Marketing could be fun, believe me.

If you ask Indie Hackers what part of startup creation they would avoid, it will be marketing, for sure. So, that’s understandable: who loves these annoying ads on Facebook or Google? You have to pay for them and you’re not even sure if people notice these ads (BTW, I don’t). Or take cold outreach, it’s so boring and unnatural, you just write to somebody you never saw and chatted with before.

So, do we need to just accept it?
Not at all, let’s spice it up!

Twitter is your weapon

Ok, let’s treat Twitter as a big marketing platform rather than social media. Of course, you can still meet a lot of exciting people and get new opportunities, but the main goal for an Indie Hacker is writing about the problem and mentioning your product that helps people to solve it.

Your achievements, challenges, and lessons taken from growing your business are actually interesting for people to read about. They will notice you, learn about your project, get interested in it and, potentially, will become your customers.

Let’s look at these tweets, they are pure marketing, but people love it!

Here’s a list of creators who are doing it right:

• levelsio
• Dan Rowden
• Arvid Kahl
• Kilian Poulin
• Tibo
• Dagobert Renouf

However, you should remember that Twitter is a long-term marketing strategy and needs a lot of dedication and time. That’s not for everybody. So, try it out, maybe that’s your thing.

Gumroad is your magic wand

Meet another marketing platform that wasn’t exactly created for marketing. So, Gumroad is a way for you to quickly sell something without any additional setups, but wait...
How could it help you to promote your product?

Let’s just follow these steps:

• Create a small product. It could be:
  • List of tools or ideas with additional info;
  • HTML or Notion template;
  • Small e-book;
• Post it on Gumroad as a free product.
• Promote it on Twitter, Reddit, or Indie Hackers. You can do the Product Hunt launch as well.

So, where is marketing?

Here’s a trick, people should provide their emails to get access to your creation. So, they’re getting a useful free product and you’re getting emails that you can use for marketing purposes. That’s a win-win situation!

Here’s an example of my Gumroad product that got me a 1.3k email list:
30+ Project ideas for Web Developer Portfolio

The only platform where I promoted it was Twitter. I tweeted with a “write a comment” technique, so people should write a comment with emoji to get their copy, it works very well with Twitter Algorithms.

Here’re my releases on Twitter:

The most important thing is to find something that interests people and you’re enjoying the creation of.

Launches are your fireworks

Customers love launches, Indie Hackers love launches. That’s an easy way to get attention for your product.

However, a lot of creators think that they can launch a product just once, but it’s not the case!

Alexander Isora, founder of Unicorn Platform:
”We relaunch Unicorn Platform on Product Hunt every six months. I consider Product Hunt to be an acquisition channel, not just a one-time launch platform. Here is an example of our relaunch.”

Relaunch your product on each major version bump. Also, don’t stick only to Product Hunt, launch on Twitter, Indie Hackers, or Reddit as well.

Summary

So, do your marketing wisely:

• Twitter: build an audience who loves your business and your thoughts.
• Gumroad: give something to the community and get their attention in exchange.
• Launches: don't be shy to be flashy with your product, people will notice it.

That’s all, folks, thank you for your attention!
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Indie Hackers.