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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?

#171

Post by awaseem »

I posted on HN about Foqos: https://www.foqos.app/ and got a few hundred downloads that same day which is awesome. I still continue to reach out to creators in Youtube and tiktok who have reviewed similar products to see if they would give any feedback. Usually since they have a larger online presence than I do, I noticed the publicly started recommending the app to others on Reddit, Threads, etc...

I've been also posting on threads after each update. I have over a 1000 downloads now, I don't have tracking but getting a consistent download rate of about 30 a day

Zero marketing and its been a ton of fun so far. Hope that helps!

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

#173

Post by joeguilmette »

nicooo wrote: post #115

I’ve had success twice using targeted social media outreach — specifically by joining relevant subreddit discussions and commenting on YouTube videos where my target audience was already active. Instead of simply promoting your service right away (it often feels spammy), I recommend genuinely engaging in conversations until the right opportunity comes up. I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://…

I signed up for the waitlist, please approve me

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

#174

Post by jakevoytko »

For my newsletter[0], I just reached 231 subscribers in 5 months. Getting to this point has involved posting to as many channels as possible (without wearing out my welcome in any of them)

My first 40 subscribers came from direct friends and my LinkedIn network.

I got about 150 subscribers from a single popular post on Hacker News, posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43461618

The remainder have come from regular posting on BlueSky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Substack notes, and starting to get search traffic from Google.

I've gotten no traction from Reddit (wow, the programming subreddits are so much angrier than every other subreddit where I contribute!) Twitter (seems like it's pay to play, which I won't do) or IndieHackers (I post milestones just for fun, but it hasn't amounted to anything).

I've found that I need to post twice a week to grow. I had a period where I was sick and was putting less effort into posts, and another period where I was dealing with a mortgage and had to post only once a week, and my subscriber growth treaded water instead of gradually growing. Even casual visitors to the site can tell the difference between moderate and minor effort.

[0] https://www.clientserver.dev/

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

#175

Post by ednite »

csomar wrote: post #170
ednite wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol...I was trying to avoid the classic shameless plug… but since you twisted my arm—it’s over at mindthenerd.com. Just getting started, but I'm having fun with it. Really appreciate you asking!

I am more interested by the SaaS and the partner that did free reach?

Appreciate the interest! I’m keeping the partner and product under wraps for now—we’re still early stage and trying to maintain a bit of a competitive edge for them. I’ll happily share more once we’ve got a stronger lead. Hope you understand!

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

#176

Post by miros_love »

My wife cold-called about 60% of all businesses in our niche within our city. Meanwhile, I literally walked into CEOs' offices, asked politely for meetings, and pitched face-to-face. Conversion was around 1%, but that gave us our first collision with reality—and our first paying customers. Also half of my clients came from Google search ads. But it was absolutely terrible - 9 out of 10 requests were people trying to talk to chatGPT

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

#177

Post by [deleted] »

abdullin wrote: post #13

I have a course on building AI solutions in business (based on success stories from companies in Europe/USA). Sold ~400 seats so far, mostly through my community and word of mouth. No external ads or cold outreach. The process was classical. Over two years I created a community to sharing cases and insights from building LLM-driven systems. We focused on creating good non-toxic and collaborative atmosphere. No ads or…

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by tquinn »

helro wrote: post #68

I got 20k+ downloads for my app by posting on Reddit. It's an app/website blocker for iPhone & Mac, so I focused on relevant communities like r/digitalminimalism and r/dumbphones with genuine, non-spammy posts: https://www.atten.app I also tried "apps gone free" campaigns by posting on Reddit and using sites like AppRaven. These were very effective for visibility, the launch is currently the #5 all-time post on r/mac…

I've been frustrated with my scheduled blocker, so based on your landing page I'm giving it a shot. So far it looks like a breath of fresh air.

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

#180

Post by jnovek »

miros_love wrote: post #176

My wife cold-called about 60% of all businesses in our niche within our city. Meanwhile, I literally walked into CEOs' offices, asked politely for meetings, and pitched face-to-face. Conversion was around 1%, but that gave us our first collision with reality—and our first paying customers. Also half of my clients came from Google search ads. But it was absolutely terrible - 9 out of 10 requests were people trying to…

> But it was absolutely terrible - 9 out of 10 requests were people trying to talk to chatGPT

I don't totally follow, probably because I don't tend to run ad campaigns and I'm not up with whatever shenanigans advertisers are doing these days. What do you mean when you say that they were "trying to talk to chatGPT"?

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