Ask HN: How to get traction? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to get traction?

10 pointsjwegan10 comments

I'm wondering how you go from 0 users to your first 1,000 users, especially if it is for a service that is not really similar anything else. I've read the blog by the duck duck go guy, but I didn't feel like I had a satisfactory answer.

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Without knowing what kind of service you're providing, it will be hard for many to offer any advice, or potentially good tactic ideas for you.

Some general advice I'd provide is:

- Figure out the characteristics of your users. What kinds of people have the problem you're solving? Be as specific as possible, and segment into multiple groups. Think about age, gender, interests, activities, group memberships, places.

- What kind of tools and services do those people already use? How do those services get their users?

- Where can your different types of users already be found? What communities are they part of? What types of sites do they frequent? http://quantcast.com is a great tool for this. This list: http://socialmediaanswers.com/niche-social-networking-sites/ and lists like it are another good one.

- What kind of things do your potential users talk about? Can you find them using http://search.twitter.com and http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch ?

Good luck!

>I'm wondering how you go from 0 users to your first 1,000 users, especially if it is for a service that is not really similar anything else.

You don't approach the problem backwards, that's how.

A "product" without a need is like an answer without a question. You should always have, at minimum, at least 1 user that finds the product useful before you even develop anything.

Assuming you have a least one person who is having a problem solved by your product, the issue then becomes to find other people with the same problem. Your product should sell itself to them.

What problem does your service solve?

Who has that problem?

Go introduce your problem to them. If this model doesn't fit for whatever "but, but" you can come up with, I would humbly suggest abandoning this product and focusing on another.

Well the product does have a need. It is a replacement for something I've been doing in an ad-hoc way for a while now. I would use what I'm planning on making even if it never took off, but I figured it would be pretty cool if I could get other people to use it too.

It is a tool oriented toward programmers and from what people have been saying it seems like you just have to get it out there and also combine it with a little advertising for things programmers might search for.

Why don't you just show us what you've made? We seem to be your target market anyway.

I plan to :), but I just started working on it. I figured I would solicit feedback from HN when I finish in a week or two once I have an initial version.

If you're at zero, just try to get to 10 first. Then go for 100. Think small, get feedback, and improve. I think Paul Buchheit said that a startup's first goal is to reach 100 passionate users.

In one word: Marketing.

Either Organic (SEO), Social media (Twitter, Facebook, Blog posts) or PPC (AdWords, Ads on relevant blogs).

[Link removed, didn't realize was same as mentioned.]

If your service is truly unique you might find some good rates on keywords.

Actually I found that link useful. I hadn't read that post. I was referring more to his book on getting traction from which he has links to a bunch of interviews.

Link I'm referring to so the original commenter doesn't have to re-edit: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/04/ways-to-get-100-...

-create something free to give away and reach out to popular bloggers to ask for reviews

-join niche forums and participate

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