I made a free Pokémon card scanner Chrome extension that doesn't rely on paid scanner APIs. How people would go about promoting an extension like this, is there a feature-program or anything like that in the chrome store?
TL;DR: Most Pokémon/TCG communities ban self-promotion, so I genuinely don't know where products like this are supposed to get discovered. How would you go about promoting this?
I found myself- like many others- pausing videos, opening tabs, searching cards, checking different marketplaces, trying to figure out pricing for specific cards. So the problem I'm solving is definitely not a new problem, many are doing this kind of product.
BUT. They are paid or requires users to bring their own paid API key, focus on mobile camera scanning, or have workflows more aimed at inventory management and sellers.
So what I built is:
Hotkey → snip card → result.
To bypass the paid services I indexed 20,000+ Pokémon cards with metadata, hashes, embeddings and all that fun stuff so it can recognize cards almost instantly directly in the extension itself.
No paid scanner APIs or image uploads, no dedicated recognition backend.
I do have a roadmap for where this could go if people actually find it usefu, better free version and some potential premium features:
- pricing history
- more pricing sources
- collection-apps integrations
- support for scanning multiple cards
- improving recognition (right now it needs a square, if its at an angle or covered up it will most likely fail)
- indexing new sets
But before pouring way more time into it, I kinda need proof that this is something people would actually want. And this is where I'm asking for suggestions.
Most Pokémon/TCG communities on reddit/discord (understandably) ban self-promotion, so I genuinely don't know where products like this are supposed to get discovered.
If you built this, where would you try promoting it?
Any feedback on the product itself is also welcome.