Ask HN: How to gain traction with projects?

by ecto on 2/14/2011, 8:14 PM with 14 comments

I've been hacking away at little projects for months. I make them up, ask my friends to test them, get feedback, iterate, and get them production-ready. It's what I love to do and I'm not going to stop.

I get pumped up. I post on my blog, Twitter, Facebook, HN, reddit, and I email blogs. I live in Northern Minnesota so there aren't many people around, but I let the few I see know about my latest projects. I even tell people about my projects at the gas station and restaurants. Basically, I try hard.

Nothing goes anywhere. I don't think it's because I make floozy things either; I feel as though my products would interest a lot of people if I could reach them.

It's really disheartening spending days of my life working on something to have a handful of people see it. How do you gain traction with your projects? Is there a magic bullet that works for you?

  • by gawker on 2/14/2011, 8:23 PM

    While I don't have much experience with launching anything, it sounds like the projects that you're building aren't exactly useful to the people around you. If you don't mind me asking, what are these little projects? You might want to try and focus on a target audience. Maybe even ask them what they need and gather some feedback? Just my thoughts. It may or may not apply.

  • by westy92 on 2/15/2011, 3:03 AM

    Similar to what I asked here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2219418

  • by nudge on 2/14/2011, 8:42 PM

    No magic bullets, unfortunately, but you'll get more useful feedback if you show us what you've made.

  • by awangstar on 2/14/2011, 10:31 PM

    hey, I have actually just started an organization to help entrepreneurs gain traction

    http://www.meetup.com/traction-bootcamp

    Unfortunately the first group's meetups will be in New York, however, maybe we can include you virtually in our program.

    I started this program because I meet a lot of entrepreneurs like you... a lot of people are good at building the initial prototype, but sucks at getting traction.

    The two major reasons being

    1. Entrepreneurs don't quite know how to gain traction

    2. Entrepreneurs don't necessarily have the support system that goad each other on to get traction, especially when the going gets tough.

    Love to include you in the program, email me (the organizer) if you want

  • by timmm on 2/15/2011, 2:47 AM

    Try and solve a problem.