So, you’ve written an IE or Firefox extension. Now, you need to tell people about it! In this new series, I’ll be covering what I’ve learnt going through that process.
External blogs. A lot of my users have come from four main-stream blogs who I contacted directly about PeteSearch; John Batelle’s SearchBlog, Gary Price’s ResourceShelf, WebWorkerDaily and Hackszine, but I’ve also had some good traffic from blogs who discovered it themselves, like Pete Prestino’s, BrainsFeed and NetWizz.
I would recommend finding authors who’ve written about the problem you’re trying to solve, and emailing them, or leaving a comment on a relevant article. Invest some time on their site, try to contribute to their community, and get a feel for the readership’s needs. Be very respectful of their time, they are all dealing with a lot of unsolicited emails, so be clear and concise on what your extension offers. That way they can quickly decide if it’s something their readers may be interested in.
Don’t be offended if you don’t hear back, expect the majority of your attempts to reach out to have no response. If they do reply, or post on their site, make sure that you thank them with an email!
Treasure any feedback you get, especially the negative. Remember, almost all people will silently stop using your addon if there’s a problem with it, so someone who tells you why it sucks is doing you a big favor!