Hey you, talk about your side-projects!
Tags: career, sideprojects
Published: 2020-05-29 08:19:01

Around 3 years ago, I started using GitHub. Though I've been working on some super cool projects, for 2 years all of these projects went unnoticed. The highest stars on my GitHub repository were 9 (8 classmates + me).

Why? Apart from sharing it with a few other classmates, I never really talked about these projects anywhere.

In this article, I am going to talk about how you can share your project so that it will reach a larger audience. Before that, here are some stats to convince you how it has helped me✨

Last year in August, I joined DEV and shared my side-project "PWAinit" here, and guess what? I got 10+ stars in a week!! Since then, I started talking about every project I build through articles, tweets, videos and it gave a huge boost to my GitHub babies.

My recent project [text-to-handwriting](https://github.com/saurabhdaware/text-to-handwriting) got 100+ stars when I shared it on Twitter! After writing an article here, the number just kept growing and it has 600+ stars today 🥺🌻

![Graph of the GitHub stars to time that shows an exponential growth after writing an article on DEV.to and tweeting about it on Twitter](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/ad68sm2o0s7m7s3i9rgd.png)
*(The Graph is from https://github.com/timqian/star-history)*

The chances of your project being discovered from Google Search are very less unless the project is famous already. You have to talk about your project if you want people to use your project. 

Do you know what the coolest part is? Even if it doesn't work, you lose nothing! The best-case scenario is, people will start using your project and it will be everywhere on the internet, and The worst-case scenario is, not many people will use it but even in this case, your project will definitely be more popular than it was when you did not talk about it. win-win 🎉

Awesome! so let's see what all options we have, 

# Share it with Friends, Parents, or Anyone you know. 🤗

Talking about GitHub, to get stars on your repository, you need stars on your repository... People trust projects that are being used and already have at least some amount of stars. You can get these initial stars by sharing your project with classmates, friends, and parents.
<img alt="Cute tiny duck with a knife meme that says 'Hey fren, star my GitHub'" src="https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/m1fwfjios0ab3t99413g.png" width="300"/>

# Tweet it out 🐦

Twitter is a great platform to share your projects! There are a lot of people on Twitter who would love to see what you're working on and would appreciate it.

If you have a cool project, then even having a few hundred or fewer followers can do wonders✨. A few months back, one of my projects got 80 retweets and 300 likes, and back then I only had around 150 followers on Twitter! Thanks to all the amazing people on Twitter🥺🌻

# Write an Article 📖

DEV.to is super cool to quickly start writing. DEV.to helps your project reach the relevant people. You can use appropriate tags depending on the project (#python, #javascript, #machinelearning) and your project will reach the correct people. 

After writing an article on DEV.to, make sure you go to the "manage" option on the right side of "edit" and Suggest a Tweet. This will help the DEV team discover your article and they may later post it on the Official Twitter handle [@ThePracticalDev](http://twitter.com/thepracticaldev) and other social media accounts.

# Talk about your project in Meetups/Conferences 🎤

There are developer meetups that happen around the world where all the developers come together and talk about what they are working on and what they do. Some developers present what they've learned or built, in these meetups. You can apply to speak in one of these meetups and give a talk about your side project!

![Spiderman giving presentation meme that says 'Introducing Potato Maker v1.0.0-beta'](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/x6nmfh38mib8jq9ezour.png)

If you want to find a list of meetups that are happening in your city, you can check out [Meetup.com](https://meetup.com). 

Currently, due to pandemic, most of these meetups are happening online which is even better since you can talk at a meetup happening across the globe!

# Other ways to talk about your project

Apart from the ones mentioned above, other ways to share your projects would be,
- Creating 'How to' videos about your project on YouTube
- Reddit
- [ProductHunt](https://www.producthunt.com/)
- Sharing it on Facebook, LinkedIn.

If you know any other ways to share a project, let me know in the comments!


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Although it's not necessary to do everything mentioned in the article, definitely do the ones that you're fine doing. 

Thank you and if you have any questions, you can drop me a DM on [my Twitter @saurabhcodes](https://twitter.com/saurabhcodes) 🐨🎉

Stay safe! and let me know your thoughts in comments 🌻