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36 Comments

What do you do to acquire users for your startup?

What do you typically do to acquire users for your startup?

Currently, I am doing the following:

  1. Create A Community
  2. Grow my engagement on Twitter
  3. Build my email list
  4. Engage on IndieHackers/Reddit
  5. Engage in Facebook groups for Content Creators
  6. Engage with Youtube comments

All of which has gotten me about 50+ to join my waitlist for jemsplash.com so far.

Goal: 200-250 in waitlist by end of the month.

  1. 4

    I really like this article:
    https://www.indiehackers.com/article/how-to-find-your-earliest-users-5df383c1ad

    Interesting stories of how 16 businesses got their first customers. The methods that each had success with varied wildly!

    My favorite quote: "...putting the right product with the right message in front of the right users."

    1. 2

      Thanks @AndrewV it was really helpful!

      1. 1

        I've been collecting, categorizing, and summarizing great links I've seen on entrepreneurship for a while. I really need to get that mini site out and available to people haha

        1. 1

          Hi Andrew, regarding your notes on entrepreneurship, could I ask that you take a look at the landing page for the Under Cloud and let me know what you think of the basic premise in relation to what you've been doing.

          1. 1

            Looks cool. But nah, I just created a little list of tagged, sorted links so I can build a little mini site.

            1. 1

              Andrew, thanks for feedback.

    2. 2

      Hey Andrew! Thank you so much I am reading it now :)

    3. 1

      Riding on this comment. This is a curated list of 100 startups and their first users' growth story I published a couple of weeks back - https://bridgeurl.com/first-users

  2. 3

    I mainly engage on Twitter, but then again I'm building a Twitter growth tool.

    My first 10 or so customers actually came from Direct DM.

    Most people call it spam, but guess what? It worked for me.

    After that, it's just a matter of engaging, commenting on other influencers, scheduling viral content, and using a bunch of fancy Twitter growth hacking tricks, like automatically retweeting my evergreen tweets in the background and auto-plugging my promotional tweet to any content that became viral.

    All that leads to profile visits and thus also landing page visits, which I can convert to users and customers.

    My visit-to-trial conversion rate is 12%, which isn't too shabby at all, while my trial-to-upgrade rate is 11%, which again isn't too bad, thus showing that Twitter converts.

    1. 1

      It's only SPAM if they don't like the message ;-)

      Really, I think the effort you put into it determines whether it feels spammy.

      Clearly blasted out an automated message to anyone who might have something to do with your product? I think that's spam.

      As soon as they show they've done something beyond manually throwing me in a list, I don't consider it spam anymore. But some people have a higher bar.

      My thoughts have probably also changed since seeing how hard it is to do direct outreach :)

  3. 2

    I mostly do the same as you do. You mentioned the content creators groups on FB. Can you mention some? I'm really curious.

  4. 2

    Unfortunately this is still easier saisd than done. Creating a community is a time consumng process to beginn with, especially when you start at 0

    1. 1

      Well I did start at 0 :) it starts with your strategy. Twitter has been my greatest opportunity to getting users in the waitlist. Even if this doesn't convert to users post launch, I am creating quite some noise.

      1. 1

        Cool! I had more success with Quora, Twitter isn´t working for my niche.

  5. 2

    Hi @breedaddy, this is a great question. As @Dinesht has mentioned, you seem to be doing all the right things. I am doing a lot of the same with Startup Sanctuary. The consistency in building these acquisition channels is key. I also think you don't want to spread yourself too thin, especially in the beginning. I have focused a lot on Indie Hackers over the past 2 months and am beginning to build out instagram and twitter now also.

    I find that I have learned the process of how to acquire followers by going deep on one channel, that I can now use to acquire followers on these other channels too.

    Keep up the great work.

    1. 2

      I love what you are doing here as well! Beautiful UI by the way :) let's stay in touch. What's your Twitter?

      1. 1

        Thanks @breedaddy. I see you found me on Twitter too haha

  6. 2

    Hi Breee,

    I think you already doing some great work, I’d remain consistent on these channels, these will further help you to grow your list.

