My partners and I run a business advertising website in Brazil. Since we didn't have any funds to bootstrap PPC/FB Ads we decided to manually send messages to advertisers (and actually chat with them) running ads on other big websites. That provided us some initial traction without having to put down any money, and also precious feedbacks that guides us through design iterations until today.
Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
91–100 of 189 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#92Lots of people come up with a good idea for a product, launch, then wonder where to get users. "Start with the market, instead," evolves their consciousness. I offer a different approach: start with the customer acquisition strategy and then build your product. 1) Build a landing page describing the problem and your solution, in terms of emotional value benefits 2) Drive paid traffic to the landing page. Get at least…
I would have to strongly recommend against number eight. It's almost impossible to be done tactfully and it's even harder to avoid the appearance of using your friends. If I built something cool that I genuinely believed one of my friends would find useful then I would wait for them to seek me out with their problem and just give them perpetual free use with no strings attached and write it off as marketing.
It's worked for me, repeatedly, and it's also been a stepping stone towards a Friends and Family investment. YMMV.
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#93My company (http://www.gosmartride.com) allows seniors without smartphones to use Uber.
Two main ways of marketing:
ProductHunt, which gained exposure among tech savvy people. Some referred parents/grandparents to use.
I then went to senior centers with business cards and flyers. All managers there were excited about the idea and happy to let me post a few flyers and distribute business cards.
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#941. I scoured the reviews of similar apps and listed the main feature requests that were being stonewalled and implemented them. 2. I then set up keyword alerts for Reddit and Twitter and when somebody mentioned [similar app] I popped in and suggested they try Lanes which, btw, has feature [similar app] has not implemented . 3. I got lucky^. Photos of Lanes began appearing on Tumblr blogs (the #studyblr community) and…
How did you set up the reddit alerts?
Using https://mention.com.
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#95I posted on hacker news and made sure to get people signed up to a newsletter. Hacker News has been the launching point for a lot of my projects over the years.
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#96Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#97Lots of people come up with a good idea for a product, launch, then wonder where to get users. "Start with the market, instead," evolves their consciousness. I offer a different approach: start with the customer acquisition strategy and then build your product. 1) Build a landing page describing the problem and your solution, in terms of emotional value benefits 2) Drive paid traffic to the landing page. Get at least…
Nice summary, but be careful with FB ads. It can easily suck tons of money for literally nothing. Even if you pay per click, you get clicks from absolutely irrelevant people (bots?), with zero engagement.
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#98I’ll second the PG advice: do things that don’t scale is by far the most effective tool I’ve found for finding _and keeping_ users. I’m building small-business tools for fringe retail [0] as a side-project, and those users are usually more than willing to at least investigate new apps if they even have a chance of solving some real problem their business faces. Emailing them personally with a pitch based on a few min…
offering to build (tiny! like, 5-minute one-offs!) features _just for them_ sort of blows their minds
How did you manage to do that without making it impossible to add major new functionality to your app? Did you nail the basic functionality of the app from the starting gate and go straight into maintenance/feature-tweaking mode?
meticulous hand-holding through the first few weeks usually convinces them to stick around
This must have created some awfully high expectations from users, which is a double-edged sword. Were you able to keep up with expectations when you got enough users to sustain the business?
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#99Well for my community sites, they just tended to come in on their own through minimal promotion. I mean, one of my forums is literally about a topic that no one else online is running a website about. For the members there simply were no viable alternatives.
However, when I failed the issue was getting people to use the site, not to sign up. People will sign up for sites and services almost at a whim, but the percentage who will actually contribute is in the single digits. So I ended up with a 'service' that mostly people ended up reading rather than posting on.
Just getting 100 users? Some active social media accounts, posts on other forums and communities, some good content and just damn faking activity until real people join tends to work well enough there.
Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?
#100Lots of people come up with a good idea for a product, launch, then wonder where to get users. "Start with the market, instead," evolves their consciousness. I offer a different approach: start with the customer acquisition strategy and then build your product. 1) Build a landing page describing the problem and your solution, in terms of emotional value benefits 2) Drive paid traffic to the landing page. Get at least…
I would have to strongly recommend against number eight. It's almost impossible to be done tactfully and it's even harder to avoid the appearance of using your friends. If I built something cool that I genuinely believed one of my friends would find useful then I would wait for them to seek me out with their problem and just give them perpetual free use with no strings attached and write it off as marketing.
Must depend on your relationship culture. My friends and family would be insulted if I didn't try my product out on them first.