How I used Side Project Marketing to Get 4000 views in 2 days

I run a website called Career Fair.

I launched it a month ago and response was good. Views, emails, tweets - you get it. I was feeling excited.

But over the last few weeks, the initial surge of traffic died down. I needed something to get that engagement back up.

On a whim, I built Immigrant Valley, a website related to my niche (tech startups) and launched it on Reddit + Twitter.

The goal: link Career Fair on this "mini-website" to get traffic up.

The result: 4000 views driven in less than 48 hours to the side project + 500 views to Career Fair. How did I do this?

Enter Side Project Marketing

So it's a Tuesday night and I'm sitting in my bed bored.

Trump recently put out an immigration order to limit H1B visas.

I'm on an H1B visa. That's not good.

Instead of feeling bad about myself, I tried to think of constructive things to do.

I could email the white house. I could call my state senator. I could call The Rock. Ok I'm about to give up and go watch a movie when..

It hits me. What if I built a website showcasing successful immigrant startups?

Like just a nice, dynamic website showcasing basic stats, employment numbers, and descriptions? I would be able to link my website Career Fair on this site too if it got traffic.

Sounds like a plan. Hell yes.

2 problems, though.

I only learnt to code a few months ago. So I'm still pretty bad at this.

Trump put out this announcement less than 2 days ago and I can tell people are forgetting about it. I need to launch this ASAP.

Time to build

I decide to take the only rational option: pull an all-nighter and ship in the morning just in time for tech twitter to wake up.

I crack open a redbull, put on some techno, and open up my text editor.

Step 1: Collecting immigrant startups data. Easier than I expect - I find a PDF table online from 2018, good enough, and export it to a JSON file. After a few hours of cleaning the data, it looks good. Spin up a Postgres Database and we are in business baby.

Step 2: Building the front end. I suck at design but I know how to steal. I look up some awesome websites and merge them together to create a website baby. I end up getting something somewhat reasonable.

It's now around 5am. My eyes are slowly starting to shut. I regret this. I regret everything. I wish I had asked Jen out a year ago...concentrate!!!

I use Ruby / Sinatra to build the webapp, purchase a domain name for $10, do all the big boy things.

And then at 7:30 am, I have something I can ship.

Launch time

I peel open a Banana and start posting everywhere. Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit.

I also send out about 20 cold emails to journalists and famous people in the immigration field. Someone's got to like this damn website right?

My website starts getting a few upvotes. I get that dopamine rush and feel on top of the world. Okay this might actually work...

And then I pass out.

7 Hours Later, 4pm

Rise and shine. I open my eyes and frantically search for my laptop. Groggy eyed I log into Twitter and...boom.

An immigration lawyer with 30k followers picked up my website and shared it.

It drove over 4000 views to the website as well as 500 views to Career Fair.

Bingo. I got some email signups and a sweet backlink.

Ending thoughts

One thing I would have done differently is host the side project on Career Fair's website - so on the same domain. But I was low on sleep sooo :)

Overall, though, I love to build things so I use that to my advantage.

Viral side projects are a great way to market your business and to get exposure.

Act fast, be bold, and just ship it :)

I'll be in the comments if anyone has any questions!

Shikhar from Career Fair