Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

There are many stories on HN about great product launches that get money from tons of people on the first day. If we hear about slow launches, the store comes years later, after the product is a success. I'm writing this so that we'll have another perspective. I'm ten days into a slow, frustrating launch, but I am hopeful and excited.

Thirteen users have signedup for my hosted PhantomJS web service (BromBone.com). That's a lie. Four of those 13 accounts are test accounts I created. Why I am so excited about these nine accounts? I have nine people who have decided to take my service for a test drive! The great thing about that is that nine is only one less than ten. Ten doubled is 20. Find another 20 and I'm up 40. That's almost half way to 100, then 200, 300, and 400. Soon I'll have a 1000.

That may be a little optimistic. I've read so much about gathering interest before launch and talking to customers. But it din't go as smoothly as I would hope. Posts to mailing lists take me longer to craft than I would like. The discussion is positive and generates some traffic. But honestly it is a trickle compared to what I need. I posted twice to HN, but no one clicked the upvote button.

Why then am I so positive? I got two sigups overnight. And I hadn't done any new marketing the day before. My traffic is tiny. But every time I do a little piece of marketing, I see a spike. The spike goes away, but it leaves behind a residual traffic increase. Additionally, the nine users I have are actually playing around with the service. They're using something I crated! I think if I keep my efforts going, traffic and users will increase.

If anyone else out there is excited about getting just a handful of signups, you're not alone. I'm sure we won't all make it big, but I think there's reason to be excited. Just because my "launch" didn't bring in a flood of users doesn't mean that I can't grow the trickle into a stream, and then a river. Or maybe this is denial. Time will tell.

Like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5362235 :)

Posting at the right time is not a guarantee you'll be seen, and you're post doesn't stay on the new page very long during peek times.

Don't worry though. I'll be back next week sometime between 9-10am Eastern with a new blog post.

Clickable link: http://www.brombone.com/

Hey, I'm going to be in the same position soon. :)

I haven't launched yet, and while I feel that there's a large audience for the service I plan to provide, I feel like the majority of my potential users are content with what they have right now.

Either way, great job. I'm not sure if I could be so optimistic. Besides talking to potential users, have you tried advertising/promotions/etc?

Edit:

As justhw said, a demo or two and screen shot wouldn't be a terrible idea.

And while this may not make a great difference, add a favicon and change the title.

The title is currently set to "A headless browser as a service built on PhantomJS - BromBone"

So, in my sea of tabs, all I see is "A head" which isn't as helpful when trying to find the tab as "BromBone."

I once read 'If you build it, they won't come'. I think this is the case for most people. Getting people to your website or service is the hard part, not the development. We're all in the same boat here. For a product such as yours, I can imagine going to events, posting on relevant forums etc... would be your best bet at getting more users. Best of luck with your product, what you currently have looks promising.