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Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

#41

Post by _urga »

While you're developing your app, keep reading Hacker News for comments on posts related to what you're working on.

For each relevant comment, jot down the comment link, author name and email address (look at their HN profile or links therein) and write a personal response, then and there, referencing their comment (give the link), and why they may be interested in your app, be specific, and also point out where your app differs from what they were talking about (it probably will). Use "Re: Your HN comment" as the subject.

When you launch, you will have a whole lot of personal, relevant emails to send to people who have already expressed interest indirectly. Don't send them all at once. Send them one by one, day by day. You may learn something as you go that you will then be able to incorporate into subsequent emails.

Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

#42

Post by joeyj01 »

chunkyslink wrote: post #14
davedx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pay a thousand people to do this." Whaa....t? You'd need a lot of money!

Compare this to PPC campaigns and you might be surprised at how low the user acquisition cost actually is.

On average how much would you pay for a person? $5 or $10, what would be your offer to a person? Just want your honest opinion, because it sounds logical but how are you going to track 1000 people if they are going to buy your product or not? What if they take the money, signup, and leave???

Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

#43

Post by nubela »

acangiano wrote: post #37

There are essentially four categories of promotion you need to do: 1) Inbound marketing. Have a solid blog and social media plan in place, which doesn't ignore SEO and link building. (My upcoming book for The Pragmatic Bookshelf is exactly for people in your position: http://technicalblogging.com . Sorry for the plug, but hey, we are talking about promotion :) 2) Hustling. Get in touch with as many bloggers and maili…

I keep reading SEO, SEO, and more SEO. But what does that really entails? As a web developer, I thought that doing nothing (other than providing quality content) and not trying to skew search results is the best path to go?

Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

#44

Post by BasDirks »

nubela wrote: post #43
acangiano wrote: post #37

There are essentially four categories of promotion you need to do: 1) Inbound marketing. Have a solid blog and social media plan in place, which doesn't ignore SEO and link building. (My upcoming book for The Pragmatic Bookshelf is exactly for people in your position: http://technicalblogging.com . Sorry for the plug, but hey, we are talking about promotion :) 2) Hustling. Get in touch with as many bloggers and maili…

I keep reading SEO, SEO, and more SEO. But what does that really entails? As a web developer, I thought that doing nothing (other than providing quality content) and not trying to skew search results is the best path to go?

Google's advice is: design your websites for consumption by humans, not our crawler. This is good general advice, but you can cater to both.

Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

#45

Post by acangiano »

nubela wrote: post #43
acangiano wrote: post #37

There are essentially four categories of promotion you need to do: 1) Inbound marketing. Have a solid blog and social media plan in place, which doesn't ignore SEO and link building. (My upcoming book for The Pragmatic Bookshelf is exactly for people in your position: http://technicalblogging.com . Sorry for the plug, but hey, we are talking about promotion :) 2) Hustling. Get in touch with as many bloggers and maili…

I keep reading SEO, SEO, and more SEO. But what does that really entails? As a web developer, I thought that doing nothing (other than providing quality content) and not trying to skew search results is the best path to go?

When we talk about SEO, we are really talking about two different efforts, on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO is all about ensuring that your content can be fairly evaluated by search engines and humans. For example, changing the permalink structure of your posts from /?p=13 to /understanding-dependency-injection is not gaming the system; it's helping Google (and humans) figure out what your content is really about.

Off-page SEO is what you do outside of your pages to help Google and humans discover your content, as well as providing Google with positive indicators of the importance and relevance of your content. This is what most developers object to.

Consider this. If you have a wonderful article on a blog that you never promote and without an existing audience, your chances of being linked to are slim. Google's ranking algorithm will unfairly think that your content is not that great given that nobody is linking to it.

Your off-page SEO efforts are meant to promote your content, getting people to see it, and obtaining backlinks in legitimate ways. Submitting a quality article to HN, for example, provides value to this community and it's good from a SEO standpoint.

Contrary to popular belief, white hat SEO is good for the web and crucial for the promotion of your app or products.

Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

#46

Post by cheez »

swalberg wrote: post #24

http://SmallPayroll.ca was a one-man-in-his-spare-time project until recently. What I did was: 1. SEM - Google AdWords mostly. I spent a fair time on this, partially because my day job at the time was in the SEM field 2. Organic - I got a great domain that contained my primary keywords, got a landing page built, and it ended up driving a lot of organic traffic. I also set up a blog on the main site. The blog was good…

Your app is so depressing.

Re: Ask HN: How do you promote your web apps?

#47

Post by ed209 »

These are things that have worked for me on a tiny budget / evenings+weekend projects.

1. Depending on resources you have, target a niche where those resources will have an impact (focus in on blocks of 5% to 10% of your demographic) - facebook is ideal for this sort of targeting.

2. If you have a holding page, make joining your Facebook page / twitter acct the next step after submitting email. e.g. "Follow our Facebook page for early access beta codes"

3. Get chatting in forums that are related to your business.

4. Compile lists of resources for your target market. Like a list of useful blogs (e.g http://soopsee.com.tadalist.com/lists/1830681/public) and attach your business to it in some way

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