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Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your 1-man startup?

#7

Post by dangrossman »

karterk wrote: post #6
dangrossman wrote: post #3

I run Improvely ( https://www.improvely.com ) myself for a living. I'd be happy to answer questions.

How did you find your first 10 customers? How about the first 100? That's always the hardest part when you start something.

I'd like to say I did something clever, but the first customers just came from a little bit of advertising. I'm talking $100-200/month in AdWords clicks the first few months, and a $79/month banner ad on a web stats site I bought through BuySellAds.com. I'm no novice to advertising, so I had the right keywords and the right ads to make sure I only paid for people looking for what Improvely offers.

I then spent my afternoons all summer with a live chat widget on the site that automatically prompted a conversation to anyone who kept the page open for 10 seconds, and talked quite a few people that came in from Google into signing up. It only took a few people at $25-99/month (I tried a bunch of different minimum prices in the beginning) to pay back the initial investment and keep the ball rolling.

Word of mouth referrals started really really quickly, as some of those first customers were both super excited about the product being way better than what they were doing, and very well connected socially. Now referrals are my biggest signup driver.

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