For years I tried, in the wrong way, to drive traffic to my small tools — and failed repeatedly. The mistake was putting myself first: I would show up on platforms already firing off links to my site, without first participating, contributing, or building a solid presence within those communities. And believe me: this is not hard at all. You just need patience and a willingness to study what kinds of posts perform best on each site. The second important thing: don’t share your links on serious sites if your content still doesn’t appeal to anyone besides yourself. Seek opinions from people outside your circle — or write about what a lot of people are already wanting to read within your niche. Google Trends is a great tool for that. Also put effort into your profile. A well-written, attractive bio with your site link makes a real difference — and it even helps you get found by search engines. Finally, comment and vote on other users’ posts. Look for people publishing about topics that interest you and where you have some knowledge, and join those conversations. Even short comments are worth it. It was by making these corrections that I started seeing real growth in traffic to my tools. Give it a try and see if you get good results too. Below, I list the sites I’ve been using that have given me the best returns — organized from the ones that drive the most traffic to the least, in my experience. 1. [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com) 2. [X](https://x.com) 3. [Blue sky](https://bsky.app/) 4. [Linkedin](https://linkedin.com) 5. [Threads](https://www.threads.com/) 6. [Facebook](https://facebook.com) 7. [Gab](https://gab.com) 8. [Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/home) 9. [Pinterest](https://pinterest.com) Come tell us if you use this method and get results — we’d love to hear about it!