What kind of promotion methods do you use to promote your newly released web apps?
Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
1–10 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#2Hopefully you had a pre-launch page where you collected email addresses, then you can email these people upon launch.
Facebook or Google cpc ads.
Submit your site to business/product directories.
Post about your web app on relevant forums (ie. if it is an app to help accountants, find some accountant forums to post on).
Join linkedIn groups and post about your app in there.
Create a facebook page/twitter and post updates regularly. Include these on your webpage, in your email signature and try to get as many likes/followers as you can.
Cold call/Cold email anyone you can find that are potential customers.
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#3I think it's funny that this is so high on the front page, yet there are no comments yet. Seems everyone is hoping to find the magic bullet.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is a one-size-fits all solution. You might cover a college campus in stickers, pair up with a local organization to use you app at a function, visit businesses and pitch it, hound tech bloggers, etc.
Do you have a web app? If you do, this would have been a nice opportunity. Tell us what it is, and ask for advice on how you might promote this specific kind of web app.
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#4Without knowing what it is you do ...
A cost effective way of getting users (I'm guessing this is ultimately what you want) at the same time as getting decent feedback is to use a crowdsourcing solution to get educated / computer using people to review your site. Ask them to sign up and use the product and go through a number of steps. Pay a thousand people to do this. If you have a good product they will keep using it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#5Hopefully you had a pre-launch page where you collected email addresses, then you can email these people upon launch. Facebook or Google cpc ads. Submit your site to business/product directories. Post about your web app on relevant forums (ie. if it is an app to help accountants, find some accountant forums to post on). Join linkedIn groups and post about your app in there. Create a facebook page/twitter and post upd…
Hopefully you had a pre-launch page where you collected email addresses, then you can email these people upon launch.
Typically this is a pre-development page, whereby you're basically tricking people into thinking you already have something, just to gauge the viability of what you're thinking of building.
In other words, it's a sleazy practise.
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#6Hopefully you had a pre-launch page where you collected email addresses, then you can email these people upon launch. Facebook or Google cpc ads. Submit your site to business/product directories. Post about your web app on relevant forums (ie. if it is an app to help accountants, find some accountant forums to post on). Join linkedIn groups and post about your app in there. Create a facebook page/twitter and post upd…
Hopefully you had a pre-launch page where you collected email addresses, then you can email these people upon launch. Typically this is a pre- development page, whereby you're basically tricking people into thinking you already have something, just to gauge the viability of what you're thinking of building. In other words, it's a sleazy practise.
Disagree completely.
As long as you truthfully state what it is you are doing and what will happen when the user leaves their email - their is nothing sleazy about this.
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#7Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#8use all social media channels to market and make sure that you continue promotion/marketing after your web application has been released
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#9I think it comes down to persistence. The methods you use will vary over time and depending on your app, but the key is to keep trying things and learning from each one.
When I launched Hacker Newsletter (http://www.hackernewsletter.com) I was thinking I would get 1000+ sign-ups the first month. It was more like 100, but what I did do was keep publishing it each week and over time I kept trying things, making connections, and proving it was something serious. Now I'm approaching 6000 subscribers and growing each week.
Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?
#10Hopefully you had a pre-launch page where you collected email addresses, then you can email these people upon launch. Facebook or Google cpc ads. Submit your site to business/product directories. Post about your web app on relevant forums (ie. if it is an app to help accountants, find some accountant forums to post on). Join linkedIn groups and post about your app in there. Create a facebook page/twitter and post upd…
Hopefully you had a pre-launch page where you collected email addresses, then you can email these people upon launch. Typically this is a pre- development page, whereby you're basically tricking people into thinking you already have something, just to gauge the viability of what you're thinking of building. In other words, it's a sleazy practise.
It doesn't have to be pre-development. For my product, I created this page about 3 months after development began, and 3 months before public release. I used the signups to get beta testers before launch, and then announced to the rest after launch.
Anything can be a sleazy practice if people use it for sleazy purposes, but it's not the practice itself.