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Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

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Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#1

Post by frits1993 »

Four months ago, one of my projects was ready to be posted on "Show HN", and so I did. After a couple of hours it reached the frontpage and traffic was through the roof. A handful dozen of trial users signed up, and with feedback of the community, I thought that if I were to spend a bit more time on it, this would be the side project I could continue working on and make some side-money with.

Long story short, four months later, I am the only user of my service. I hired a brand strategist who looked at the market, with who I forged a marketing plan, and with who I set goals. Needless to say, none of them were met.

What does/can this mean? Should I accept that what I built will only be used by myself, or is this a phase each product/service goes through? If only there were one extra paid user, I would have enough motivation to continue, but with zero conversion the motivation starts to fade.

I think it is irrelevant to re-post a link to the project, but feel free to ask/look it up if you think it's relevant.

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#2

Post by fernicolo100 »

Hey,

I have been working on y own startups since 2013. My first startup failed. The second one, it was really hard to find how to get users, but after a few months discover a hack which drove a lot of traffic. 2 years later, I sold it.

Now I am working on a crypto company which we started with a game for the World Cup which was pretty good in terms of users. But now, launched NFL and we are fighting again.

It is not easy at all build stuff and then get users. It takes time and work to find the best alternatives to get them. Actually, Show HN, I was never able to get a lot of upvotes. So congrats on that and keep the hard work!

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#4

Post by tixocloud »

Hi,

I'm in a similar situation myself and in the process of figuring out why. I would recommend reading the book "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg.

I think it is relevant for you to share your project - there could be many different factors why traffic isn't converting. Trial users from a Show HN are great but I've multiple websites that had traffic but 0 converted. This tells me that the traffic audience may not be my target customers.

I'm doing things that don't scale now .. so actually going out to acquire users manually. What I've found is that the value proposition might actually be a better fit for folks outside of the HN community.

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#5

Post by tixocloud »

fernicolo100 wrote: post #2

Hey, I have been working on y own startups since 2013. My first startup failed. The second one, it was really hard to find how to get users, but after a few months discover a hack which drove a lot of traffic. 2 years later, I sold it. Now I am working on a crypto company which we started with a game for the World Cup which was pretty good in terms of users. But now, launched NFL and we are fighting again. It is not…

Care to share what the hack might be? Whether it's cosmetic, feature, etc.

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#6

Post by frits1993 »

tinchox6 wrote: post #3

Hi, I think you product has not failed just because isn’t on the spot right now. Maybe you have to try hard to make your product be known. Maybe trying in other sites like product hunt or indie hackers.

Posted on all of the better known and even the less known platforms. Some of them did indeed drive some traffic, but somehow none of them even lead to trial users.

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#7

Post by frits1993 »

fernicolo100 wrote: post #2

Hey, I have been working on y own startups since 2013. My first startup failed. The second one, it was really hard to find how to get users, but after a few months discover a hack which drove a lot of traffic. 2 years later, I sold it. Now I am working on a crypto company which we started with a game for the World Cup which was pretty good in terms of users. But now, launched NFL and we are fighting again. It is not…

You got me interested in the hack as well. Obviously, it will most likely not be a hack we can all copy, but I'm curious to what methods got you to finding out about it.

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#8

Post by frits1993 »

tixocloud wrote: post #4

Hi, I'm in a similar situation myself and in the process of figuring out why. I would recommend reading the book "Traction" by Gabriel Weinberg. I think it is relevant for you to share your project - there could be many different factors why traffic isn't converting. Trial users from a Show HN are great but I've multiple websites that had traffic but 0 converted. This tells me that the traffic audience may not be my…

I definitely think that you're right about that, that the HN community is not the target audience but more of a board of critics taking a look. That's why after launch, I spent time (and money) into finding out what the target audience actually was and where to find them. I thought the brand strategist had a pretty good idea of the market, but no target users found so far.

What exactly do you mean with "going out to acquire users manually"?

Project: https://qeys.io

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#9

Post by murukesh_s »

Since your domain is very niche, you have to do marketing as well as targeted sales. Have you reached out to potential customers and asking them to use your service?

Also please consider making this a B2B enterprise product. To do that the main thing you need to do is hide the price or put insanely high prices. like $999 per year per license and above. If you are hiding prices, put a button to contact the sales team, which could be your phone number to start with.

Also put some white papers and add a lengthy demo with your own voice with an actual project, like Wordpress being protected and ask them to contact your sales if they need to enable the protection in their software as well. The demo could be put behind a sales form to collect contact details.

And hide your technology details. They don't need to know how you do it. Just give instructions on how to put enable your validation. Since you don't have a free tier it's very easy for you to validate your project's success. Just reach out to X potential customers (it's very easy for you to figure out potential customers too) and ask them to try your product. Give a 6 months money back. I

p.s. A great sales article I found on HN this week: https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/ama-steli-efti

Re: Ask HN: 4 months after posting my project on HN, it has 0 users. Has it failed?

#10

Post by murukesh_s »

murukesh_s wrote: post #9

Since your domain is very niche, you have to do marketing as well as targeted sales. Have you reached out to potential customers and asking them to use your service? Also please consider making this a B2B enterprise product. To do that the main thing you need to do is hide the price or put insanely high prices. like $999 per year per license and above. If you are hiding prices, put a button to contact the sales team,…

Overall the idea looks good, but the product looks too cheap, javascript validation? oh perhaps I could do it on my own.

Just hide the details and put some jargons (AI/ML to detect behaviour etc :) and give an enterprise look and feel.

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