I’ve been working on my open-source backend server for about a week now, and it already has about 12 stars, 9 forks, and nearly 10 outside contributors. That might not sound like a lot, but the project is only a week old and it isn’t a package or anything that can be used by outside people.

So, how did I do it?

The most important thing has been issues. When GitHub was developing issues, they secretly made the most overpowered label that there is, “good first issue”. I can guarantee that if you create a new issue every two hours on your repository that has “good first issue” on it, you will get outside collaborators.

Don’t forget to Star the Backend Server

What else can help with your labels? If you use emojis in the title, anyone that sees your issue will be instantly drawn to it because it is more colorful. This will increase the amount of views on your issue, and increase the likelihood of someone to help you with it as well.

Finally, if you create a todo list in every issue, this tricks the GitHub system into thinking it’s a bigger issue, and it also tricks the websites, like ‘goodfirstissues.com’ into moving it higher in the rankings.

There will be more tips like this coming tomorrow and the day after, so if you liked hearing this, make sure to follow me, so you can see more tips as they come out.