Should I spend money to get traffic in the early stage of my startup project?

I've been posting clientside.dev on Reddit, Hackernews, and TikTok for free and have used this method to get my first 100 paid users in the first week of launching the beta. With time I think paid advertisement might be a solid option but I've learnt a lot for free by just posting and asking for feedback from my target audience. Reddit,HN, and TT work for my site but you may need to find where your target audience lives. If I were you I'd be pushing really hard on Linkedin.

There is no right answer that fits every business, but I believe you are working with the right mindset. The key is to just get customers (even free ones if needed) to start using your platform. It's the most valuable data you will get to understand your Product Market Fit and what is and isn't working in your platform.

If your approaches Today are not gaining customers fast enough or the current customers are not providing feedback, attempt another method of getting customers.

I am of the mindset that if you can't give your product away for free, no one will ever pay for it. Consider giving it away for free to 10 - 50 people for some extended period of time. If they continue to use it for free you got something, if they don't bother with it after some time, than keeping a paid customer will be even more challenging.

if you have the money why not? go for it, but in the early stages I think even content and engagement marketing can work well for you.

when we first started with our tool ruttl, we focused on Twitter and LinkedIn for the social media and were very active on Indie Hacker itself. I think you can try for SEO but it doesn't give quick results.

Do PPC only if you have the expertise or just to test some copy; otherwise, here is what is working for solo founders:

• content marketing (your blog and other communities)
• organic growth through SEO
• launching on platforms like Product Hunt

Yes if you can convert it, no if its just a waste of money :)

Advertising is likely going to be a tool you need to scale your service so I'm in favour of doing this early on. Just follow the standard rules of testing and validating to see what works best and then focus your marketing budget where it converts the best.

I also agree with other comments about using your personal and professional networks for free traffic and there are plenty of articles on IH to get you started. I just believe there's no harm in trying Advertising as early as you can to see what sticks.

You can but if you don't have a good level of discipline that can VERY quickly turn into a bottomless pit.

If you're inexperienced (haven't launched a couple of money-making projects) then your identity is likely still wrapped up into the success of your baby (idea).

In that case, I would recommend doing free marketing tactics instead. Figure out where your people hang out, see if they've got questions relevant to your startup, help them, and then pitch if it makes sense to pitch. (Do it with a bit of tact.)

In general, spending money to validate an idea is fine, but you have to be careful not to fall into the trap of throwing smart money after dumb money. If the experiment fails, shoot it and try something else.

Hi Alex,

It can be beneficial to advertise on Google, Facebook, and Twitter after your app is released in order to get customers and move your product forward.

I think it could be a great way to get the word out and attract some potential customers.

Just remember to carefully consider your budget and advertising strategy before you invest any money.

It may be helpful to do some research and consider consulting with a marketing expert before deciding whether or not to invest in advertising. Ultimately, the decision to advertise will depend on your specific business goals and the resources available to you.

Good luck with everything, and keep us posted on how it all turns out!

Test, test, test. You got to pay to play, just make sure you are getting bang for your buck. What I mean by that is to set up your data collection so that even if you fail to acquire customers you are constantly learning from it.

To get the traffic you need to market your app for this you want to spend a good amount on it. Otherwise, the people don't know about your app and this is not good for your business if you don't reach your audience.

You should invest a particular amount (maybe around $1k) that you would be comfortable investing in marketing. Try out different marketing platforms (Google ads, Insta, Facebook) and which one gives you the best result.
Much more results can be achieved by outreaching people on slack groups, Twitter, LinkedIn or via email.

I would not recommend to spend money on acquisition, instead you can spend some money on getting feedback from users. So if you run some ads, try to capture email ids of potential users and reach out to them to schedule customer discovery interviews.

If you need help with other ways to validate ideas you could schedule a complementary consultation with Lukas on Geeks and Experts. He has over 20 years of experience in building products.

Yes it is necessary to spend some amount to get traffic on your project website but for this you have a proper plan of how you will get the fruit from your advertising.

Some people's spent money for (branding, traffic, conversion) the goal depends and you need a proper funnel for it.

I will highly recommend you to spend some amount on the advertising facebook, LinkedIn, google, and twitter because your project is for the professional users. or people how use task scheduling etc

If you have budget and either have the SEM expertise, or know someone that does, then I'd say go for it. But you'll find it hard to get enough data to validate that approach unless you have 3-5k to spend.

I would recommend to get some early users via your connections or through reddit or other forums that gets free traffic. Building a audience will always be helpful for your business anyways and will help better than any sort of paid adverts.