Promote your product by helping others

Since I started being active in startup communities, I've seen many recommendations on how to promote a product with or without a budget. I don't want to talk about all of them today. Because I built free-to-use products, it's almost impossible relying on paid ads, although I experimented with them too. I needed to find other ways, budget-free. It doesn't matter if you build a free or paid product. It's always good finding a budget-free marketing channel for an indie hacker. Anyways, back to the topic. I started spending time in communities on Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, and Reddit. I was reading and participating in discussions. I replied to questions or comments every time I saw an opportunity to bring some information to the discussion. I didn't expect anything in return. I wanted to help. If I think it's valuable to post a link to my product (my product can help), I post it. But only if I truly believe it helps the other side. I find out it works, and it's free. Yes, you can say it takes time, and it's not scalable. You'll be right. On the other side, if you don't have a marketing budget but have time, it might work for you. P.S. I'm working on a new project built on this principle - promote your product/personal brand by helping others. I'm looking for the first few participants who would be willing to start it with me. You can benefit from being the first. If you want to know more, send me DM on Twitter.