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How to get your first 100k active users

blog.winnie.com

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Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#11

Post by annekate »

jqbx_jason wrote: post #9
annekate wrote: post #2

BTW, I'm the OP and am happy to answer questions here. My expertise is obviously in consumer internet products but I spend a lot of time thinking about growth. It's my superpower!

What's a "very modest spend" when it comes to advertising? How much is enough to validate whether and ad is or isn't working in your experience? Also did a majority of your new users come from being featured on app stores or was it primarily through turning the modest spend into a serious spend once the ad was converting?

Enough to get statistically significant data. There are programs to get $100 AdWords or FB Ads credit and that's more then enough to get a few thousand to 10k impressions on your ads and give you decent data about how well they perform. I would usually set a testing campaign to spend about $10/day for 5-7 days, and would shut it down early if it was looking particularly bad.

Our app is free, so we aren't eager to pay for installs at any price, and paid aq is not a major channel for us. The lion's share of our new users come from organic search, social sharing, and word of mouth.

Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#12

Post by jqbx_jason »

annekate wrote: post #11
jqbx_jason wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a "very modest spend" when it comes to advertising? How much is enough to validate whether and ad is or isn't working in your experience? Also did a majority of your new users come from being featured on app stores or was it primarily through turning the modest spend into a serious spend once the ad was converting?

Enough to get statistically significant data. There are programs to get $100 AdWords or FB Ads credit and that's more then enough to get a few thousand to 10k impressions on your ads and give you decent data about how well they perform. I would usually set a testing campaign to spend about $10/day for 5-7 days, and would shut it down early if it was looking particularly bad. Our app is free, so we aren't eager to pay…

Can I ask for a ballpark of what # of users it took to get to that inflection point when SEO and word of mouth takes over? At least in my experience getting to there has proven to be the main challenge.

Also- thanks for taking questions and congrats on your success :)

Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#13

Post by fabianuribe »

I love this kind of posts, by sharing the anecdotes of what worked and what didn't, they provide a glimpse into the inner workings and strategies for one of the biggest challenges for any startup, plus most likely will generate a considerable influx of new users from the post itself. Everybody wins.

Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#14

Post by annekate »

forkLding wrote: post #4
annekate wrote: post #2

BTW, I'm the OP and am happy to answer questions here. My expertise is obviously in consumer internet products but I spend a lot of time thinking about growth. It's my superpower!

As well, got other questions, but understand if you don't want to answer, what did you think was the most important problem you solved for your users and how did you get people to really download your app after the beta stage? This also sounds like a good link that can go on indiehackers.com

Thanks, I'll check it out.

We solve an huge number of extremely important problems for our users. Some things just off the top of my head:

- Find local daycares that have spaces available, which is pretty important when you need to work

- Find a nearby restroom or changing table when you need one RIGHT NOW (and when you need one, it's usually RIGHT NOW)

- Get parenting advice in real time on just about any topic

- If you're someone who doesn't fit in with traditional parenting groups (mostly moms, mostly married, etc), connect with a community of parents like you (single parents, stay home dads, etc)

- Find places where you can nurse or pump safely

- Get suggestions for things to do with your kids, because they are bored and you need to get out of the house

- Locate family-friendly restaurants and businesses when traveling

Etc. In some ways this is actually a challenge as there's no single, dead-simple value prop that we can use. But I love Winnie. We're genuinely helping people be less stressed and more successful as parents.

Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#15

Post by annekate »

forkLding wrote: post #3
annekate wrote: post #2

BTW, I'm the OP and am happy to answer questions here. My expertise is obviously in consumer internet products but I spend a lot of time thinking about growth. It's my superpower!

Canadian here, great to hear about your success, I'm on google play store and couldn't download, guess its US-only at this point?

The Android app is US only, but you can also sign up on Winnie.com. We do have some Canadian users :)

Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#17

Post by ythn »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #5

Not that you need my vote, but I agree with all of this. In particular: - Go true native, not hybrid - Use ads for testing ideas - Don't forget about email! I'm also intrigued by your approach of not going market-by-market like a lot of local-focused marketplaces do. Your approach seems to make sense, and obviously worked for you. I particularly like that you had a different onboarding flow for users in new markets,…

> - Go true native, not hybrid

What about for games? Unity is extremely tempting, especially when the alternative is to write the game twice in two different languages...

Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#19

Post by annekate »

dboreham wrote: post #6

"Relying on push notifications alone" Yeah no. Apps using push notification for marketing/dark purposes is super irritating and for that reason I block notifications by default from all apps.

Funnily enough, we also sort of failed to capitalize on push. We didn't even ask for push permissions in the first version of our app! Eventually we found the right push product for our users, but it's still the case that a lot of people have them off by default or prefer to be contacted by email.

Re: How to get your first 100k active users

#20

Post by dna_polymerase »

annekate wrote: post #2

BTW, I'm the OP and am happy to answer questions here. My expertise is obviously in consumer internet products but I spend a lot of time thinking about growth. It's my superpower!

Regarding the part about native apps, would you go as far as even restraining from publishing any app, if native app developers are not available (or not in the budget) in the beginning?
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