Key Lessons Featured

šŸ”¦ 4 Examples of Side Project Led Growth

Ayush Chaturvedi

• 4 min read
šŸ”¦ 4 Examples of Side Project Led Growth

Side Project Led growth is a developerā€™s way of doing marketing!

Jokes aside, side projects are a solid growth strategies deployed by small indie hackers to large companies.

The idea is to build small, free and useful products that solve a specific problem in your userā€™s journey.

There are 3 main benefits of such side projects -

  • Free products get a lot of love, support and back links!
  • They give you a great opportunity to spread word about your main product and build a solid brand.
  • They are a good ā€œlead magnetā€ to attract potential customers into your funnel.

In many cases, giving away free side projects can be better than having a free plan.

Letā€™s look at 4 companies that have used this strategy well with examples of their side projects -

1. Tweet Hunter

The Tweet Hunter team is a master at launching side projects.

Their main product is a Tweet scheduling software which charge a premium for. But to promote it they launch small free products almost every month.

They build and launch side projects on Product Hunt and Twitter and get plenty of love and support from their audience.

Some of their most successful side projects include:

Read the full Tweet Hunter story -

šŸ¹ How Tweet Hunter Became a Million Dollar Juggernaut
ā€œThe Future belongs to Creatorsā€ Thatā€™s the quote on Tiboā€™s Twitter banner. Tibo and his friend Tom are founders of TweetHunter - A Twitter audience growth tool. Back in May 2021, they were just getting started, looking for their first users. They were analyzing and indexing viral tweets
Listen Up IHAyush Chaturvedi

2. Veed

Veed is a web based video editing platform. Their ideal customers are YouTubers and content creators who want to create, edit and publish high quality videos fas

There 40+ free tools listed on Veedā€™s website.

All of them boosting their SEO and bringing new users into their funnel every day.

Some of their most successful side projects include:

Read their full story -

Rock Bottom To Rocket ShipšŸš€ | How Veed Grew To $5M+ ARR
Listen Up! IH ā€“ Episode 24 ā€œKeep pushing, and make something people search forā€Thatā€™s Sabba Keynejadā€™s message to Indie Hackers. Sabba [https://twitter.com/sab8a] is the Co-founder of Veed.io [http://veed.io/] ā€“ a browser-based video editing tool. Sabba and his co-founder Tim grew the company fā€¦
Listen Up IHAyush Chaturvedi

3. Bannerbear

Bannerbear is a an automatic image generation API and NoCode tool.

Marketing teams use it to generate social media images for their ads, e-commerce stores and social media posts.

They donā€™t have a free plan, but recently started building side projects for SEO growth.

Automated image generation tools -

Recent tweet from Bannerbear founder Jon Yongfook shows some great SEO benefits of these tools -

Read the full Bannerbear story -

Living The Indie Hacker Dream | Jon Yongfook
Listen Up! IH ā€“ Episode 19 ā€œIf you want to go from 0 to $10K MRR you should divide your time 50:50 betweencoding and marketingā€Thatā€™s Jon Yongfookā€™s advice for Indie Hackers. Jon [https://twitter.com/yongfook] is the founder of Bannerbear[https://www.bannerbear.com/]. Bannerbear
Listen Up IHAyush Chaturvedi

4. Founderā€™s Book

Founderā€™s Book is a platform of tools and resources for first-time founders and early stage startups.

Itā€™s mainly a content business and they have found great traction via newsletter partnerships and also worked with accelerators and incubators.

But their side projects have brought in plenty of high domain authority backlinks to their main site.

2 side projects that got great success on Product Hunt -

Read their full story -

šŸ“ˆ How Founderā€™s Book reached $34000 revenue in 7 months
ā€œGo from Idea to MVP, and beyond. Now!ā€ Thatā€™s the tagline of Founderā€™s Book - A platform of tools and resources for first-time founders and early stage startups. Goutham is the founder of Founderā€™s Book and is a first time founder himself. He recently crossed $34000 in
Listen Up IHAyush Chaturvedi

More Examples

This is such an effective strategy among indie hackers as well as large companies.

Some more examples in brief -

Llama Life

Main Product - Llama Life

Side Projects -

Transistor FM

Main Product - Transistor

Side Project -

SaaS Blocks

Main Product - SaaS Blocks

Side Project -

Calm

Main Product - Calm

Side Project -

Thank you for reading šŸ™

Hope this gives you some ideas for your own side projects.

If you know of more such examples, please share in the comments below.

Every week, I share the most actionable insights and inspiring tips from successful Indie Hackers FOR aspiring Indie Hackers

Ideas + Insights + Inspiration for building profitable internet businessesšŸ’Ŗ

Sign up to Listen Up! IH and join 2000+ spirited Indie Hackers who read this newsletter every week.

Sign me up!

Cheers,

Ayush