They then forget that the typical person there is an industry peer or competitor rather than a customer, and that the chances of selling them on their product is slim to none.
Another thing is that most of the forums/subreddits these days have strict rules against self-promotion.
And I'm not saying that you're wrong - I'm just wondering what do you think is the right way to do things.
There are far less creators than there are people that merely consume/enjoy/use that kind of content/art/product/service
and that
Most people who are creators aren't going to be in your target audience, and hence won't buy/use it.
Hence by marketing to other creators, you end up marketing to a subset of a subset of your product/game's total audience.
As for how you should market?
Well, in a mix of ways. Paid ads, getting journalists/media outlets/influencers to cover your work, posting on social media, doing various attention grabbing marketing campaigns, etc.
Plus using communities that are likely to be interested in the game.
Of course, as you say, the latter have rules against self promotion.
But here's the thing. Those rules are not 100% set in stone absolute.
They're about stopping drive by advertisers, not just anyone with anything to promote at any time in history. That's how the communities I run work for instance, with the assumption being that if someone shows a real interest in the community and subject, we'll allow them to share their work.
So you ideally want to be a longtime contributor on any community you want to market your work on. Have (as they say), less than 10% of your posts as ads for your work.
Hope that helps.
Wish you could save posts on HN because this is a gem!
How obvious the distinction is depends on your product.
Imagine I'm a robot maker making a robot vacuum cleaner. The kind of publicity that can get me into "Hackaday" probably comes to me a lot more naturally than the kind of publicity that gets me into "Good Housekeeping"
But I should be aiming for the latter, assuming my target market is "homeowners" rather than "robot enthusiasts"
Of course, for other products the distinction might be less obvious; if I'm making an IDE my users and my peers are probably fairly similar groups.
Even if it isn't designed for a niche, you can still start by marketing to one. Or to a demographic, and advertise to media that targets that demographic.
Because if you're talking about ads, many people (even in this post) are saying that they just don't work for small projects.
That's a great way to describe it.
Eh, I tried exactly this for a "thought bubble" project I had. Figured a landing page and $200 on ads would be the best way to gauge demand before writing any code.
Seemed like a great success - 50 or so e-mail signups, time to roll up my sleeves and start building! Until I looked closer and realized that every single signup was from a clearly fraudulent address. There's absolutely zero chance that they all just happened to be female, nicely formatted [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com addresses.
Using ads to dip your toe in the water might have worked ten years ago, but there's just way too much fraud nowadays. I think you're better off finding your first ten users manually and asking very nicely for their time and feedback.
That was a few years ago, but I launched my app on the Play Store recently and noticed the exact same pattern. Definitely fake, too, because accounts were created in Firebase without user profiles (i.e. the app was never launched). I assume there are bot farms scanning new releases for certain packages (e.g. Firebase) and creating fake accounts.
If someone clicks, signs up, and never pays, the conversion rate on the ad looks worse, and Facebook's targeting looks less valuable.
If I can't post my FOSS to the linux subreddit then what in the world am I allowed to post?
There is not enough information in your comment to judge correctly, but I would like to point out that it's not black and white.
You know what I hate about Hacker News lately? The green accounts that show up, post a link to their product (sometimes even making it to the front page), do not reply to comments, and exist only to keep spamming their own links. I also saw a post gain 16 upvotes even though they forgot to post the actual content.
If you regularly contribute to the linux subreddit, participate in discussions, and post interesting links from non-affiliated sources then yes, being deleted for "self promotion" sounds unfair. But if you only go there to promote your project then I'd also side with the mods.
Exactly like this HN submission did.
Always read the wiki before posting. When in doubt, ask moderators if they're OK with self-promotion.
Self-promotion doesn't mean you spam links left and right. Try to provide value first, and maybe at the end of your post/comment, link to your website.
Ie FB ad - conversion.
Instead you want a showy FB ad that takes them to a landing page that looks like your website (native) to build trust, maybe have them answer some questions to get qualified etc. There's numerous ways to filter out "bad traffic".
That is my email address: [firstname].[lastname]@gmail.com
I'm not female though.
I'd expect most or even all of them to be from gmail but I'd be skeptical if they all followed the same naming convention, whether its first.last or something else.
That alone is at least mildly suspicious but it doesn't prove its not legitimate. However in this case he also used other data points to make that determination.
That makes you fraudulent these days? Man, my wife and I are screwed.
I’m saying that they were fake because all of them were formatted like that, registering within hours of being made available on the Play Store/AdWords, with zero external links and the app never actually being launched.
The odds are almost nil that they were legitimate users. It’s incredibly easy to spot, the email signups after the initial launch are far more “natural”, even those sharing the same format.
I got more visitors from briefly mentioning my site on a comment here on HN than from ads and PH.
Anyway, after a week of sulking that I wasn't the next Facebook overnight I buckled down and continued working with more long term vision. Growing a userbase takes time, 99% of the time.
It was played off as "meh" by Peldi but it was masterful. I had launched a product 2 years before and until then, I couldn't understand what I did wrong.
I obsessed over what he did. Every single thing. Trying to find where he got "lucky". There was no luck.
I knew Peldi from the Flash days. Met him once or twice in SFO, and he has an infectious smile and was super friendly.
Once, one of our team was showing me Balsamiq and they all liked it. I tried and it was super easy to use. I went to buy the license or I went to ask how to buy it, and Peldi replied back, something in the lines of, "Free for you buddy. You did enough for the community, this is the least I can do." That was also the time when I realized Peldi was behind Balsamiq.
I had had various interactions with him, not just about Balsamiq but asking him stupid questions, advice, and networking introductions.
But, he networked VERY hard.
https://blog.balsamiq.com/startup-marketing-advice-from-bals...
As for luck, you made your own luck. Congrats on your success!
You could also just go to some old posts (HN or reddit) that are relevant to your product and reach out to anyone who seems ideal customer.
It's easier said than done, but hey, now you (hopefully) have some initial users, all for $0.
Did they give you a reasoning for this guidance?
Going after your customers looks great (honestly, I have zero successful experiences either way), but it is really hard for people that have a day job.
Reddit, on the other hand, is similarly priced and I got a lot more real users from them.
In any case, that's the closest I've gotten and I've learned to appreciate the hustle. It was also, for me, much more difficult than the actual coding/building. Although it was neat gaining a bit of "clout," it was repetitive, monotone, and extremely draining.
[1] www.gameref.io
As a quick thought: who was/is your customer? It wasn't quickly apparent from your site. Is it game devs? Or game dev studios? Or platform owners? The hustle you did was actually great, but may have yielded more positive momentum if directed at potential customers.
That way, you get product feedback and also test the waters on pricing/revenue. Journalists have their place, but it's really PR and getting the general word out. Defining a customer profile, and having direct sales more-or-less figured out generally comes first before press pushes.
So unless your average customer spends $100+ with you, it will most likely not work. A common trick is to offer upfront paid annual plans, to convert $10 monthly into $120 now.
In true cynical form: Unless you are trying to either sell products to developers or are working on getting into ycombinator it seems like a terrible idea to pitch your idea here, the main benefit seems to be identifying competitors.
Then again, dropbox.
You can make arguments about ad spend and somebody can come here to correct me but I am fairly confident in the assertion that worrying about idea stealing and competition at the idea stage means you’re almost definitely indexing on the wrong things.
> In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ...
Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared.