Early User Growth
Helping founders get their early users the right way
After reaching #1 of the day on ProductHunt last week with a collection of how successful companies got their first users, the number of sign-ups for Early User Growth skyrocketed in the last week.
Last night Early User Growth reached its 1,000th pre-launch sign-up, meaning that - by now - over a thousand people are interested in the free course on how to get your first 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 users for your startup/project.
Here's what really helped bump that number up:
- I asked my own network to check out the ProductHunt launch to get initial upvotes
- I posted in over 25 Startup-related Facebook & Slack Groups about the launch
- I emailed my existing list about the launch
- Went viral on Twitter in Saudi-Arabia and Japan
- Got a few media mentions about the collection
- Reached the #1 spot on ProductHunt so got mentioned in the daily ProductHunt newsletter
- Reached the #3 spot for the week on ProductHunt so I again got mentioned in the weekly ProductHunt newsletter
- I posted my launch to IndieHackers as a milestone
A total of 18,000 people visited the page in the past 7 days.
But traffic is worthless if you aren't turning it into something useful, which for me was sign-ups for the free course on early user growth.
So the page contained 4 different email opt-ins:
- 2 static opt-in forms (one at the start, one at the end)
- 1 opt-in pop-up after being on the page for 15 seconds
- 1 opt-in pop-up after being on the page for 45 seconds
I had a sign-up rate of around 4.5%
I also built a small tool that registers if someone Tweets about the course after signing up so I can send them a bonus chapter in the future. They sign up, they tweet, they verify their username, and they're added to the list of "bonus" sign-ups.
This helped to further get the word out on Twitter.
Some actionable learnings:
- Launching on ProductHunt alone is not enough, you need to get the word out that you've launched. Find groups that are related to ProductHunt/Tech enthusiasts, and introduce yourself and talk about your launch.
- Thank people that share your content - I've sent dozens of emails, tweets, messages on platforms thanking people for sharing my content. They often ended up signing up for the course afterward once they went back to the site.
- Ask your network to help you. I had lots of help on launch day, this really helped to spread the word and get so much more from the launch. Huge thanks to @harrydry, Menno, @jorisderuiter, @leonpals (for hunting!), Chris, Bosko, Ralph, Paul, Mark, Alex, Timo, Jeff, Jurgen, Zach, Josh, @franklagendijk and many others that made it happen. I really appreciate it
- Prepare your launch. Probably the most important one. I ended up finishing everything around 2 am my time the night before and made sure to be back at the office at 8 am so I could launch at 9 am (which is midnight in San Francisco). Had to finish a few last things that morning, ended up launching around 930 am. If I didn't prepare, I definitely would've seen much worse results.
- Post your launch to IndieHackers. I was on the front page for a long time with my launch, which definitely helped to get more eyes on it and increased the number of upvotes.
I will do a complete write-up of the things I have learned from this launch soon (including my launch strategy) and will post it on IndieHackers as well. If you have any questions, definitely feel free to reach out to me :) Always happy to help.
If you're interested in learning more about how to get your first 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000 users, feel free to sign up for the free 2-week email course at https://earlyusergrowth.com
The course is launching soon.
How did billion-dollar companies get their first users? Surprisingly, it's not much different than most companies do today.
Though you might think they started out with millions to get their first users, they often took small steps to get there.
As part of my free email course on Early User Growth, I went out and researched how successful companies got their first users.
And today I launched that collection on ProductHunt -> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/startup-first-users
Feel free to check it out, and if you enjoy it than an upvote is always appreciated.
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Just spend the morning reading through these. Awesome resource. Definitely something I will revisit.
People fall into the trap of copying big companies now. But if you're an Indie Hacker you'll learn far more by copying the techniques these companies used to get started in the first place.
Also some very nice "side project marketing" for Early User Growth!
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Thanks, Harry! Glad you liked it! I agree, I think most people go for so-called 'growth hacks' too quickly. Your first users should come in batches, not thousands at once - at least not for most products.
So that was my goal with this list: to show people that almost every company started out small, no matter how big they are today. If you're feeling small today, it does not mean you won't be able to grow into a bigger company someday.
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and it's already gaining momentum on ProductHunt!
Hope more hackers will see this and learn from the stories.-
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Yeah, it has done incredibly well on PH today
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Wow! This is an amazingly valuable tool. Thanks so much.
Would love to see some B2B and enterprise co's Something like Oracle, IBM, WorkDay, etc.
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Interesting idea. This captures a snippet of what companies did. I would like to see a deep-dive a bit more into that process.
Btw, the date for Facebook launch is incorrect incorrect. It should be 2004.
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Haven't responded this yet - but thanks for pointing out the FB launch date - changed it right away 5 days ago but never thanked you. So, again, appreciate you pointing it out :)
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I will read it in the next few days, I have upvoted it for now
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Thanks for upvoting it! Hope you like reading it ;)
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This will be a rocketship.
