My experience with dev.to's "free" listings as a means of product promotion
I'd like to share my recent experience with dev.to's "free" listings as a means to promote your product.
If you are a software maker/developer, you have most probably stumbled upon dev.to. That's the medium.com alternative targeted to developers. And it's been growing a lot for
Trending on Indie Hackers
40 open-source gems to replace your SaaS subscriptions 🔥 🚀
After 19,314 lines of code, i'm shutting down my project
Need feedback for my product.
We are live on Product Hunt
Don't be a Jerk. Use this Tip Calculator.
Thanks for this article! I wasn't aware you could advertise on Dev.to and with my service being 100% for developers (PDFShift.io, an API to convert HTML documents in PDF), I think it's worth the try! I'll do a follow up once I have some stats!
Looking forward to seeing the results 🚀
I've created my account there, but I can find the link to advertise, do you have it? Thanks :)
Nevermind, found it. But I have 0 credits ;)
ah, sorry. I hadn't realised that.
Write an article. It will give you lots of traffic. @aershov has gotten thousands of hits to fullstack.cafe through publishing on dev.to
Yeah, I was thinking on doing that. Curious to see the results :)
Just took a quick peek, turns out I've got 5 credits to spend, published a little ad for Doka.js. Curious to see how this goes. Will post results if they are any good.
For information, you start with 0 credits, and "Members receive 5 credits for every profile badge you earn.".
Thanks. I didn't know. Apparently, I had earned some badges along the time. Some badges should be relatively easy to earn.
Yes, certainly :)
Maybe other indie hackers could post and report back on metrics? That could be interesting.
We've posted stuff there before, had a quick look = 24 clicks.
I didn't really expect it to drive traffic, I personally find the layout hard to navigate/scan, plus it being new, despite how much traffic the whole website gets, I'm guessing the traffic to a new thing will be low, then competing with all the other ads just makes it even harder to get any kind of clicks.
Thanks for sharing the insights!
Hey Stan, thank you for sharing this I didn't know about this?!
It thinks if some of us do as Rosie said it would be beneficial for many of us to have an overview of the service.
I just listed mine, Colors & Fonts to see how it goes, I will keep you all posted for the results.
Have a good day !
Hi Stan,
Thanks for sharing.
I believe the problem is in the message itself.
How often does one need to find alternative for a software?
I would say quite rarely.
I'd try to change your message for something like that:
Thank you. Sounds reasonable. I will experiment with that next time. Unfortunately I can't edit it right now. But you definitely have a point.
This is pretty cool. Never knew this. I was active quite a lot on DEV before I found IndieHackers (more suited to what I wanted to browse and interact with). However, this is a gem
👍
Where are the other places you have been promoting? You seem to have a lot of traffic
I wouldn't say a lot as of now. But it's steadily growing. My targets for SaaSHub are ~ a few million visits a month.
The traffic is mostly organic. However, SaaSHub is also being promoted on www.libhunt.com (another project of mine)
That's a serious target, Stan!
by organic you mean SEO or?..
Yes. SEO. I've done my research, and it's totally feasible .
This is my first time looking at Dev.To but seems like a popular platform. Can you share more about the advertising tool they provide? I ask because you said that your post listing might not have been well targeted. What controls do they offer you?
If you want to share the copy here, I'm happy to offer feedback.
...not well targeted in regards to copy. There isn't any specific options to target users as with FB ads for example.
This is the post https://dev.to/listings/products/saashub-find-the-best-software-alternatives-and-tools-1f25. Thanks!
Ah, got it, thanks for clarifying. Here is the copy that I found on that page:
"SaaSHub is an independent software marketplace. It will help you find alternatives of the services and tools you already use as well as discover new ones.
Some interesting sections of SaaSHub are the Google Graveyard & Replace Facebook"
I think that this copy could use some improvement. Are you open to feedback and suggestions?
I am, however, I'm not allowed to edit the listing as 24h have passed since its submission.
Can you share your suggestions here so that everyone reading can benefit?
Sure, I would revise to say something like:
"Looking for alternatives to your current software ? SaaSHub hosts over 76k apps on an independent marketplace. Come discover Google Graveyard, Replace Facebook, and so much more!"
Worth noting this service was created not only for ads but for listing conferences/jobs/mentors/courses and everything related to programming (btw most of the listings costs 1 credit).
Maybe most of the people use it for checking these things, not the products since it's concentrated dev community, not makers. But it's just one opinion.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I think sharing your story ( Challenges you faced, mistakes you made and lessons you learned while building your product) will be much better than make ads on Dev.to because people love stories and this way you'll promote your products without being promotional
As a developer, I'm really blind to ads. I'm not a big fan of dev.to but I read some articles posted there and guess what. Until 5 minutes ago I had no idea there are some ads!
I put TrackMyLift on it earlier and have gained around 49 clicks. Gonna put Simple Board on aswell soon
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.