How to market a side project when you are the only one doing it

When one person builds the product, marketing tends to be the part that waits. What helps is a small loop, done every week: write the facts down once, publish one useful post, take it to where your users are, write to a few people, and let the numbers choose next week's move. This is the loop we use for our own products. For each step, here is what it needs and where IndieBob, the tool we built for it, takes care of it.

Start with one page of facts

Before writing anything, write down what the product does, what it does not do, what it costs and who it is for. One page, plain words. Every post, email and reply after this comes from that page.

In IndieBob this page is the facts sheet. Drafts are grounded in it: a capability that is not on the page is not claimed, and a price that is not on it is not quoted. If you use a coding assistant, a prompt you run in your own repository writes the first version from your code.

Measure before you post

Record which page someone landed on, which site sent them, which campaign link they clicked, and whether they signed up or paid. You need neither cookies nor anyone's IP address for that.

IndieBob's tracker, @indiebob/tracker, sets no cookies and stores no IP. It keeps a random visitor id in local storage, honours Do Not Track, and gives visitors a way to opt out. We explain it on our privacy page.

One useful post a week, on your own domain

A post on your own site keeps answering searches; a social post scrolls away. So publish on your own site first and point everything else at it. Pick a question your users actually search for, answer it properly, and mention the product where it helps.

IndieBob writes a first draft from your facts sheet. Your site fetches published posts through its content API, and a signed webhook tells a static site to rebuild. This site works that way: publishing a note in IndieBob rebuilds surfzone.co with it.

Take the post to where your users already are

Then tell people in the places they already read: a forum, a community, a newsletter, a social account. Put a tracked link on each, so you can see which place sent readers.

IndieBob turns a published post into posts for nine places. Mastodon and Bluesky post themselves once you approve them. Reddit, Hacker News, Product Hunt and Indie Hackers are copy and paste.

Write to a few people directly

Pick people who would genuinely use what you made. Read their website first, say one specific thing about their business, and make one ask.

IndieBob reads each prospect's site and writes the opening for that person. You approve every first email; follow-ups then go out on their own, never at weekends. Reading the prospect's site and writing the email run on our own solar-powered, battery-backed AI farm. It does not detect replies yet, so when someone answers, take them out of the sequence yourself.

Each week, let the numbers pick the next move

Once a week, look at what changed and pick one thing to do about it: the source that dried up, the post that drew readers, the setup step still missing.

IndieBob's Do Next list shows these as cards. Each one says what prompted it and has one button that goes to where the work is.

What it costs, and what it does not do

IndieBob is free for one project, with 20 outreach emails a month. Plus is €9 a month or €49 for six months, with 200 outreach emails, as many projects as you need, and the attribution and revenue dashboards.

What it does not do: sign-in is Google only; posts and first emails wait for your approval; it does not detect replies; and your posts live on your own site, not on indiebob.com. indiebob.com