| I did this earlier this year and it went surprisingly well. About 20 percent of the traffic into my side project site clicks through to my startup's site — even though there's just one linked button. I was expecting low single digits. Because the side project tapped into current events (filter bubbles and social media), it got great press coverage, including a mention in a front-page Sunday NYT story, and in top newspapers in France, Germany, and England. I've even been invited to speak at two conferences based on my side project (including international travel accommodations). After an interview with a leading journalism foundation, I was approached by the WSJ to do a partnership, and my side project's app now includes free access to the WSJ (and is, to my knowledge, the only app that has this). Best of all, I launched the side project on Kickstarter, and it was fully-funded there. This is typically really hard to do with software (esp free software), but I was able to tap into my startup's user base to get the ball rolling. Seeing how successful the side project was, I paid cash to get a Chrome extension built (to complement the iOS app). We've got almost 1k users, with over 10k app downloads. And we're the #1 search result for "read WSJ free" :) My side project is here: http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com, and my main startup is: http://www.beelinereader.com. edit: why the downvotes? This is a thread about marketing with side projects and the potential benefits. I shared new information about things that might come your way if you do what the author suggests. Did I also give links? Yes because without them there's no way to know if this is true or made up. Is there a better way to do this? Or did you go through and downvote all of the comments that talked about experiences with side project marketing? |