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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?

#201

Post by conductr »

pc86 wrote: post #141
gardnr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this comment part of the grift?

I don't think it's a grift in the negative sense but this is absolutely a marketing comment. They're doing exactly what they say to do in the comment. They're on HN where at least some of their target market is. They have a product that is relevant (right down to the headline/CTA). They didn't just post the link but put it at the end of an informational comment. 10/10 meta-promotion IMO

They also likely were involved in the the original question getting posted so they could provide that answer which is what makes it an entirely fabricated grift

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

#203

Post by komali2 »

When I had a restaurant in Taipei, every time I posted in the Taiwan subreddit even tangentially mentioning it, we'd get 2-3 customers the next day in off that post, and a couple more throughout the week.

So, niche subreddits, especially for geographies, could work well.

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

#204

Post by talldatethrow »

miros_love wrote: post #189
jnovek wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

Indeed, it was written in a rather unclear way. I have AI in the name of my company and I left a form on the site to fill out. My site, due to a cold start, began to appear in the search results for people from different countries who misspelled "ChatGPT for free" and stuff like that. They went to the site, saw my form, filled out the required fields and wrote "Make me an essay on the topic...". No stop words can cov…

What do you mean by "cold start"? I can't figure it out, but are you saying because your site was very new google gave it more weight for those search terms and that's why you were ranking well on that competitive search terms?

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

#205

Post by mtremsal »

> We have a free version. For now, we have kept it invite-only. Question is TOFU.

Comment from `amanchanda`, i.e. the OP.

Nice hustle writing an Ask HN post to then plug your own product, but you have to make sure to respond to questions with your _other_ account `nicooo`. ;)

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

#206

Post by miros_love »

talldatethrow wrote: post #204
miros_love wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it was written in a rather unclear way. I have AI in the name of my company and I left a form on the site to fill out. My site, due to a cold start, began to appear in the search results for people from different countries who misspelled "ChatGPT for free" and stuff like that. They went to the site, saw my form, filled out the required fields and wrote "Make me an essay on the topic...". No stop words can cov…

What do you mean by "cold start"? I can't figure it out, but are you saying because your site was very new google gave it more weight for those search terms and that's why you were ranking well on that competitive search terms?

Quite the opposite. A new site that Google is afraid to show for any normal queries. There is too much competition there. But there is a lot of space in the unique garbage results.

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

#207

Post by nicooo »

johncole wrote: post #136
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 went to sign up and got sent to a typeform telling me thanks for my email address. Did I fall for the hustle?

Thank you for the trust. I am finalizing the last features before opening to first users. I will reach out to you soon!

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

#208

Post by nicooo »

pj_mukh wrote: post #140
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://…

Interesting product! One problem: I want to get a handle on the quality of online conversations you flag. Do you know that on the free tier, the top 5 you flag are the best of your filter?

Yes, I will do an initial search for 1000s of conversations and give you the top 5. Each day I repeat the process.

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

#209

Post by nicooo »

arewethereyeta wrote: post #182
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://…

This seems like that sort of marketing where the OP creates a question for himself to answer from another account.

I was not involved in the original comment. But maybe I should expand my product to build this ;)

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

#210

Post by nicooo »

joeguilmette wrote: post #173
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

Thank you for your trust. I want to finalize a few more things before roll it out to first users. I will get back to you!
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