Jokes aside, side projects are a solid growth strategies deployed by small indie hackers to large companies.
The idea is to build small, free and useful products that solve a specific problem in your user’s journey.
There are 3 main benefits of such side projects -
In many cases, giving away free side projects can be better than having a free plan.
Let’s look at 4 companies that have used this strategy well with examples of their side projects -
The Tweet Hunter team is a master at launching side projects.
Their main product is a Tweet scheduling software which they charge a premium for. But to promote it they launch small free products almost every month.
They build and launch side projects on Product Hunt and Twitter and get plenty of love and support from their audience.
Some of their most successful side projects include:
Read the full Tweet Hunter story -
Veed is a web based video editing platform. Their ideal customers are YouTubers and content creators who want to create, edit and publish high quality videos fast
There 40+ free tools listed on Veed’s website.
All of them boosting their SEO and bringing new users into their funnel every day.
Some of their most successful side projects include:
Read their full story -
Bannerbear is a an automatic image generation API and NoCode tool.
Marketing teams use it to generate social media images for their ads, e-commerce stores and social media posts.
They don’t have a free plan, but recently started building side projects for SEO growth.
Automated image generation tools -
Recent tweet from Bannerbear founder Jon Yongfook shows some great SEO benefits of these tools -
Read the full Bannerbear story -
Founder’s Book is a platform of tools and resources for first-time founders and early stage startups.
It’s mainly a content business and they have found great traction via newsletter partnerships and also worked with accelerators and incubators.
But their side projects have brought in plenty of high domain authority back links to their main site.
2 side projects that got great success on Product Hunt -
Read their full story -
This is such an effective strategy among indie hackers as well as large companies.
Some more examples in brief -
Main Product - Llama Life
Side Projects -
Main Product - Transistor
Side Project -
Main Product - SaaS Blocks
Side Project -
Main Product - Calm
Side Project -
Thank you for reading 🙏
Hope this gives you some ideas for your own side projects.
If you know of more such examples, please share in the comments below.
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