    You can try to do some gust posting. Also try to make some win win deal with top bloggers of your niche, it will help you get more traffic and signups.

    1. 1

      Completely agree, I struggle with this. I have no clue how to go about guest post/blog outreach :(

      going to check out some videos on this.

  7. 1

    Link dropping the product in every indie hackers comment adding no or little value to the discussion :-D

  8. 1

    This really depends on your startup. On Windsor.io we had over 100 email signups in the first month with very little effort. It was mostly about posting a link to our webpage in the right place, and making a very convincing landing page for someone who related to the problem.

    For us, the right place was accelerator forums (like the community page on Startup School, or the YC Slack). We also get a lot of landing page views coming from a software architecture subreddit to one of our engineering blog posts.

    I think it's more important to focus on a few channels that work for you rather than trying to spread out across many

  9. 1

    It depends on the stages of growth. We did something similar to you for earlier growth or to drum up interest. But now that we've opened our beta, we're really doubling down on who our ideal customer is.

    Now that we have that, our goal is to talk to as many of them as possible.

    So our strategy for the next few months is to really just prospect and onboard customers using a cold / warm approach, rather than focus on inbound.

    Inbound gets built over time. Our customers are sales people. Email + LinkedIn is our bread and butter right now.

    We have other customer profiles that can use us too: freelancers, consultants, etc.

    But we don't want to spread ourselves too thin. One market segment at a time.

  10. 1

    My strategy for UptimeMate is pretty simple.

    • Build a simple landing page, where you explain the benefits of your product. Add a subscribe to waiting list form.
    • Promote your landing page on LinkedIn, so that your close friends and business relations know about your upcoming plans.
    • Tweet about the tech stack you are using. That was our biggest source of sign-ups. Tweet from me and one Tweet from my co-founder
    • Register your product on Betalist e.t.c.

    We now have more then 500 sign-ups for UptimeMate. Without much work and we spend only $100,- on few listing pages.

    Good luck with your product

    1. 1

      This was super insightful, I was thinking about adding JemSplash to Betalist. Thank you so so much and wishing you the best with your startup.

  11. 1

    Hi! Congrats on your current results) have some questions - what exactly are you doing? ) Sorry, but I couldn't get your VP from landing)

    1. 1

      Jemsplash.com is an alternative for Gumroad.com

      It allows users to sell their digital products, ebooks, guides, pdfs, software licenses, themes, etc. We will have lower transaction fees then our competitors and more upsell features in our launch and following.

  12. 1

    Post your startup on Betalist. It got me around 200 signups to my waitlist.

    LinkedIn is a good source as well, but you'd need to a good network to have an impact within your time frame.

    I wonder if you can pitch yourself as a guest for some podcasts as well.

    1. 1

      Good idea! Do you suggest I submit my startup now to get users to sign up for the waitlist, or should I submit when jemsplash.com is in Beta?

      1. 1

        I'd post now since the site is geared more towards waitlist products.

        It can also take up to a month for them to add you if you choose their free plan.

  13. 1

    Hey Breeee,

    The engagement through social channels is quite straight forward, though I wanted to ask what do you do to create a community - is it just a final goal of your efforts or do you use separate channels dedicated only to your community?

    1. 1

      Great question Gabriele, in order to create a community I have focused on creating the right funnel. Lately, I have been getting a lot of traction on Twitter. That traffic then convinces users to sign up for jemsplash.com. Then, an automated email is sent once they sign up leading them to my Facebook Group for Content Creators. I just started, and it's working out pretty okay. I also have been doing the same in Slack Channels, IH, Reddit, Quora, and searching for more communities. The goal is to build up a community of Content Creators even post launch because my Saas startups are perfect for them.

      This community serves Content Creators at large :) Developers, Authors, Bloggers, Artists, Designers, etc. The data has been real, I love seeing how diverse and non exclusive the community of content creation has grown too.

      1. 1

        This looks like a great plan, good luck!

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