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Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

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Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#21

Post by helen842000 »

jfoster wrote: post #17
helen842000 wrote: post #5

Adwords, Forums, facebook groups, blog audiences, commenting, twitter, pinterest. Go and find out where you customer hangs out online. Who already has your perfect audience on their mailing list? See if you can write something of value for their audience and tap into existing groups. When you do get users, ask how they found you then double down on promoting in that channel.

Some of those suggestions (eg. comments) may represent a risk to search ranking. From what I understand, Google considers comments a negative signal. Perhaps it's only duplicate comments, though. Can someone more experienced than I am please provide their perspective here?

Perhaps! However I think it's important to jump in with a community and comments give you the chance to be a valued member that contributes.

Also, if your customers can find you without the assistance of search rankings (which can change at any time) then surely that's a good thing.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#22

Post by dclara »

gbelote wrote: post #14

One cool technique I saw recently (which isn't always applicable) is from a talk by Jason Cohen: http://vimeo.com/74338272 (around minute 7) In a nutshell when he was building WPEngine he went to LinkedIn and found folks who were Wordpress consultants. He then sent them a follow email and said he's building a product for "folks like you and would love to talk to you about your pains, needs, etc" (customer development…

You have a very good example for shooting against the target niche where you have your best audience to listen to you. But the question is: "when he was building WPEngine", there are already 40 folks "who were Wordpress consultants"? Then the result is not unexpected, and can not be consider a good example. Sorry if I misunderstood you. What we want know is how he got that 40 consultants to working on WPEngine in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#23

Post by lgilchrist »

What's your product and who is your target user? Where do they spend their time? LinkedIn, Reddit, and HN won't help if you're trying to reach, for example, teenage girls.

I collected some thoughts on this that you might find helpful: http://lgilchrist.github.io/how_to_get_your_first_100_users/

TL:DR; - get a splash page up and start collecting emails - guest blog - particularly in places you know your would-be-users will read - organize an event - play around with paid marketing

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#24

Post by byoung2 »

dclara wrote: post #22
gbelote wrote: post #14

One cool technique I saw recently (which isn't always applicable) is from a talk by Jason Cohen: http://vimeo.com/74338272 (around minute 7) In a nutshell when he was building WPEngine he went to LinkedIn and found folks who were Wordpress consultants. He then sent them a follow email and said he's building a product for "folks like you and would love to talk to you about your pains, needs, etc" (customer development…

You have a very good example for shooting against the target niche where you have your best audience to listen to you. But the question is: "when he was building WPEngine", there are already 40 folks "who were Wordpress consultants"? Then the result is not unexpected, and can not be consider a good example. Sorry if I misunderstood you. What we want know is how he got that 40 consultants to working on WPEngine in the…

WordPress was around for years before WPEngine started. There were thousands of WordPress consultants at that time, and he was building a WordPress hosting platform.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#25

Post by hayksaakian »

mgl wrote: post #13

If you have a product that may generate profit, e.g. a SaaS application targeting businesses, not a money burning consumer-app train (see: twitter or another photo album app) one of the strategies that work is cold emailing: 0. Identify and name your target group, e.g. commercial real estate agents in CA. 1. Find these people on Linkedin using advanced search option and invite them to connect. 2. Once connected you h…

You're better of calling RE agents. They do lots of business over the phone, so they're likely to pick up.

If your solution really works, it should be an easy sell.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#26

Post by itengelhardt »

Here's a tactic that has worked for me so far

1. Set up a blog on your domain

2. write 20+ articles on industry-related topics (this alone will bring in some traffic)

3. get a number of emails from prospective customers

4. write a PERSONALIZED email to everyone on the list and ask if they are interested in an interview to be published on your blog. Offer a link from your blog as additional incentive

My response rate so far was >80%

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#27

Post by habosa »

dbla wrote: post #11

In my opinion reddit is very underrated in terms of customer acquisition. It's a target community of early adopters who are willing to start a conversation with you. For my start-up, 900dpi, I got our first 400 users from reddit after failing miserably through other channels. We found our best success in /r/web_design but have also looked at /r/frontend and /r/webdev. Sometimes your best traffic comes from comments i…

r/startups was great for one of my launches, gave a lot of interesting feedback and drove some traffic. Wasn't hard to hit the front page.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#28

Post by itengelhardt »

dclara wrote: post #22
gbelote wrote: post #14

One cool technique I saw recently (which isn't always applicable) is from a talk by Jason Cohen: http://vimeo.com/74338272 (around minute 7) In a nutshell when he was building WPEngine he went to LinkedIn and found folks who were Wordpress consultants. He then sent them a follow email and said he's building a product for "folks like you and would love to talk to you about your pains, needs, etc" (customer development…

You have a very good example for shooting against the target niche where you have your best audience to listen to you. But the question is: "when he was building WPEngine", there are already 40 folks "who were Wordpress consultants"? Then the result is not unexpected, and can not be consider a good example. Sorry if I misunderstood you. What we want know is how he got that 40 consultants to working on WPEngine in the…

There were numerous WP consultants when he did this. They were his target customers. He interviewed them about their pain points and found that their pain was in line with what he had in mind for WPEngine (easy, fast, secure, no-friction hosting for WP) He asked them to write him a check at the end of the interview. BAM, customers. (I make this sound easier than it is..)

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#29

Post by spencerfry »

I've grown https://www.uncover.com (a simple tool to give employees perks and rewards) in various different ways. A lot of it began with telling my network of friends who run startups. Getting them signed up. Then getting them to tell their friends how much they liked it. Once that source was depleted, I began to do a lot of content marketing. I started writing for a lot of different blogs, websites, etc. That helped get out name out there and brought in about a third of our current customers. I'm now beginning to experiment with buying ads. It's still too early to tell how well that will work out, though.

Re: Ask HN: What'd you do to get your first 100 users?

#30

Post by dclara »

mrtksn wrote: post #16
mgl wrote: post #13

If you have a product that may generate profit, e.g. a SaaS application targeting businesses, not a money burning consumer-app train (see: twitter or another photo album app) one of the strategies that work is cold emailing: 0. Identify and name your target group, e.g. commercial real estate agents in CA. 1. Find these people on Linkedin using advanced search option and invite them to connect. 2. Once connected you h…

This is borderline to SPAM, so I think the e-mails should be very personal. If you have many competitors I am probably getting lot's of these e-mails which means you would have much harder time to get my attention. Let's say you are a hosting provider, I probably would not like to get an e-mail from you offering me some good price or hard to understand feature of yours, because there are probably lot's of cheap hosti…

Very good point on "identifying my problem", maybe it's better to be "identifying my specific problem" that nobody else can resolve for me. Thank you.

I'm sort of learning this point from others and trying to apply it to draw people's attention. I showed people that you need to build a private version of the web that stores the only information you are interested in or related to you. And we have a tool to help you create your Private Web with a few clicks. But I failed. Can you please pinpoint out why? The Kickstarter project is here: http://kck.st/JNqv8z

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