Marketing for Developers: Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:01] help those of you who want to create your own projects and earn money from them. So recently I made a survey on Twitter and LinkedIn about what do people do in their spare time or maybe as a full-time income and as I expected

[00:16] a lot of developers in the age of AI are creating projects and quite a significant group, 25 and 23% respectively, have zero revenue with their products because well, building is easier with AI now, but marketing and

[00:31] sales are still the bottleneck. Arguably even bigger one because the amount of competition grows higher. So, this is kind of summed up in one post, kind of funny. Everyone wants to be a business guy, a founder until it's time to do

[00:47] marketing, not just LinkedIn. And also, internet is full of kind of almost memes about marketing for developers because developers are good at building, releasing, launching, but then it goes to zero revenue because well, marketing.

[01:02] So, this post on Reddit went viral with the main idea that distribution is the job, not the product only. So, in this video I will publish two videos from my newest course on Laravel Daily called Marketing for Developers, where I share

[01:16] my own experience from 10 years of my own products and my clients' projects. So, here on YouTube you will see two videos out of that course, which is about building a personal brand, which is I think a foundation for long-term

[01:29] strategy if you want to get money from your products. And also, I will publish another one, what content to post. So, how to get ideas about your product to publish on social media or YouTube. The link to the full course, which is seven

[01:43] description below. As usual, I'm sticking to my new tradition of courses, max to 1 hour, just the actual value that you need to know without any fluff. And here on YouTube, let's take a look at personal branding and what content to

[01:57] post. My first piece of advice is to build your personal brand for long-term. Doesn't matter what kind of product or service you may release in the future or soon. So, you probably know this guy. Let's take a look at an example. Nuno

[02:11] Maduro, he's been doing hyped video in very energetic style for many years on YouTube, on Twitter, and that's why he's successfully having sponsors now and releasing a lot of packages and tools. So, the result of that, whatever he

[02:26] releases, the new package like Pest, Pynt, Pale, whatever comes with letter P in the beginning, people usually trust him to deliver something good. Of the first place, but Nuno's personal brand on top gives the trust. So, I

[02:43] think if Nuno launches some kind of SaaS tomorrow, a lot of people would buy just because of Nuno's brand. Another example, do you know this guy? Aaron Francis. He's also been in the Laravel community since like forever. He's MC of

[02:59] Laracons, and now he released quite a few products, Faster Dev courses. Before he had Database School and other courses. Now, he's working on Solo, which is a tool for AI agents. But, you see this number? 60,000 followers joined

[03:15] see this number? 60,000 followers joined in February 2009 and 61,000 posts. Let's compare out of curiosity with Nuno. 37K posts. Also, similar amount of followers posts. Also, similar amount of followers and joined in 2013. So, another example,

[03:30] whatever Aaron releases like tomorrow, some people will buy just because of him. So, if a similar tool like Solo or other would be released by someone else, unknown person in the community, they will get like five likes and maybe a few

[03:45] clicks. But, if Aaron releases something, then it's hype. Again, the product should be good, but personal brand on top is such a good sales machine without really doing much sales sometimes. And another example, you

[03:59] probably know this guy, right? Myself. So, I've been tweeting a lot and posting a lot and doing YouTube videos since also forever. And now it helps me to sell courses or filament examples or AI coding daily membership just because

[04:13] people trust me to deliver valuable stuff in the videos, which I do genuinely without even marketing or business strategy, but I've been doing that for so long that people trust my products. Of course, still the product

[04:27] valuable for that person. It's not just sponsorship of me doing stuff. But my personal brand on top is what keeps me still in the game even in the AI

[04:39] reality. A lot of people I know buy my courses and stay on my subscription just to support my work. Even if they don't need those courses right away right now. And also with personal brand, you never know when it will be valuable and in

[04:53] what case. So, another example, Wendell Adriel. He's been in the community of Laravel also for very long time. Not that long actually, 2022 on Twitter, but like a few years also matters because he has 4,000 followers already and 10,000

[05:08] posts. So, he's been blogging and releasing open source contributions for quite a while. And as a result of that, here's the tweet. He landed a job at

[05:20] Laravel. And I'm pretty sure when he sent his CV and was a candidate for the job, his open source contributions, his talks at meetups, his work online were huge huge factors to get hired. So, my overall message here is that you should

[05:36] be visible in whatever form you prefer with whatever message you have, with whatever message you have, something valuable for the community. Do that for long enough and then the community will pay you back in some form

[05:49] when you need help. Help for example with retweeting your stuff when you release something. It may come in various forms. And I know what you're thinking. It's hard work to post something for long time. But guess what?

