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

#61

Post by paulcole »

matt_the_bass wrote: post #30
docker_up wrote: post #23

Let's be honest with ourselves. 0 users after 4 months is a failure. Can you turn it around? Sure, it's definitely a possibility. But all your effort so far is not the way to do it. You need to do things completely differently, because whatever tactics you have used so far haven't even gotten you a single user. You would have to invest more money and time into it, and it might get more users. You need help, and brand…

I don’t think generally calling it “failure” is fair. I think you could call it “marketing failure”.

It was on the frontpage of Hacker News. That's not a marketing failure.

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

#62

Post by stevew20 »

murukesh_s wrote: post #10
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.

This is an aweful idea and you should be ashamed for posting it.

If OP had gone this route with his product, I wouldn't have even scrolled, just hit the back button immediately.

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

#63

Post by not_real_acct »

docker_up wrote: post #40
matt_the_bass wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think generally calling it “failure” is fair. I think you could call it “marketing failure”.

At what point does it become a failure, if 0 users after 4 months of effort is NOT a failure? Coddling people, especially in business, is very counterproductive. People could waste years of their lives following bad paths because of bad advice like yours. Not a single person has decided that the product is worth paying money for. If the purpose of the effort was to get some people to pay money for this, and the outco…

I couldn't agree more. I have a friend who's pushing fifty years old and he's been trying to make money with the same product for nearly thirty years now. I see his friends on Facebook constantly encouraging him, and telling him that he does great work.

He doesn't.

His product is atrocious.

They're just being nice and he should've thrown in the towel twenty-nine years ago. His income is literally less than $100 a year. (I believe he's on SSI disability now, which is how he gets by.)

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

#64

Post by not_real_acct »

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,…

Agreed, these prices are ridiculously low.

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

#66

Post by yazr »

ezekg wrote: post #58
docker_up wrote: post #23

Let's be honest with ourselves. 0 users after 4 months is a failure. Can you turn it around? Sure, it's definitely a possibility. But all your effort so far is not the way to do it. You need to do things completely differently, because whatever tactics you have used so far haven't even gotten you a single user. You would have to invest more money and time into it, and it might get more users. You need help, and brand…

I went nearly a year without a paying customer, even though I had an email list of over 300 people and a beta user pool of ~400 people, got on the front page of HN twice, and was #3 product of the day on PH. Still, nobody stuck around, much less offered me feedback. It was tough, and I considered giving up many times. But to call it a failure because of that would've been premature. If your product isn't selling, may…

I keep wondering about adwords buying for a small SAAS.

At $1/click, and then maybe 1%-5% conversion for a paying user, and even if this is a generous 100$ annual subscription .. its just terrible.

Does this really work long term ?

(disclosure : i worked in a big B2C that spent 8 digit sums on incoming traffic so obviously it works..)

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

#67

Post by matt_the_bass »

paulcole wrote: post #61
matt_the_bass wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think generally calling it “failure” is fair. I think you could call it “marketing failure”.

It was on the frontpage of Hacker News. That's not a marketing failure.

With all due respect only making 1 post on HN is not in my opinion effective marketing.

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

#68

Post by paulcole »

matt_the_bass wrote: post #67
paulcole wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was on the frontpage of Hacker News. That's not a marketing failure.

With all due respect only making 1 post on HN is not in my opinion effective marketing.

He paid no money and got a few dozen signups in just a few hours. If that's a failed campaign then I wish I can fail like that.

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

#69

Post by ParanoidShroom »

Relink it again man, I for example just missed it and never seen your project.

I looked it up, and it seems pretty cool and well made. Kudos on keeping releasing new products.

Maybe people want a slightly different version of the product ?

I for example just never use such things in my professional/personal life. Maybe your target crowd isn't on HN ? Maybe submit towards a more subject related news site ?

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

#70

Post by mindcrime »

paulcole wrote: post #61
matt_the_bass wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think generally calling it “failure” is fair. I think you could call it “marketing failure”.

It was on the frontpage of Hacker News. That's not a marketing failure.

There's a lot more to marketing than getting on the front page of HN.

OP, I suggest you read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg, and The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, and consider if you've successfully identified who your customers are, and a valid channel for reaching them. Further ask if you've correctly identified a problem that those customers will pay to have solved, and whether or not your product actually solves that problem. How do you do that? Talk to customers. All of this stuff is in the Steve Blank book.

Also consider reading The Mom Test[1] by Rob Fitzpatrick.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+mom+test&inde...

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