Getting early adopters is the main point of suffering for most of us indie hackers.
Thanks for helping with that.-
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Thanks for the comment - glad to hear that you liked it!
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Upvoted! Great resource and interesting/encouraging to read how many companies got their first users with free, non-scalable strategies, that could be leveraged by lots of indie makers as well to get initial traction/feedback etc.
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Thanks for the reply - glad you liked it! Traction is always the hardest but even before traction you should just focus on getting the first 1-10 on board. That'll teach you what matters to your users, why your product fixes their problems and understand where you might reach similar people like them to start creating traction.
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Interesting reading - upvoted!
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Glad you liked it - thanks for the upvote!
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Awesome! Good luck Frank!
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Thank you, Joris!
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Alright, 35/1,000 reached, so 3.5% there. 965 to go :)
UPDATE: Incredible, got 20 sign-ups just today, so we're at 55 now!
I haven't even touched my launching strategy yet but Early User Growth has reached its first 35 sign-ups as of last night.
Till now it has just been a simple landing page without all the upcoming features I am going to add. But I'm extremely happy to see people are signing up.
All I've done so far is:
- Post updates on Indiehackers
- Reply with my site in comments in appropriate topics on IH
- Set up a Twitter account
- Post in the 'Launch my startup' thread on Reddit/r/startup
My launch strategy is about 5 pages long with all types of marketing strategies, and I am really excited to start launching the different types of strategies soon. In the end, it's all about providing value to people, so that's the core of the strategy.
If you're also interested in learning more about how to get your first 10, 100 or 1000 users, feel free to sign up for the free 2-week email course at https://earlyusergrowth.com
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Hi Frank! I would like to see what makes you credible on the website. I love the topic but I usually sign up to get advice from people who've "been there & done that". Some additional information that speaks to your experience in larger detail than "I've helped startups" would be valuable, at least in my eyes. My 2 cents :)
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Hey, thanks for the reply!
Yes, I've thought about that but also wanted to make sure the copy on the site is short and sweet. In case you need a little push to sign up right now, I'm happy to already share some of my experience:
- Helped a local B2C real estate startup go from 0 to 14,000 users
- Got the first 7,000 users for a B2C interior startup starting at 0
- Helped a B2B tech company increase week-on-week growth by 30% for several weeks in a row
- Created a low-budget PR campaign for a B2B marketing company to be featured on sites like The Next Web and Forbes
The learnings from these campaigns, and others, will be the core of the free course on https://EarlyUserGrowth.com: how can you figure out the right strategy for your own company and what is the step by step guide to get there? (And obviously: what are some things you shouldn't do?)
If you have any other questions, feel free to hit me up!
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Short and sweet, I like it!
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Nice @FrankHeijdenrijk! Looking forward reading more on your stories and advices.
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Well done and very useful product!
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Congrats! I just launched my first landing page (https://Widget.Build) so I am glad to hear you are having success.
Are you tracking analytics to see where people are converting from?
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I'm getting my ass kicked by flutter_bloc right now! So You've got a new subscriber!
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Congrats Frank!
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Nice landing page, keep us posted!
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Pretty Amazing Frank!
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Hi Frank! This looks very promising. Can't wait until your first article is up!
August will be dedicated to writing the free email course for https://earlyusergrowth.com. So I decided to already to block off days so I can work on writing the different chapters.
Because most projects like this take 3x the amount of time you'd expect, I already blocked 3 times the amount of time I believe I need to write it (let's just hope it's not actually 3x that now - but if that's what it takes to create a fantastic course, so be it).
Scrolling through BetaList every now and then myself and have signed up for many companies through it, so I decided to submit http://earlyusergrowth.com to BetaList as well.
Running through the whole submission process was absolutely flawless and definitely like the design Marc Kohlbrugge used for this funnel.
If you're interested in getting users early, definitely submit your startup/project to BetaList (https://betalist.com)
And if you want to learn more about getting your early users, feel free to sign up for the free email course at http://earlyusergrowth.com
After going through interviews with people that struggle with early user growth, I made an outline of what the free email course should contain.
The outline contains the pain points when you're starting out, including several strategies on how to deal with these pain points.
Also struggling with early user growth? Sign up here -> http://earlyusergrowth.com
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Site is down?
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Yeah looks like it was down, should be up again -> http://earlyusergrowth.com
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To make sure I publish the right kind of content on https://EarlyUserGrowth.com I need to understand what the fundamental issue is with makers and developers regarding getting their early users.
I've therefore reached out to a few dozen makers and developers to ask them a few questions regarding their experience. This has already given me some good insights into what people really struggle with when they're launching a product.
Obviously I wouldn't be able to write the right content if I didn't practice what I preached, so having early user conversations was essential to make sure that EarlyUserGrowth will be the right place for people to actually find the content they should be reading.
