Ask HN: How do you drive traffic to a startup pre-launch landing page?

Try to hit the jackpot. Reach out to people with large Twitter followings who might be interested. One tweet can bring in as many hits as you pestering your personal network of people who might not even be the target audience. Also do some Google searches and leave useful comments on blog posts where your product could come in useful. I’m launching a private forum service for example, I google for people asking how to make a forum software configured to be private. Boom, there’s me pointing out www.oath.is - my new startup blabla.

Just some ideas.

Use your existing networks. When we had our initial landing page up for matchist (http://matchist.com), my co-founder and I used our networks to spread the word. That consisted of our Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and other personal connections via email.

We also had an existing community from our other company, Entrepreneurs Unpluggd, which was actually our target customer base, so we sent out some emails to them as well.

For all intents and purposes you don't. People that already have substantial followings can drive traffic for you. If you are a normal person, you can grind out signups, but those people will forget who are you by the time you launch.

So, what's a person to do? Well, build a product worth using. Get a few people using it and enable them to spread the word for you.

Good luck!