Most of my customers come from Indie Hackers - how do I get more exposure?
Most of my users or customers come from developers on IndieHackers that happen to come across my product here.
That's great, and it's a great community.
However, I can't help but think that I should reach a broader audience. I've written a couple of blog posts, and I've tried posting my product on various sites, but to no avail. Indie Hackers remains my best source of traffic.
Do you guys have any ideas of what to do next for my product?
My visitor traffic is transparent here: https://plausible.io/dogger.io
Trending on Indie Hackers
That's impressive. I also received a good amount of traffic from IH. @ffMathy
Have you ever repurpose your content and circulate on different channels? This how I run Virtual Mojito. Would be awesome to exchange opinions. On Twitter?
What do you mean by "repurpose content"?
And sure! My Twitter handle is ffMathy.
Repurpose sometimes means the same content -> different distribution channels, design, and slightly twist the order. @ffMathy
This is one example from my bi-weekly newsletter: https://virtualmojito.substack.com/p/-virtual-mojito-live-004
And my social media post: https://twitter.com/felix12777/status/1288758851945164801
Hi Mathias,
first of all, congrats on a permanent source of traffic. It is really precious.
Now, you mention blogging.
That is supposed to work, but later - and with the help of SEO.
Try other communities - Product Hunt, Facebook Groups and Slack communities work great.
Thank you! Slack communities is a great idea.
Have you considered reaching out to your potential customers directly? IMO it's the most "controllable" lever of growth at your disposal.
That's why we launched makesales.io, to bring the science behind the mindset, and the guidance.
As we're launching, I offer a 2h consultation program to help you with your first efforts, let me know if you want to chat!
I think the main concern in my scenario is: Where do I even find my customers?
Your product looks nice by the way.
thank you! Where have you looked so far?
Here's an example of gameplan for you:
At this point, you know who you want to talk to, and know why the others decided to become a customer, time to reach out to them:
Have you tried reaching out to sub forums of Reddit, Betalist, HN, Product Hunt, posting on other communites, etc., etc.,?
Thank you for chiming in!
Tried Reddit, Betalist, Hacker News, and Product Hunt. Not much luck there.
I'm sad I didn't really put enough effort into the Hacker News post. Might try again in a couple of months.
Have you tried going Beta or offering some sort of reward in return for feedback?
Maybe direct contacting customers via email?
One thing that I've seen people doing pretty well is Twitter. Not to brag but I've been reaching some good exposure
If can spent some time giving value upfront there you might get some good return. It's not a overnight success, though.
• Be consistent
• Share your learnings
• Engage with your people
There's a community of developers hanging out there.
https://twitter.com/randallKanna
https://twitter.com/petecodes
https://twitter.com/arvidkahl
To name just a few.
Already doing that, and slowly gaining new followers. Thank you so much for your input though!
Hope that helps!
Thank you for your input - didn't think of that.
The dilemma here is that Docker is a technology that's hidden even to the scanners. You can't know for sure if people are using it. There is no trace of it anywhere.
Best luck would be to search open source products, but those are also often the ones that can't afford the product.
IMO the best two places for you would be:
a well-thought out "Show HN: " post on HackerNews. Your post title needs to catch attention and clearly communicate what customer needs your product solves, perhaps even conjuring up some curiosity.
various subreddits (e.g. for docker or sysadmin). Don't post straight away though. On reddit it's best to write at least 5 non self-promotional comments in any subreddit before attempting to drop your own stuff. It's a heavily moderated community.
Stackoverflow?
Medium
Google what a user would be looking for that your service is a good fit and see where they land and what's useable...
Some GitHub page/project that is tightly related like create one that partially helps with the same issue but not to the same extent?
Other bigger startup communities?
All very good ideas! Thank you!
I just tried StackOverflow (based on yours and others feedback) and made a reply here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42982266/how-can-i-test-a-pull-request-before-merging-it
As for the Google part, that's actually great. Perhaps I should pretend that I'm looking for a solution to a problem that my product solves, and see what kind of resources (blog posts, etc) I land on. Perhaps that could be inspiration!
If you are going the exploration tools and are unsure what to put an effort in, the Google AdWords tool lets you see amount of search per term.
You can also try to see auto complete searche suggestions
Or go deep with competition with something like semrush
Also a couple of links, maybe might help
https://postyourstartup.com/
https://github.com/mmccaff/PlacesToPostYourStartup
Thank you Victor! You're the best.
Hey Mathias :)
I cannot tell you for sure, since I'm not successful at this, but I might brainstorm a bit.
Your project is related to docker. Try to search docker communities in Slack or maybe Telegram (not sure about the last one though), and probably you might invest some time in discussing stuff there, in slack channels. When you get some credibility, like when people already know who you are you might showcase your product (or, showcase your product when it's relevant to discussions, it won't be considered as ad I think)
Next, I'm not sure about docker, but I'm building my app with Laravel and I think I saw a newsletter from one of big Laravel's site. Same for Vuejs, there is some pages like "Built with VueJS" or "Awesome Vue", a collection of apps built with vue. So maybe there is something similar in Docker community.
Next, monitor stack overflow/similar sites for questions, and provide link if it's suitable.
In github in opensources products they offer putting your site link in exchange of donation. So if it's okay, you might donate.
What about PH launch, or you have already launched? And HN? You might post on HN from time to time.
Try to find subreddits related to docker, maybe get some activity here too.
Hi Victor! Thank you for your extensive reply - so nice of you!
The idea with Slack is a great one. I'll see what I can do. Didn't think of this.
I already posted the project to GitHub "awesome" repositories - not much traffic coming from there.
StackOverflow is also a great idea. The dilemma is just that no one seems to be asking questions there that could be related to my project.
As for the GitHub open source projects that include a site link for donations, can you name a few, or show me how I can find these? I haven't stumbled upon any yet.
I launched both on ProductHunt and HackerNews with very mixed results (barely any traffic). I am afraid of posting again because it might seem spammy and get downvoted to oblivion.
Well, PH launch should be thoroughly prepared, since it's indeed kind of one-time-opportunity. Though if you post twice a year it's okay, if you have bunch of new features, you can call it "My app 2.0" and still get some results.
Regarding donations, for some reason vuejs docs came to my mind: https://vuejs.org/ like, they have logos at the bottom or https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/ in the docs at the right. But it might be expensive.
But I'm pretty sure I stumbled upon some libraries which can put your logo/link somewhere, and the libraries might be relevant to your product. Cannot remember any of them right now...
Btw, except StackOvevlow they also have other stack exchange sites, something for administrators, linux servers, devops etc..
Also you may pay for some services which analyses where your competitors were mentioned, might work as well.
Also you say that you get traffic from IH. Right, because you're active there.
But for example recently I read a post from founder of one of nice products, which is very successful. He said that he got most traffic from twitter. Imagine you reply/post 10 times per day, something relevant or even irrelevant. So maybe you'll be able to get thousands of subscribers, which also might be a channel of traffic.
Plus, advertising in twitter , I mean asking persons to retweet :)
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Great idea! Thank you so much!
I made a reply here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42982266/how-can-i-test-a-pull-request-before-merging-it
Correct me if I'm wrong (--and I really hope I am wrong), but isn't Stack Overflow quite anti self-promotion? I know I've had my attempts removed.
If there's an art to doing it right, I'm all ears.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.