After trying at least 60 other potential domain names, the domain name https://EarlyUserGrowth.com was not taken, so I registered this domain name for this project.
I then quickly put together a simple landing page where people can sign up to receive an email once the first article is live.
Total time invested: probably 40 minutes, along with $10 to buy the domain name. It doesn't take years and millions of dollars to change people's mindset, it just requires some action.
December 6th marks the day that the idea for Early User Growth was born.
One thing I have noticed over the last few years is that a ton of people have great ideas, put a lot of time into building it and then have a hard time finding the right people to use it and pay for it once they've launched.
"But everybody thought it was a great idea" is a sentence you then often hear. People are focused on what other people - like their friends and family - think of it. Instead, they should focus on the end user.
Since a lot of makers have a hard time figuring that out, Early User Growth is there to help them get the right knowledge necessary to launch successful products.
17 Comments
Would be happy if you share entrepreneurship groups you were talking about in the post!
Bet these aren't just some groups, probably they are active and you were active in them for a while before posting?
Also, how did you go viral on Saudi and Japanese Twitter??
Hey!
Some are smaller private groups, others are mainly focused on startups. I had joined these in the past to just stay up-to-date on what startups around the globe are doing and to help people when they're struggling with early user growth.
You can find most of them by simply looking for "Startup [city]" to find the ones around you. I also joined a bunch that were not directly near me but still seemed interesting. Can highly recommend this, even if it's not your target audience, cause it helped me turn my Facebook feed into valuable content rather than random updates with filtered pictures from friends.
I ended up going viral in Saudi Arabia and Japan because people there shared the article on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/econabdullah/status/1175382058354511872
https://twitter.com/Basem_A/status/1176065450721140736
https://twitter.com/kajikent/status/1174853048796999680
Was more of a random addition, didn't plan on it.
Yeah, I would be interested in a rough number and how much time/energy was spent in the groups before making the ask.
I think this is actually important to know. I find myself needing to spend most of my energy coding https://storycreatorapp.com/ that I need to optimize the time spent on social media.
My intuition says 1-3 facebook groups, 1-3 Linkedin groups, and 1-3 forums. Posting on those 3-7 times a week for about a month or so. How do those numbers sound too much or too little?
Congrats on the success.
Just replied to the top comment with some answers.
In your case, with your product, I'd join Influencer groups, share your content and engage with other posts. That has always helped me.
Let me know when you're out of the WIP phase and launch the product; happy to help to brainstorm some ideas to get your first users.
By the way: groups aren't a blueprint for success. It just worked in my case because I know that my target audience is there. It could well be that instead of groups, for you it might be sending DM's on Insta or maybe even creating your own group and inviting influencers - then promote your product later once the community starts gaining some traction.
Great write up Frank! Very nice example of text book side project marketing. Top idea. Top execution!
I am excited to follow along your journey! I just subscribed and am also pretty eager for your content! Thanks for adding value to the Indie Hacker community! I am so grateful that I stumbled upon your page.
I think there could be a real benefit of this sort of thing as a paid service. Traditional marketing companies don't even come close to this - they seem to just charge a fortune to spend more on advertising and come across as inauthentic.
In theory it would be great to do this sort of networking myself but don't have the time between working as a full time developer and working on my Indie project. It's not the knowledge that's a showstopper but the time needed to implement it.
Thank you for the post! I too am working on such a pre-launch and this would definitelya ct as a checklist. I just have one question:
Given you would have worked on similar pre-launches earlier too, what do you think about the sign-up rate of 4.5%? Is it above-par/ below-par? What factors would you consider while making the decision?
I think 4.5% is good and it beat my estimation beforehand. Basically they're landing on a page related to the course but that's not the initial proposition they're coming for when clicking the link to the /startups page. Once you're there, you'll see the pop-ups and opt-in forms for the course.
On the home page, I get around an 11.5% sign-up rate. But most people that go to the main page already know what they're going to find, as opposed to the /startups page.
That is great! Fantastic results in homepage sign-ups. I see that the current homepage consists of a paragraph of information about each startup.
Will wait to read more about startups grew in the early phases in the course. Would definitely be more valuable to all your subscribers.
Look forward :)
Great article. Thanks for sharing.
Great article, thanks for sharing all of the steps. I really love the idea of your little Twitter widget – definitely need to build something similar :)
Really cool post :).
One of the reasons I found it so interesting is because it really does give an insiders perspective into the 'Follow what successful people do not what they say'.
Clearly your hustle has been working out - and it sets a new standard for anyone else launching a similar type of business.
I signed up for your course - best of luck bro!
Wow, 1k sign-ups prelaunch. Congrats, never thought it would be possible! I tried with one of my projects https://www.linuxjobs.io sign-ups prelaunch and only retrieve 50 signups. And I was happy to get them :)
Congratz bro!!!
Awesome, congrats man!
Awesome, congrats man!
EDIT: Woops, double comment.
This comment was deleted 6 years ago