How to Promote a Startup if you are a Developer

Many developers quit their jobs to build their own startups. Most of them fail and go back to work.

It’s not because their product is bad.

The real problem is this: they treat marketing as something unimportant and instead continue writing features.

They think, “If I build great features, users will come.” Or they believe that a beautiful design and good interface will make their startup successful.

But real life doesn’t work like that.

I started my entrepreneurial journey as a developer. I quit my last job four years ago. At that time, I was a software engineer.

During the past four years, I changed my mindset from feature building to marketing. And I keep changing it because it is hard.

Sometimes thoughts come to my mind like:

“Your competitor has a great feature, so do the same”

Or:

“Add a new feature, it will grow the market”

But I’m sure, it will not grow the market. It will waste time and bring frustration.

In this article, I want to share my personal experience as a developer. I want to show the common mistakes developers make in entrepreneurship. I also want to share which promotion channels work best.

Finally, I will explain how to shift your mindset. This will help you get visitors and paying customers.

10% of published startups on ProductHunt are already gone. And this is only what we can see from domain expiration — the real failure rate is likely higher.

How do we know this? We researched ProductHunt and found that around 10% of published startups are no longer active. From 198,110 discovered outgoing domains, 20,676 are currently expired.

If you want the full list of authority websites with expired domains and trusted backlinks, check Full List of Authority Websites with Expired Domains

Stop Building Startup Features

Writing features feels productive.

When you write code, you feel like something is growing. New things are added. The project looks active.

But here is the main trap: nothing really grows except the codebase and the level of demotivation.

For developers, building features is comfortable. Marketing feels difficult. So we avoid marketing and stay in our comfort zone.

When there are no payments and no growth, you start thinking your product is bad. Then you get new energy and start building a new product that you believe will succeed 100%.

This cycle often leads to burnout, disappointment, and sometimes depression.

Now I spend about 90% of my time on marketing and 10% on writing code. Because of this shift, my projects started getting more visitors and started earning money.

Before, I believed that more features would fix everything.

That thinking ruined my previous startups.

I looked at competitors and thought the problem was design or missing features. So I tried to copy them and improve my product to match them.

But this is a trap.

You improve the product, yes, but it does not automatically bring more users.

Marketing basics first, practice then

Many developers think they need to read marketing books first and only then start doing marketing. They think it works like programming. You read books, then you practice writing simple code.

But it doesn’t work like that.

Real experience comes from practice. Just like in development — you really learn when you get your first job, work with real data, and solve real problems.

It’s like painting. Who will create a better picture?

The one who read 100 books about painting but painted only one picture? Or the one who painted 100 pictures and read just one book?

The answer is obvious.

The best way to learn anything is practice. Learning should go together with action.

You try some marketing. It doesn’t work. Then you look at how others do it. You read articles. You watch videos. You find guides and tips. You test again.

It’s a process.

But many developers surround themselves with marketing books and spend months reading. They keep building features. They think they are building a startup.

But they are not doing marketing.

If you read books before doing anything, you don’t really understand them. You have nothing to compare with. No real experience. No base to judge what works and what doesn’t.

Many developers think they need to collect knowledge first.

In the end, they don’t get paying customers. They just waste time and energy.

Developers often fail at marketing because they focus on features instead of solving real user problems. They don’t define a clear target audience. They don’t explain the value clearly. They skip market research. They think, “If I build it, users will come.”

Marketing becomes a secondary task instead of the main strategy.

My advice?

Choose one marketing channel. Start using it. Learn while doing it.

Watch YouTube videos about that channel. See how other entrepreneurs use it. Test things. Improve step by step.

Don’t wait until you “feel ready.”

You will never feel ready.

Start first. Learn on the way.

What marketing strategy is good for developers?

There are two things a developer must start doing if he wants to promote his startup and get new customers.

The first one is learning content marketing.

The ability to write good content is very important. Even if you decide to run paid ads on Google or social media, you still need to write a good headline and description. Writing skills matter everywhere.

When you learn content marketing, you start to understand people better. You see what they search for and how they think. It also brings you traffic in the long term through blog posts and social media.

If you publish consistently, people start to trust you. They follow you. Then they recommend you and share your content. And trust makes sales much easier, especially if you’re a solo founder.

The second thing is choosing the marketing channel that works best for you.

I tried many channels: X, BlueSky, Reddit, Facebook, SEO, YouTube in different formats. Some of them didn’t work well for me, so I stopped. I focused only on what brought real traffic to my website.

You need to save your time and energy. First, find what works. Grow that channel. Then later you can test new ones again.

Right now I focus only on content marketing, YouTube, and SEO. This brings me more than 2,000 warm visitors every month. These people are not cold traffic. They search for something specific. They already have a problem and are looking for a solution.

So if you’re a developer like me, start learning content marketing. Practice writing posts and articles. Learn SEO.

You can write one good article and reuse it everywhere: — post it on your blog — cut it into short posts for social media — turn it into a YouTube script — make YouTube Shorts from it

One piece of content can work for you in many ways.

Start small. Stay consistent. And don’t wait for “perfect.”

SEO for Developers: How to Start If You Have Zero Marketing Experience

Good news for developers who want to start doing SEO: you don’t need to talk to many people. I know that most developers are introverts and usually prefer not to communicate too much. We like to sit in our dark little corner and write code. That’s normal.

But there is also some bad news. You need to learn copywriting, because SEO requires writing articles.

If you think AI can do this job for you, you might be disappointed. AI content rarely ranks well on its own. Also, visitors usually don’t enjoy reading dry and boring text. AI cannot easily share real emotions or first-hand experience.

You can still use AI tools like ChatGPT. For example, to check grammar, generate ideas, or help structure an article. Think of it as an assistant, not a replacement.

Your first articles will probably not be very good. You might even dislike them. That’s normal. Over time, your writing will improve.

Later, you will return to your old articles and optimize them. You may rewrite some sections or add new information. This keeps your content fresh and useful. Google likes updated content.

When you publish your first article, your goal is simple: get any position in the top 100 Google results. After that, improve the article step by step.

SEO is a long-term process. It requires regular work and continuous content updates.

Here is a simple plan to start:

1. Read some basic materials about copywriting.
2. Start writing articles on your blog. For example, explain how your product helps users solve a problem.
3. While working, keep a list of article ideas. When a new idea comes to your mind, write it down. Later you can choose the best idea for your next article.
4. Practice creating thumbnails and images for your articles. Each image should explain one simple idea. Do not overload your images.
5. Read blogs from competitors you like. Good content often makes you want to try or buy the product it talks about.
6. Work on backlink building
7. Do on-page SEO optimization

Do YouTube SEO

In Google search results, there is a video carousel where Google shows three videos from YouTube based on the user’s query and keywords. This block appears when Google thinks the query has video intent, and it is often placed above the normal search results.

Because of this, it is a smart marketing move to reuse your blog content. When you publish an article on your blog, you can also create a YouTube video based on it. You already have the material — you just need to turn the article into a simple video script. This is much easier than creating a script from scratch.

Try to optimize your workflow. Do less work, but get more results.

I do the same thing. This approach helps my content appear in several places: in normal Google search results, in the Google video carousel, and in YouTube search.

When your video ranks in Google, it brings more views and new subscribers to your YouTube channel. It also attracts new visitors to your website.

One of my videos brings around 600 views per month on YouTube. In total, it already has 2.2K views and helped me gain 68 new subscribers.

Some of these viewers also visit my website. I always leave links to my tools and articles in the video description, so people can easily find them.