Be Your Own Best User | Hacker News Reader

Be Your Own Best User

kylewritescode.com

28 pointsmagic643510 comments

Open articleView on HN

Great post.

It's easy to get downheartened when you've just released a new project and you're only getting 1 or 2 users per day.

What you have to remember though is that almost all successful blogs, sites, applications started off like this.

I bet the likes of Instagram, Twitter, Blogger were a ghost town for ages before taking off.

Though Facebook went viral really quickly, I bet Zuckerbergs heart skipped a beat the first time someone signed up.

Kyle, can you tell us more about that early period when the first handful of visitors started using the site? How did they find you?

Thank you. You're very right -- it's so easy to get discouraged at the apparent lack of activity in any early product, no matter how jazzed you might be about it. It's also easy to get caught up in the "if you build it they will come" mindset. Sadly, this seems to be rarely the case, even for the best of products. (Though as adamtmca notes, it's certainly possible!)

The first few 100 users of Forrst were all my friends and colleagues, and theirs as well. I invited folks I trusted would give me raw, honest feedback, and I trusted them to invite similarly-minded people. The next ~1,500 users came from this post: http://thinkvitamin.com/design/forrst-finds-designers-who-co...

Instagram hit a million users in about 90 days.

Let me suggest an opposite approach: don't be your best user.

Consider: you are an entreprenur/hacker. If you are also your best user, then your best user is an entrepreneur/hacker.

This leads to several undesirable effects. For one, your users will value the product less because they could write it themselves (or they think they could). For another, you're far more likely to end up in a crowded space with many competitors, because the need and the capability to satisfy the need are coincident in the same people. And for another, you may end up with a product that's tailored to the relatively small niche of "hackers", and unfit for wider audiences.

Now contrast with a different scenario: go find some people with a problem and money to throw at it, but no expertise in solving the problem. Learn about their problem. Most likely you will be horrified at what passes for "information technology" in their world. When you present your solution, they will look on it as magic, and you as some technology god.

This is a very good point. Forrst's community is geared towards other entrepreneurs and hackers, so the fact that Kyle was his own best user actually helped perpetuate the site's growth, while this wouldn't have worked as well with other less hacker-minded sites. It all depends on what kinds of people you want to attract and what kind of community you want to build.

Do you know how much the e-book will sell for?

Initially I was thinking no more than a dollar or two, maybe with a free/preview version which would include a few selected chapters. On the other hand, I think this hopefully will be highly valuable to a lot of folks, so it may end up being higher. (And thanks to Alex for helping me see the light on that.)

Please don't undervalue yourself like that. This kind of experience and insight is worth much more than "a buck or two".

Appreciate that, Alex. I think you're probably right.

Set the minimum to one or two dollar and let the reader choose to pay more. You will be surprised how much are people willing to pay for good content (They know its great content, because of the great free preview.).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com