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Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#41

Post by cosbgn »

I run a small but fairly successful "embed chatGPT on your site" widget https://rispose.com

I'm acquiring customers by:

- Offer a 100% free unlimited solution (with branding) I get a lot of daily clicks from people coming from my customer's website

- Offer a really good price. My competitors are about 5X more expensive. I'll eventually maybe raise my price, but for now I have a lot of people switching to my tool

- Affiliates. This is something new I'm still testing.

In summary a good free product which links back to you get's you millions of requests per month!

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#42

Post by abdullin »

nikolayasdf123 wrote: post #32
abdullin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are way too many ads around "AI". Everybody else does that, frequently overwhelming people with too many promises of quick wins. I prefer to distinguish from this hype and reach people through other channels - good content, word of mouth and interesting collaborative events (like our last Enterprise RAG Challenge). This might lead to slower sales in the short term, but I think the long-term value to the brand i…

yeah, this is much slower growth... danger must be it is so slow it must be non-existent. but I am with you on same boat, there are too many AI ads for crappy apps but I guess it speaks to flood of crap-ware, and flood bad content in social networks ^not meaning about you, of course (those folks must not be even on HN)

Building something that people truly need - might not lead to huge sales right away, but I believe this to be a good long-term strategy. Sprint vs marathon.

Just keep on pushing on it, and it will eventually work out.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#44

Post by 90s_dev »

vanschelven wrote: post #10

Grown way past 100 users with: • Make a great product. Everyone tells you "build it and they will come" is not working anymore, but it's working _for me_. • Outreach via your network. Talk to people with the intent of learning, not selling. • I'm personally on a freemium model. But that's in the developer-to-developer market, which is vastly different from your B2C EDIT: https://www.bugsink.com/ link to product, may…

I've been struggling with choosing a model to make enough to keep the lights on with my upcoming project. Has freemium actually gotten enough paid users for you?

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#47

Post by Etheryte »

cosbgn wrote: post #41

I run a small but fairly successful "embed chatGPT on your site" widget https://rispose.com I'm acquiring customers by: - Offer a 100% free unlimited solution (with branding) I get a lot of daily clicks from people coming from my customer's website - Offer a really good price. My competitors are about 5X more expensive. I'll eventually maybe raise my price, but for now I have a lot of people switching to my tool - Af…

I've seen a number of products like this and I'm somewhat curious: how do you handle the security side of things? Do you have a server to shield the API keys and proxy all requests?

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#48

Post by cosbgn »

Etheryte wrote: post #47
cosbgn wrote: post #41

I run a small but fairly successful "embed chatGPT on your site" widget https://rispose.com I'm acquiring customers by: - Offer a 100% free unlimited solution (with branding) I get a lot of daily clicks from people coming from my customer's website - Offer a really good price. My competitors are about 5X more expensive. I'll eventually maybe raise my price, but for now I have a lot of people switching to my tool - Af…

I've seen a number of products like this and I'm somewhat curious: how do you handle the security side of things? Do you have a server to shield the API keys and proxy all requests?

Yes, all requests pass by our server.

Re: Ask HN: How are you acquiring your first hundred users?

#49

Post by rorylaitila »

I start by building products for myself that I know solve my problem, so at least I have a user of 1. Then I try to get to 10 users personally through my personal network. This helps me validate how easy acquisition and onboarding will be. Then to get from 10 to 100 I post more widely about the product on social media. My current product https://humancrm.io is at 16 users. I am adding about a user a week currently. All the while I work on SEO and backlinks. Once I get to 100 users then I'll probably start more bulk marketing to get to 1000.
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