I promote my open-source projects (and maybe products in the future) ? I'll really appreciate it if someone with related experiences can offer me some advice.
- hnarayanan 5mo agoPlease share some of your tools.
- alexyan0431 5mo ago[dead]
- milkytron 5mo agoWhat do you find them useful for? Could they potentially provide value to another open source project if integrated?
- alexyan0431 5mo agoThe inspiration came from scattered fragments of my observed needs in life, so it may be hard to intergrate the tools. But I can intentionally do this afterwards. Thank you for your comment.
- didgetmaster 5mo agoYou could start by putting a link to your projects or blogs in your HN profile.
- alexyan0431 5mo ago[dead]
- nicbou 5mo ago> No pull requests, no issues, even no stars This is the standard for most projects What is your objective?
- alexyan0431 5mo agoI totally agree! As most of developers do, I want my projects to be seen by more users. It's really helpful to find out the drawbacks in my projects and make me realize how to imporve my works. I need feedbacks, both positive and negative are welcome. So I'm writing this post to ask my seniors for advice and experiences on how to promote an open-source project.
- ambertime 5mo ago[dead]
- OutrageousTea 5mo ago[flagged]
- alexyan0431 5mo agoAgreed. I think that's the basis of promotion and marketing: find your users and make sure you can reach them. I'll try to be more focused on meeting the needs. Ty.
- the__alchemist 5mo agoThis is normal. Projects used by others are the exception. They are usually driven by skilled marketing efforts or funding.
- alexyan0431 5mo agoYes. Marketing skills are significant, and I'm trying to learn more about it. It's just at the early stage for me though lol. I hope I can stick to it.
- clearstack 5mo ago[flagged]
- _f9cu 5mo agoYou will find in five years. Untill then, practice, analyse, experiment the tool, make it efficient. You would have already known your plan, the five years is to clear out the trash from head and find why you started in first place
- alexyan0431 5mo agoTotally agree. There are too much noise on the way to the target and we have to keep the original intention.
- skillsora 5mo ago[flagged]
- viveksinghhn 5mo ago[flagged]
- sminchev 5mo agoThis is always the struggle. To implement it is not like promote it. Making the product publicly visible and known is actually the harder part. Be consistent, try on multiple places, be active, make good site, good videos, good training, talk to people, listen what they say. Post it in reddit, write articles in places like here, dev.to, medium, explain how you did it, why, what you learned... Cases where somebody implements something and it becomes viral for a one night sleep are so rare, that I am not really sure that they actually exists ;)
- alexyan0431 5mo agoThank you for your valuable suggestions!
- chistev 5mo agoYou can improve by aiming for increasingly complex programming features. A step above what you can already do.
- alexyan0431 5mo agoThat's a great idea. I'll try it from now on.
- panavm 5mo ago[flagged]