Discuss this article or ask me any questions you may have.
7
I completely agree that this is a really effective marketing strategy, great article. I would also add Baremetrics Open Startups to that list.
Also, I just had an idea for a side project that I can launch for my main project while reading this - so thanks :).
5
From an SEO perspective, is it more effective to launch side projects under an existing domain or setup totally new domains for these? I can understand link back value from multiple domains, but I have been taking the approach of "building a brand". By launching multiple projects under the same brand, I am trying to build trust in my brand as well as contribute to the authenticity of the brand when people visit an individual product page. Thoughts?
Depends. If it’s originally under your brand then some folks may not link to it. Also, it’s harder to launch as a separate thing on Product Hunt etc.
So, what you can do is separate website at first. Then after 3 months move it all to a directory in your site and skinned for your brand. 301 all the links to the new resource.
1
That's a clever way to do it.
They cover this question in the Crew blog post linked in the article as well, and they recommend a separate site:
"If you build your tool on a separate website, what you sacrifice in not having on your domain, you gain in exposure and memorability."
Wow, my head is spinning with ideas. Maybe there’s some way to create a side project that would help people decide what to do for a side project? 😀
All the examples and this part really made it click:
Instead of setting a selfish goal like, “We need 1000 unique visitors in 30 days,” we should ask ourselves, “How can we help 1000 people? What can we give away that is related to our core business?”
1
Yes! This was also the sentence that made it for me. Help 3 people a day and eventually they'll come to buy from you.
Im planning on doing a content curation with my company https://marky.dk/ on small marketing tricks that help SMBs grow their business.
3
Great article! This marketing approach really aligns with the IH ethos. I love the concept of increasing awareness of one product by adding value to the world with another. Also came up with a side project idea for my other side project, HackSource. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!
2
Ali, you’re everywhere man. I have been studying your Medium posts religiously (especially the one on getting more readers to your Medium post!)
Thanks for the great content. I started my blogging journey a month ago, which surprisingly includes “side projects” in almost all of them.
Keep up the good work, and don’t stop. Because...you know....it’s also helping me :)
2
Great article, inspiring to think! A lot of startups doing so, without calling it "side project marketing"
Invision has great designing course and Sketch plugin called "Craft". Basecamp writing books and making Rework podcast.
But I really don't think that it replaces writing and producing content. after all your "by-product" need a bit of a marketing it self.
2
I loved this article so much and quite surprised to see it on IH. Highly recommended to all growth hackers/marketers.
2
I agree with this! In the book Traction, one of the chapters is called Engineering as Marketing. As a developer, I absolutely love this channel because it taps into what I love to do.
1
Hey Ali,
It's really very to read. A good marketing idea I really impressed.
1
The Crew guys really blew the doors off this idea with the success of Unsplash. I think it's such a good idea that I'm sort of taking a Side Project First approach. I've just put up an interactive take on the Side Project Marketing Checklist at https://MarketingHustle.xyz that I hope to use as a traffic feeder for some marketing app ideas that I will be working on in the new year.
1
When you "hack out loud" you art attracts potential partners and buyers
1
https://detailed.com/ has also many many examples of side projects used for marketing purposes :) great project by viperchill
1
At the beginning of the year, I realized there was no good, easy, simple way to create a funnel chart on the web. So I created https://codefor.cash/build-a-funnel-chart.php as a php script.
And then I sent an email to the guy with the first result of the SERP and mentioned that I built a new tool to solve this, and he added it to his website.
Took me about an hour.
That's gotten me 1317 unique users who, on average, view 2.79 pages. At $0.50 cpc, that's $650 worth of value from about an hour's work.
That list started years ago and should be handy inspiration.
1
I work as a growth marketer at a company that used to compete with Crew. The reason I say used to is because Crew got acquired by Dribbble. The founders are now working on Unsplash, an entity they spun out separately, after the acquisition, as their primary focus.
On the one hand, yes, a great example of side project marketing. On the other hand, it’s a very atypical side project example, at the extreme end. If you can reliably launch these then you should actually take a portfolio manager approach to building businesses and do a labs company, holding company or similar.
Yes, side projects are a good direction to go but hard to do consistently well, like most marketing is.
I completely agree that this is a really effective marketing strategy, great article. I would also add Baremetrics Open Startups to that list.
Also, I just had an idea for a side project that I can launch for my main project while reading this - so thanks :).
