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.
> No pull requests, no issues, even no stars
This is the standard for most projects
What is your objective?
I 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.
This is normal. Projects used by others are the exception. They are usually driven by skilled marketing efforts or funding.
Yes. 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.
Post it where your users already spend time and keep it simple—show what problem it solves, not just the code.
Agreed. 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.
What do you find them useful for? Could they potentially provide value to another open source project if integrated?
The 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.
You could start by putting a link to your projects or blogs in your HN profile.
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Please share some of your tools.
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