I bet the companies using inventive ways to get their first users like the ones listed in the article are in the minority (but certainly make for more interesting stories to read/write about).

I launched a SaaS product recently, and after a pretty successful HN launch, I've been trying different ways of marketing.

What I learned, and this may be obvious to many, is that the boring path of getting users by gamifying SEO actually works. I firmly believe that you can get your first 1K visitors by just using the formula of writing content. You don't even have to be good at writing -- target some keywords, use good SEO hygiene, have a high enough word count, and people will at least come.

I pumped out some mediocre blog posts with clickbaity titles [1] just to test it, and I was surprised to see it work, bringing in consistent weekly traffic. A popular Chinese blogger including a one-liner about my product in his blog in February is the sole source that brings ~1-2 Chinese users (actually signed up) to my app every day 3 months later.

[1] https://terrastruct.com/blog/10-tips-diagrams-system-design-...