From an SEO perspective, is it more effective to launch side projects under an existing domain or setup totally new domains for these? I can understand link back value from multiple domains, but I have been taking the approach of "building a brand". By launching multiple projects under the same brand, I am trying to build trust in my brand as well as contribute to the authenticity of the brand when people visit an individual product page. Thoughts?
Hi Brett, here's a great interview that that shows the positive effective of a side project: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/site-builder-report-website-builder-reviews-44-000-mo--Kn5FqULyPafmCC6Oons ... the side project was at https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/stock-up and provided over 300 backlinks
Depends. If it’s originally under your brand then some folks may not link to it. Also, it’s harder to launch as a separate thing on Product Hunt etc.
So, what you can do is separate website at first. Then after 3 months move it all to a directory in your site and skinned for your brand. 301 all the links to the new resource.
That's a clever way to do it.
They cover this question in the Crew blog post linked in the article as well, and they recommend a separate site:
"If you build your tool on a separate website, what you sacrifice in not having on your domain, you gain in exposure and memorability."
https://crew.co/blog/how-side-projects-saved-our-startup/
Wow, my head is spinning with ideas. Maybe there’s some way to create a side project that would help people decide what to do for a side project? 😀
All the examples and this part really made it click:
Instead of setting a selfish goal like, “We need 1000 unique visitors in 30 days,” we should ask ourselves, “How can we help 1000 people? What can we give away that is related to our core business?”
Yes! This was also the sentence that made it for me. Help 3 people a day and eventually they'll come to buy from you.
Im planning on doing a content curation with my company https://marky.dk/ on small marketing tricks that help SMBs grow their business.
Great article! This marketing approach really aligns with the IH ethos. I love the concept of increasing awareness of one product by adding value to the world with another. Also came up with a side project idea for my other side project, HackSource. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!
Ali, you’re everywhere man. I have been studying your Medium posts religiously (especially the one on getting more readers to your Medium post!)
Thanks for the great content. I started my blogging journey a month ago, which surprisingly includes “side projects” in almost all of them.
Keep up the good work, and don’t stop. Because...you know....it’s also helping me :)
Great article, inspiring to think! A lot of startups doing so, without calling it "side project marketing"
Invision has great designing course and Sketch plugin called "Craft". Basecamp writing books and making Rework podcast.
They even have a podcast called "sell your by-products" https://rework.fm/sell-your-by-products/
Great stuff, bottom line.
But I really don't think that it replaces writing and producing content. after all your "by-product" need a bit of a marketing it self.
I loved this article so much and quite surprised to see it on IH. Highly recommended to all growth hackers/marketers.
I agree with this! In the book Traction, one of the chapters is called Engineering as Marketing. As a developer, I absolutely love this channel because it taps into what I love to do.
Hey Ali,
It's really very to read. A good marketing idea I really impressed.
The Crew guys really blew the doors off this idea with the success of Unsplash. I think it's such a good idea that I'm sort of taking a Side Project First approach. I've just put up an interactive take on the Side Project Marketing Checklist at https://MarketingHustle.xyz that I hope to use as a traffic feeder for some marketing app ideas that I will be working on in the new year.
When you "hack out loud" you art attracts potential partners and buyers
https://detailed.com/ has also many many examples of side projects used for marketing purposes :) great project by viperchill
At the beginning of the year, I realized there was no good, easy, simple way to create a funnel chart on the web. So I created https://codefor.cash/build-a-funnel-chart.php as a php script.
And then I sent an email to the guy with the first result of the SERP and mentioned that I built a new tool to solve this, and he added it to his website.
Took me about an hour.
That's gotten me 1317 unique users who, on average, view 2.79 pages. At $0.50 cpc, that's $650 worth of value from about an hour's work.
I should do this more often...
This article inspired me to ship another side project... list of VC firms (easily searchable by location)
Funnily enough, creative backlink builders for SEO have been doing this for quite a while. Here’s an extensive list of examples for how to do this:
http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
That list started years ago and should be handy inspiration.
I work as a growth marketer at a company that used to compete with Crew. The reason I say used to is because Crew got acquired by Dribbble. The founders are now working on Unsplash, an entity they spun out separately, after the acquisition, as their primary focus.
On the one hand, yes, a great example of side project marketing. On the other hand, it’s a very atypical side project example, at the extreme end. If you can reliably launch these then you should actually take a portfolio manager approach to building businesses and do a labs company, holding company or similar.
Yes, side projects are a good direction to go but hard to do consistently well, like most marketing is.