Guides / Launch

Where to share your side project launch (and what to post)

A practical guide for indie developers · ~8 min read

The hardest part of a side project isn't building it — it's the silence after. You ship, you post once, you get four likes, and you conclude nobody wants it. Usually the project was fine; the distribution was the problem. Here's where your first real users actually come from, and how to post in each place without getting deleted.

First, a mindset that saves you

"Launching" isn't one big day — it's a handful of posts written for different rooms. Each platform is a different room with different etiquette, and the same copy pasted everywhere fails everywhere. Plan for five small, tailored posts over a week, not one announcement you fire and forget.

Reddit — high reward, high rules

Reddit can send you a flood of the right people, because niche subreddits are exactly your audience self-sorted. It can also ban you in minutes if you walk in selling. The rules that keep you alive:

• Find the niche, not the giant. A focused sub like r/SideProject, r/IndieDev, r/SaaS, or a tool-specific community converts far better than a huge general one.
• Read the sidebar. Many subs have a self-promo day or a specific format. Breaking it is the fastest route to a removal.
• Lead with the story, not the link. "I built X because Y annoyed me, here's what I learned" gets upvotes. "Check out my new app 🚀" gets reported.
• Be in the comments. A post you abandon dies. Answer every reply for the first few hours.

Hacker News — Show HN

If your project has a technical angle, a "Show HN:" post can do a lot in one day. The audience is sharp and allergic to marketing speak. Keep the title plain and specific ("Show HN: A tool that turns Git commits into a public changelog"), write a short honest first comment explaining what it does and what's still rough, and don't oversell. Front page is a long shot, but even a modest showing brings developers who'll give real feedback.

X / Twitter — the slow compounding one

X rarely produces a launch-day spike unless you already have a following, but it's where the indie community lives, so it compounds. A build-in-public thread — what you made, a screenshot or short clip, the problem it solves — does better than a dry announcement. Tag nothing, hype nothing; show the thing working. The follower you earn here is the one who's around for your next three projects.

Product Hunt — the set-piece

Product Hunt is worth it when you have something polished enough to withstand attention and a small group who'll show up. Pick a launch day (mid-week tends to be less crowded than Monday), have your assets ready, and rally whatever audience you have to engage early — the first hours shape the day. It's less "post and pray" and more "event you organize."

Indie Hackers & dev communities

Indie Hackers, dev.to, and topical Discord servers are smaller but warmer. People there want to see what others are building, so the bar for "is this spam" is much lower — as long as you're a participant, not a drive-by. A genuine "here's what I shipped and what I'm unsure about" post invites the kind of replies that turn into your first users and testers.

The part everyone underestimates: writing five different posts

Here's the friction that kills launches. The Reddit post needs to be a humble story. The tweet needs to be punchy and visual. The Show HN needs to be flat and technical. The Discord message can be casual. That's four different voices for one project, written while you're already exhausted from shipping — so most people post once, badly, and stop.

The fix is to draft them before launch day, when you're not tired, and to start from your project's own description so each one is accurate. Tailor the tone per room; keep the facts identical.

Build less, distribute more. The project you think failed probably just never made it into the right room with the right words. Pick two or three places from this list, write for each one specifically, and show up in the replies. That's a launch.