[06:05] It is hard work. It's supposed to be hard work. That's why those outliers single people who are up to that, that's why their personal brand is even more valuable. Because people genuinely feel they are helpful in the community and

[06:21] that's why they want to pay those people back. Because of building personal brand was easy, everyone would do that. And yes, it will pay off later. But this is why I'm talking to you now about that because maybe you bought this course or

[06:36] you're watching this course because you want to sell the product now. But it's similar to growing a tree or something like that. Plant the seeds now. Start your journey of your personal brand now and in a year or two you will see first

[06:50] benefits. Then whatever marketing you need for that product at that time in a year or two may be much, much easier. And another example I want to show you as the final point. So recently I had a sponsored video on my YouTube channel

[07:04] sponsored by Night Owl which is a competitor or alternative to Laravel Night Watch. And I genuinely asked my audience, do you see the future of such alternative to Night Watch? And one of the comments was really profound. So

[07:18] this was the comment pessimistic about Night Owl future because they will always have to waste money on ads like my sponsorship or elsewhere because no one really knows Night Owl as a tool or its creators. Unlike native Laravel

[07:34] solutions like Night Watch. So even Laravel products were partially bought by people because they trust Taylor or they want to pay back Taylor. I've been for example using Envoyeur for deployment for many years and I've been

[07:48] paying for that for many years. Although technically I didn't really need that. I had only one project and if I wanted to I would move on elsewhere, but I just I would move on elsewhere, but I just wanted to support Laravel as a team even

[08:00] before it was a huge investment with a huge team. So hope these examples will convince you to start being visible online. Post on social media on whatever channel you want about something valuable for the community and do that

[08:15] for long enough that it will pay off in the future. Now after we had talk about where to post your content about your products, let's talk about what to post because this is the main problem it seems. So you land on Twitter or

[08:28] Facebook or whatever social media you want to post on, you land here and then you post what? You need ideas, right? This is the main problem that I see from product people. They are so focused on the product that when it comes down to

[08:42] content, they're kind of stuck. And for that, let's make an experiment. So let's take any random product from Product Hunt. I will do that in live mode so I haven't prepared. For example, Checklist Fox. This is a product number two today

[08:58] you're doing something like that for your product, Checklist Fox. And here while browsing your website or checking out your product, you need to think about the problems, the actual problems, the actual questions that your target

[09:13] audience may have that you would impress them with your product or before and after result or something like that. Preferably something visual to trigger their emotions. So from that while browsing, download as PDF. This is what

[09:27] catch my mind. I would immediately show the actual PDF being generated, something more pretty which they don't do that on their homepage which is pretty surprising to me, but maybe they do that on Product Hunt itself. Let's

[09:42] see. Do we have the PDF generated maybe on this screenshot? No, not really. They are just showing the process, but not the before and after. So, I think I'm on

[09:54] to something, but actually the video. Okay, so in 20-second video, they probably at some point show that PDF, but I would go for actual image. So, actually. They are showing the features, and this is the problem actually. So,

[10:09] Doist, and there are a gazillion of other apps, but I think their main target audience is a planner as a PDF potentially printable for someone to go outside and go shopping or go something

[10:23] with checklist. So, getting back to the empty text area on Twitter or on any social media platform, I would start something like this. For example, scenario, ever needed a checklist, but your battery is dead or you just want to

[10:36] save the battery on your phone, and it's generally not always convenient to use phone on the road for such things. Good old paper printable PDF in some cases is surprisingly efficient. And then I would move on with posting the real PDF, some

[10:50] example, and something like that that would solve the immediate problem that some people have during shopping, during some journeys, and stuff like that. So, this is my main idea what you should post about your product, any product.

[11:03] Try to come up with scenarios with ideas of problems of people, and then post about how your product solves that. Or even better, emphasize the end result of your product, the value, the outcome, and then your product is kind of along

[11:18] the way as a tool. But you need to understand that when people buy your product, they don't buy the product, they buy the outcome that your product gives. Like in my cases for courses, for example, I shouldn't advertise courses

[11:32] as much, I should advertise the end product that people would be able to native PHP or something like that. And if you still struggle to generate ideas for social posts, AI can help with that. Let's try it in action. So, I will ask

[11:46] ChatGPT, or you can use Claude, or you can use whatever AI like Gemini to generate something for me. So, this is my prompt. I need to build a marketing material for this website, Quick Post. Can you crawl the website and basically

[12:00] suggest ideas. Of course, this is just one prompt from my head. I will not even save that, but you get the idea how to prompt. I chose high level for the model of GPT, and let's see what it comes up with. You can see it is searching and

