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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?

#51

Post by infocaptor »

pitdesi wrote: post #12

What field is it in? For ours ( http://feefighters.com ), which is b2b app, we have a 6 pronged attack which works pretty well: 1) SEO - people find us when they search for credit card processing and lots of long tail keywords. This is a long term thing but completely worth it. Make sure all of your pages are optimized for SEO. 2) SEM - we were buying keywords on google/bing/yahoo. Facebook has been less effective fo…

Or you could do a fake interview like mine http://www.mockuptiger.com/mockuptiger-interview

Just keep experimenting. First exhaust all the tried and tested methods and then experiment

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

#52

Post by infocaptor »

cheez wrote: post #46
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.

Why is it depressing?

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

#53

Post by sixtofour »

pitdesi wrote: post #12

What field is it in? For ours ( http://feefighters.com ), which is b2b app, we have a 6 pronged attack which works pretty well: 1) SEO - people find us when they search for credit card processing and lots of long tail keywords. This is a long term thing but completely worth it. Make sure all of your pages are optimized for SEO. 2) SEM - we were buying keywords on google/bing/yahoo. Facebook has been less effective fo…

6) Referral for $25 ... people want to refer us anyway.

Without the fee, people would refer you anyway, mostly anonymously. So the $25 fee is a way to document where your referrals come from. That sounds like a good buy.

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

#54

Post by sixtofour »

cheez wrote: post #46
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.

Your comment made me click on the app. :)

I thought it was attractive, and fills a need. Nothing depressing that I can see.

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

#55

Post by hbar »

joeyj01 wrote: post #42
chunkyslink wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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???

The cost is very low through services like Mechanical Turk. Typically you'd ask them to complete a survey on usability of your site -- you get some useful feedback from them, and sometimes they return as users themselves.

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

#56

Post by destraynor »

For Intercom (http://intercom.io) blogging has been our most effective weapon thus far. We'll give advertising a go soon, just to compare. But right now it looks like a good article that's related to the product drives readers, which we try to then funnel into the site.

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

#57

Post by samf »

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…

Have you written about your experiences with transitioning from "spare time project" to what it is now? I saw that there is a blog for smallpayroll.ca, but do you have a personal blog that covers the start of your business and beyond?

I'm very interested in transitioning spare-time projects into something real. Thanks for any info, and congratulations on smallpayroll.ca!

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

#58

Post by joeblue »

redguava wrote: post #23
startupstella wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you elaborate on this? what is successful and what have you learned about ad content?

My app is http://www.cliniko.com I used the "likes" targeting in the facebook ads demographics to target occupations that my product is aimed at. I also targeted relevant english speaking countries. I have tried quite a few different styles of ads, but individual ads for each occupation that were specifically targeted has the best results. I guess I would advise creating many ads, and wording them specifically for ea…

Have you tried Linkedin? It might be a good avenue to test.

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

#60

Post by thewordpainter »

twitter is the most powerful tool if used properly. you can cultivate a rapport that can translate into a relationship before you know it...and for companies like ours that are completely outside of the heart of the action, it's allowed us to stay somewhat attached.
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