Company Development with Open Source
One of the biggest obstacles to the growth of small outsourcing companies is finding customers. Each company solves this problem in its own way. Someone enough to work with existing customers and not think about the problems of growth. Someone is storming Upwork with countless applications trying to find a standing customer with an interesting product. Someone opens a sales department, whose employees write hundreds of letters every day, make dozens of cold calls, which, as you know, are not always converted into a signed contract.
There is another way, difficult, risky, but really interesting and inspiring.
Throughout my career, I worked in small companies and saw them grow and build sales. I witnessed their successes and failures. I had enough time to analyze the reasons that led to both positive and negative results.
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In one of the companies I worked for, there was a long period of stagnation. We had a lot of “free hands” (people not engaged in external projects), we stormed UpWork, but things went too slowly. We decided to start developing a template (admin panel ) for themeforest , the development went on for a long time, we made countless versions. None of the versions passed themeforest (and even wrapbootstrap ).
We did not despair and went the other way: we made our project completely free, the source code was uploaded to GitHub. From this moment on, more than a year has passed, the project scored more than 7,000 stars on GitHub, this project was followed by a series of equally successful open source products, and most importantly, the company's stagnation turned into rapid growth. We stopped looking for clients, they started coming to us themselves.
At the end of last year, I left this company, and a month ago I founded my own, where I am ready to apply the tactics developed by me to promote opensource projects and share them with you.
So the first thing to do is decide what the product you are developing will be. There are three obvious, but really important factors that can lead to your product success. If your project meets at least one of the listed requirements, then it has a chance:
You have a great product, but people should notice it. What to do? First you need to write a memorable Readme.
Readme is the first thing that people see on the page of your repository. Some of them will never even launch it, but if they like the Readme, they can click on the treasured asterisk, which is really important for promoting your product. Readme should be useful and colorful. Be sure to provide juicy graphic materials describing your product. Also do not forget to write instructions for launch and use. A qualitative description increases the chances of success, see how we and other people do it.
Now you have a great product with an amazing Readme. The most crucial part begins.
GitHub has a trending page that thousands of people view daily. Once there, your project (if it is good) has every chance of becoming truly popular. Page trending has many subcategories, but the main effect is the biggest effect. To get there, you need to score at least (numbers change from day to day) 130 stars, and preferably even more, to climb as high as possible and be visible as long as possible.
First you need to get there, what can help you:
- Think about the resources that you are going to use when promoting. Usually, it helps reddit, hackernews and others, but you need to go there wisely and each resource has its own specific publishing rules.
- Ask your friends for help. The more developer friends put you a coveted "asterisk", the shorter your journey to trending.
- Choose a day. Note that GitHub attendance falls on weekends. The choice of the day of the launch of the project is also influenced by the resources that you use during the promotion.
- Choose a time. You have a day — your friends live in one time zone, and Reddit users (or another resource) in a completely different one. You must take this into account.
- Answer the questions. The better you communicate with the audience of the resources you use for promotion, the greater will be the return on them.
Having a popular opensource-project you are capable of much. Do not stop! Try to go to the producthunt to reduce the distance from the product to the customer. Grow community and word of mouth will definitely work. Use your product as a portfolio - you do not associate stupid NDA.
I sincerely hope that my advice will help you and in a while I will definitely tell you if our own opensource-product helped my company.
There is another way, difficult, risky, but really interesting and inspiring.
Prehistory
Throughout my career, I worked in small companies and saw them grow and build sales. I witnessed their successes and failures. I had enough time to analyze the reasons that led to both positive and negative results.
')
In one of the companies I worked for, there was a long period of stagnation. We had a lot of “free hands” (people not engaged in external projects), we stormed UpWork, but things went too slowly. We decided to start developing a template (admin panel ) for themeforest , the development went on for a long time, we made countless versions. None of the versions passed themeforest (and even wrapbootstrap ).
We did not despair and went the other way: we made our project completely free, the source code was uploaded to GitHub. From this moment on, more than a year has passed, the project scored more than 7,000 stars on GitHub, this project was followed by a series of equally successful open source products, and most importantly, the company's stagnation turned into rapid growth. We stopped looking for clients, they started coming to us themselves.
At the end of last year, I left this company, and a month ago I founded my own, where I am ready to apply the tactics developed by me to promote opensource projects and share them with you.
Tactics of product promotion on GitHub
So the first thing to do is decide what the product you are developing will be. There are three obvious, but really important factors that can lead to your product success. If your project meets at least one of the listed requirements, then it has a chance:
- Utility. People love products that solve their problems and make life easier.
- Matching trends. Sometimes popular words solve everything. Not even the most useful product can become quite popular if it uses approaches / technologies that today are the hottest topics for conversation.
- Design. Some projects do the same thing as hundreds of others, but “they shoot because they are really beautiful.
You have a great product, but people should notice it. What to do? First you need to write a memorable Readme.
Readme is the first thing that people see on the page of your repository. Some of them will never even launch it, but if they like the Readme, they can click on the treasured asterisk, which is really important for promoting your product. Readme should be useful and colorful. Be sure to provide juicy graphic materials describing your product. Also do not forget to write instructions for launch and use. A qualitative description increases the chances of success, see how we and other people do it.
Now you have a great product with an amazing Readme. The most crucial part begins.
GitHub has a trending page that thousands of people view daily. Once there, your project (if it is good) has every chance of becoming truly popular. Page trending has many subcategories, but the main effect is the biggest effect. To get there, you need to score at least (numbers change from day to day) 130 stars, and preferably even more, to climb as high as possible and be visible as long as possible.
First you need to get there, what can help you:
- Think about the resources that you are going to use when promoting. Usually, it helps reddit, hackernews and others, but you need to go there wisely and each resource has its own specific publishing rules.
- Ask your friends for help. The more developer friends put you a coveted "asterisk", the shorter your journey to trending.
- Choose a day. Note that GitHub attendance falls on weekends. The choice of the day of the launch of the project is also influenced by the resources that you use during the promotion.
- Choose a time. You have a day — your friends live in one time zone, and Reddit users (or another resource) in a completely different one. You must take this into account.
- Answer the questions. The better you communicate with the audience of the resources you use for promotion, the greater will be the return on them.
What's next?
Having a popular opensource-project you are capable of much. Do not stop! Try to go to the producthunt to reduce the distance from the product to the customer. Grow community and word of mouth will definitely work. Use your product as a portfolio - you do not associate stupid NDA.
I sincerely hope that my advice will help you and in a while I will definitely tell you if our own opensource-product helped my company.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/334550/
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