Should I depend on ProductHunt/Reddit/HN to get my first users?
Hi guys so I've been working on a project for the last few weeks, and a useable version of the product which solves a problem is finally ready for users.
While building the product, I already had a landing page set up and was reaching out to people that had the problem, and pitched it to them via DM.
By doing this I was able to get a mailing list of 16 people to date. In addition there were many people that liked the idea yet didn't sign up for the mailing list.
Nevertheless the good feedback plus the fact that people were actually signing up to the mailing list, gave me a sense of validation that the product is something people would actually use.
However, now that it has launched I have reached out to 50% of my mailing list with a link to the product, and reached out to 5 other people that previously showed interest from the landing page. In addition to this I have been reaching out to people on linkedIn, and also talking to my friends.
From doing all of this I have 2 users. That being one of my very close friends, and the other being their cousin.
So now I'm struggling with the question of whether people don't want to use my product and that I shouldn't pursue this, or that I just haven't been able to reach out to as many people as I need to , to get some users.
Keep in mind the product is free right now, I haven't even thought about getting to charge people if I'm struggling to get people to use it for free.
From previous experience, I know I can get a lot of eyeballs on my product from producthunt/reddit and potential users from it, but I don't know if I should just depend on that.
Any insights, do I just need to reach out to more people using cold email/messages? Reconsider the product validation? Or just post on producthunt/reddit and see if I get any traction?
Eyeballs don't usually convert. Getting newsletter signups, but not product signups sounds like you haven't hit a problem painful enough. Go launch anyway! Unless it takes you another few weeks.
Is the product you're talking about subscrybe? It seems like you got a solid thing going there. When I look at the product my first thought is "holy shit I need this" as I did recently pay for Fitbit even though I only had one for a week. But then - this has only happened once. So I don't want to get into a new product just to get rid of one old one (that has already been cancelled).
I guess my best (noob) advice is to try and put pressure on the problem and see where the most pain arises somehow. I guess I would use Sales Safari for this.
My main question would be - who has this problem multiple times a month? Like a company who lets employees subscribe to stuff for them? not sure.
Hey, yea the product is Subscrybe.
Definitely agree, I think although a lot of people have experienced the problem, but many of those people don't have the problem frequent enough for them to use my product.
But yea I was also thinking to reach out to small businesses since they often have a lot of subscriptions, but it's a bit hard to know who's involved with company subscriptions. That's why I think launching on high traffic platforms, to potentially find those people. In addition to looking for people that do have the problem multiple times a month.
Thanks for the advice!
I think it's ok to depend on that at the beginning. You must reach somehow a critical mass of users to start getting some word of mouth new users.
I would post on PH/reddit and see. Once you get some users you can expand on social media, I think Twitter is good for pretty much everything.
Good luck with your launch!
Send me a message and I'll help you with a vote on all the 3 sites :) Here's my contact link: https://contact.do/toni
You can try posting on PH's makers discussion. Either you can start a discussion like :
"I have made this product and <xyz>, what did you build? Would be great if you share your product experiences"
Or can join the same type of convo started by different PH users and share more about your product...
It really helps.
It's upto you if you want to start a discussion or join them. Both would be great 👍
Thanks, will try this !