Getting Traction for an Open Source Project
Kimmo Brunfeldt, December/2014
ProgressBar.js statistics
- 45 000 visitors
- 65 000 page views
- >3k stars in GitHub
Steps to a good project
- Solve an existing problem
- Gift wrap the solution
- Share it at the right time to the correct channels
- Maintain it
Solve an existing problem
Problems with current solutions
Lousy documentation?
Lack of examples?
No tests?
Gift wrap it
Gift wrapping takes time
(That's 20 working days)
Share it at the right time
to the correct channels
Get initial buzz
Traffic
Where to share
- Friends and colleagues
- Reddit (500k in /r/programming)
- Hacker News
- Popular news letter (JavaScript Weekly 77k)
- Popular blog authors (DailyJS, Tympanus 50k-100k)
Help people
- Answer to StackOverflow
- Comment on related blog posts
- Open issue to GitHub project
Maintain
Answer to issues and pull requests
Don't kill the project
Find new maintainers
When to release?
Share your projects!