[12:15] thinking. So, searching on.com, it's crawling the website. We can probably enable somewhere here there should be enable the web search or something like that, but it wasn't needed for this case. So, okay. We have a table of idea,

[12:30] moving house specific scenario, piece of mind, planning for trips, wedding coordination, and grocery list. And these are ideas that you can start with. Of course, don't post exactly what it says, but you get the ideas

[12:46] and from here your head should start spinning with what to post, how to phrase that, what visuals to add, and stuff like that. And it's even providing the example. I wouldn't post exactly what AI says, as I mentioned, but just

[13:00] to get the ideas started, this is a great kind of thinking partner. In other words, just put the URL to your product to AI, and it will give you ideas for marketing. Another thing to talk about is the format. So, what to post? Text,

[13:14] images, or video, or something else. And from what I see in 2026, video is by far the best converting mechanism. Just because people see videos in action. So,

[13:26] this is random video from my Twitter. So, someone created something and immediately in 16 seconds you see product before and after in action. This is what we've been talking about, the impression on the audience. So, they

[13:39] would immediately get the problem, the before and after, and be impressed. So, this got 538k impressions and a lot of likes. And if we scroll down a bit more, so this image for example, this is so cringe. This

[13:54] like screens AI and this is even a paid ad. So, this I don't approve. But for example, another video of Fable 5 something something, which actually is a product demo of probably Miles himself. I'm not even sure, but it's a demo, it's

[14:10] a video, it's it's moving. So, you see what's inside without even clicking from the platform. And again, a lot of likes and views and engagement. So, if you need to choose between formats, prefer video whenever possible. And I'm not

[14:25] talking about talking head video like I'm talking now. It could be a demo video partially AI generated. I will not trust AI with fully generated videos at the moment, but just make a screencast without any sound or with background

[14:40] music just filming your product in action, something like that. Then put some text additionally what's the video about and then post on social media. So, the thing is that you have to be native to the platform. I'm showing Twitter a

[14:53] lot in this course as an example, but the same would work on LinkedIn and Facebook and others. They all want you to stay on the platform and want the audience to stay on the platform. So, any external links to the video on

[15:06] YouTube, to your blog post, on your website would get fewer views by definition, partially because the platforms are demoting those links if

[15:18] elsewhere because they want people to stay on the platform, but actually thinking from the other side, this is a consequence of people behavior. So, people are in the mode of scrolling Twitter, for example, or YouTube, or

[15:32] TikTok, or whatever. They are in the mode of staying on the platform. They scrolling past Twitter like this, and you need to hook them with first sentence usually and some visual, either image or video. But as I mentioned

[15:47] image like fully because it's screaming AI and it's totally not converting. That should be natural. So, they get hooked with the idea, they see your visual, and then if they're interested in both, in

[16:01] the idea, in the problem, then they may click the link. So, I see a lot of product owners complaining that Twitter and other social media algorithms went bad because now it doesn't convert. So, the links posted on Twitter don't really

[16:15] get any conversions that much, but it's not the algorithm. Algorithm is actually in favor of serving what's best for viewers. And best for viewers is staying on the platform. So, you need to get viewers' attention on social media

[16:30] platform first, and then if you do that, they may click to your website or other they may click to your website or other content. And that's why blogging and SEO in this era doesn't work as much because even on Google you have like AI

[16:44] overviews and stuff like that. So, from any platform where people are searching, they have lower chance to click somewhere to your website. So, yeah, these were two free videos from my course about marketing for developers.

[16:58] will be in the description below. And also, if you don't have time to do marketing, if you feel that it's not in your DNA, you prefer to stay builder, I can probably help you personally with your marketing. So, I started doing

[17:13] something new for myself. On my Laravel Daily and on YouTube channel, you've seen sponsorships, but also in addition to sponsorships, so there's advertising page on Laravel Daily. I can shoot a video for your product and publish on my

[17:26] channel, but not necessarily, or generally we can brainstorm ideas. So, after a few conversations with founders, I feel like I can be valuable as a marketing consultant, so to speak, or marketing partner. So, just email me

[17:41] [email protected] and let's chat. Let's hop on call or whatever communication platform and let's discuss, because I see a huge problem now for developers who just don't really want to do marketing, but

[17:55] without marketing, there usually will be no sales. So, I genuinely want to help, and that also may be a new income channel for me, which would allow me to spend more time on free videos on YouTube. So, I hope it's a win-win.

[18:09] That's it for this time, and see you guys in other videos.