What is the best way to attract your first 10k users?

5 points·wyall··4 comments

How do your attract your first 10k users especially when faced with a chicken-and-egg situation such as an ad network, for example?

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There are a few interesting answers in the 'Startup Traction' topic on Quora [1].

Lots of them mention having a great product that solves a real problem, having a content-rich blog to drive traffic, inviting friends and some PR. (Maybe the friends one isn't so applicable to an ad network!)

[1]: https://www.quora.com/Startup-Traction

For an ad network, why not set up niche websites in-house to serve on first? This involves time developing good content and ranking in search engines but could solve one side of the chicken-egg problem. You could help yourself by making a niche site specific to website owners, using it as both a seed ad server and a way to build your ad server-base.

Convincing business owners to invest in advertising that is not being served anywhere would be difficult, even if CPC-only.

Good Question.

i suggest you to go and check Kilometer's blog. Kilometer is now building a new startup, and they are documenting their journey from an idea to 1000 customers. http://www.kilometer.io/blog/

Ad Network?

Contact as may publishers as you can and offer them INSANE payouts for serving your ads. That way you get some initial movement.

Then go to Affiliate Marketing Forums and promote your traffic source there. Affiliates will eat it up if you manage to get some volume.

Affiliates are eager to test out virgin traffic sources.

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