Pick a side project that markets itself.
Don’t get stuck in the marketing swamp, pick a side project that markets itself.
When me and my friend started building UpDog as a side project we figured that we would promote it mainly via TikTok – it’s a TikTok engagement analytics tool for creators after all, so it makes sense.
Marketing takes time and effort though, even making a small TikTok takes up unreasonable amounts of time. And this is supposed to be a side project right?
You want, nay, need a side project that promotes itself. When choosing what to work on for your next side project make it a prime deciding factor whether it has any built in mechanism for promoting itself.
It might be alluring to pick the side project that seems most simple to build but if it doesn’t promote itself in any way you might find yourself spending a ton of more time on marketing than what you do building. To me, that’s not a sustainable side project.
If you can, I suggest picking a side project that ticks one of the following boxes:
- Social features
- Sharing features
- Is noteworthy
- Is remarkable
We’ve tried making UpDog noteworthy by having a spectacular and humorous website, and to some extent it works, but it’s hardly enough to make the project self sufficient. UpDog doesn’t inherently tick any of the aforementioned boxes, it’s a product used in isolation and it would be hard to tack it on, so it requires an external marketing engine.
Next time I’m picking a side project, I’ll be picking something that promotes itself so it truly remains a side project in terms of required effort.
