GitHub Graveyard
Why good projects die in obscurity and what's actually missing
I can find a hundred interesting projects on GitHub right now that will never get used. Good code. Clever solutions to real problems. All of them rotting with a README that says “Installation” and nothing else.
No screenshots. No origin story. No landing page. No way to pay.
What’s actually missing
The code works. That’s not the problem. The problem is surface area.
No “why you started”: Every project exists because someone hit a wall. That wall is the hook. But most READMEs skip straight to “npm install” as if the reader already knows they need this.
No visual proof: A screenshot takes five minutes. A 30-second demo video takes an afternoon. Both do more work than a thousand words of documentation. People don’t read feature lists. They skim images.
No payment avenue: You solved a problem worth solving. Someone would pay for the convenience of not solving it themselves. A “buy me a coffee” link. A paid tier with premium features. A consulting CTA. Anything. The absence of a payment path isn’t humility. It’s leaving value on the table.
The flywheel you’re not spinning
Good things spread, but only when there’s something to grab onto. Visibility creates traction. Traction creates more visibility. Skip the first step and the flywheel never turns.
- That first blog post explaining your approach brings the first users
- Those first users bring feedback that makes the project better
- The better project gets mentioned in someone else’s newsletter
- That mention brings users who write their own posts
You’re not trying to go viral. You’re trying to create enough surface area that the right people can find you.
The minimum viable marketing
This doesn’t require becoming a content machine. It requires:
- A landing page that isn’t just the GitHub README
- One blog post explaining why this exists
- One screenshot or GIF showing what it does
- One way for people to pay if they want to
That’s it. Four things. Most projects have zero of these.
Why developers skip this
Because it feels like marketing, and marketing feels gross. But there’s also timing.
WOW finally found the reason why our GitHub is a graveyard of personal projects we quit.
the emotional cycle of going from optimistic to hopeless happens on practically everything we do.
The emotional cycle explains the timing problem. By the time you’ve pushed through the valley to finish the code, you’re spent. Marketing feels impossible not just because it feels gross, but because you used all your energy surviving the build.
Explaining what you built and why isn’t manipulation. It’s communication. The same skills that make you good at writing documentation make you good at writing a landing page.
The project you’re proud of deserves to be found. Hiding it behind a bare README isn’t modesty. It’s abandonment.