Get featured as a solo dev: 9 features in 28 days, 2 moved a number

Description and use

How to generate measurable traffic from media features: 9 features in 28 days, only one drove 99 visitors because it included a quoteable number and linked to the author’s own domain.

Problem

How to generate measurable traffic and engagement from media features as a solo developer.

Outcome

Out of 9 features, only the one that included a quoteable number and linked to the author’s own page drove measurable traffic (99 visitors). Two features moved a measurable number (one increased visitors from 7 to 230, another added 1 star).

Workflow

• 1. Publish a data‑driven article with a clear, quoteable number.
• 2. Submit a PR to a relevant community (e.g., This Week in Rust) adding the article link.
• 3. Ensure the link points to a page the author owns (own domain).
• 4. Track traffic via analytics (Vercel Web Analytics, GitHub API).
• 5. Compare traffic before and after feature.
• 6. Repeat for other outlets, noting that unpitched or automatic features rarely move traffic.

Evidence

On Oct 17 at 7:22 AM ET we published a study of our own crates.io downloads. The finding fit in one line: 80.1% of 3,676 downloads across our 69 crates arrived on a release day or the day after.

Source

Four minutes later, at 7:26 AM, we opened a pull request adding one line to the next This Week in Rust draft.

Source

The page had 7 visitors in its first 4 days. Then 13 on Oct 21, 80 on Oct 22 and 137 on Oct 23 by 5:25 PM ET.

Source

The dev.to copy has 22 views. That is exactly the median of our 39 dev.to posts.

Source