6 Strategies That Got My Side Project Its First 1,000 Users

My co-founder Wilson and I launched our side product Confetti on January 1, 2020.

Before doing so, we had a list of everything to do before and after our launch to ensure our product had a growing audience.

We filled a Notion doc with dozens of marketing-related ideas that we could achieve for free.

Our ideas had to cost $0 because we are a bootstrapped company, and our product only costs $2.50/mo, so it wouldn’t be likely to have a good ROI if we used Facebook ads.

1. Telling our story

My co-founder and I met each other in a pretty interesting and serendipitous way.

He read my article, My 8 Side Projects That Never Saw The Light of Day, that I posted in r/sideproject, and reached out a week later with a React app that he built based on my mockups. I liked his prototype so much that we continued to work together and launch the product.

Our encounter turned partnership was intriguing enough to be a compelling story. By writing articles on Medium about our journey, I can share what I’ve learned and hopefully inspire people to create their own products.