How to attract users to your startup
The most frequent question I hear from young entrepreneurs is “How did I get users?”
And that's how I do it.
')
I made a blog with 5 million readers, an advertising exchange that spans more people than Facebook, wrote a book that was 12th on Amazon, and did a whole bunch of all sorts of different strange things that are popular and bring money . I created a new growing social shopping company . I am an angel investor and advisor in a dozen different companies and one university . I attend several magazine covers here (estimate the number of views and comments of people who would like their “daddy to be as cool” as me).
The best sites seem to fly magically by themselves. The truth is that each site requires some kick to get the first 10-100 thousand users. Consider this a list of accelerator kicks for your business. But remember that "nothing kills a bad product faster than good marketing." Now you are warned.
In April 2000, I launched Fuckedcompany.com, a blog that described the crash of dot-coms. The blog had 5 million readers per month, a decent income and in the end I sold it.
Blog marketing started when I joined a large online web development community. “Hey, look at this ass, what a freak,” I wrote with a link to my website. This was the beginning of a hot debate about my blog. Hundreds participated - mostly gratefully, some with hate. I elegantly walked out of the discussion and only watched as 24,000 new users registered on the blog this week. There is a line between spam and a useful contribution - I think I was able to keep from moving the line.
With Blippy.com, we also chose a controversial path. Instead of telling people “this is a good site to tell friends which restaurants you go to” (which Blippy did), we made a more ambiguous message on the topic “show everyone your credit card statements”. This led to a lot of attention and PR (more about this in the “Press” section below).
Remember that your product does not have to be ambiguous to create controversy around it. If you compose electronic music hang in the company of country lovers. They will hate you, and that's good. If it brings at least one new user to a dozen haters, I will do it.
Almost everything can lead to disputes and controversy. If there is nothing controversial around your product, it’s boring.
Importers of address books, auto-tweets, “send it to 5 friends and get special access,” etc. I have never been a fan of such things, but they are popular.
One of my sites, Fast140, sent a tweet when it was first used (indicating that it would do so). My other site Mobog.com imported the address book and allowed me to invite everyone you know. Importers of address books ceased to be effective around 2007, and I should have removed it already.
If you are creating apps for Facebook or something using Facebook Connect or Twitter, these things can still be effective, although the window of opportunity is already closing for them.
Pay people to drive other users. This works naturally in cases where you keep a site with a paid access.
One of my sites, Hitmelater.com has an affiliate program. It works fine. Supporting a successful affiliate program is more work than it seems. You can’t just post a link for affiliates and wait. Instead, you need to look for affiliates, teach them, hold promotions and stimulate them. The best way to get an idea of how a good affiliate program works is to join this or this .
It is even possible to find an affiliate program manager who will work only for a percentage.
What is good with search engines is that you don’t need to do anything — if you have a good service or good content, Google will take care of people finding it.
Tweaks can help increase their number. But at the beginning of a startup, a waste of time on SEO seems empty. The gain is unlikely to be significant.
My TinyLetter free mailing service is on the first page of Google for a free mailing request (notice what I did?). All I had to do was give the site a good tag and Google did the rest.
Press is a great way to get new users. The easiest way to be mentioned in an article is to tell a journalist a good story about your idea. Do not write press releases. Do not hire a PR firm.
Instead, think about the story you yourself would like to read. Choose a journalist you like who could potentially want to write it. Tell him the idea in 2-3 sentences. Contact him via e-mail. If you do not know his address - guess it. Ping him on Twitter and Facebook.
If the author does not respond - try with another. But with only one at a time, they do not like when the same story is given to their competitors.
Also - tell not just a story about your company, gain the trust of a journalist by disinterestedly providing him with finds and ideas for articles not related to you. Karma!
Bad idea of the article: “I launched the thing and you should write about it.”
Good idea article: “Facebook broke something. And by the way, this has to do with my shnyage. ”
Good idea article: "I just got 20 million to launch my stuff."
Good idea of the article: "My competitor got 20 million, but my stuff is better."
Good idea article: "Shnyaga my competitor is unreliable and can kill you."
Good idea of the article: “I’m not at all sure that my shnyaga is legal.”
Ask someone famous (really famous or at least on the Internet) to use your site. Let him write a tweet about this or make a video on Youtube.
Contact him through his manager, a PR firm, a lawyer (does not interfere with a little google), Facebook, Twitter, a page on MySpace (still effective), information on Whois, etc.
Offer him a combination of nothing, money and / or appeal to his objectivity.
Let the big company promote you. At Blippy, we made Sephora advertise us for free on our Facebook page with 1 million fans, just because we did support them on our website.
BillShrink got T-Mobile to say “if you don’t believe we are the cheapest, go check on BillShrink.com, an independent service.”
Think about something cool that can be done with a large company and contact their employees on LinkedIn, Facebook through BranchOut , which is free and better for this task. (clarification: I am a BranchOut investor).
Conferences can be tedious, but they helped launch a number of companies successfully.
Offline events work best when your product is tied to the real world. Evite started with country conferences, with the condition that you have to sign up to participate using Evite. Yelp did something similar too.
Most party launches (and SXSW conferences) are completely ineffective at getting new users.
Read about the famous Twitter screen at the SXSW conference.
I know a company that promoted a game called "Shrooms" by distributing sachets of (harmless) mushrooms at a gaming conference, almost bringing the matter to arrest.
Richard Branson drove a tank through Times Square in front of a huge Coke billboard to advertise Virgin Cola (not sure if it actually worked). Hugh Hefner bought an estate in Los Angeles and invited celebrities to hang out with naked people there.
Groupon promotes online advertising with a positive ROI (yes, not creatively, but it works). YouTube allows you to place semi-legal content on MySpace pages. Facebook and Digg made widgets, and now thousands of sites use them with a link to them.
I hope you enjoyed exploring these ways to promote your site. Final tip: As entrepreneurs, we are immersed in our products. Try to forget for a week or more about the product itself and instead dive well into the thought of promoting it.
Thank you for reading.
- pud
From translator
Although the article came out quite recently, but it turned out that we in SkyDNS had already used most of these tips in absentia before reading them and were able to increase our user base well over the last month. Here, before the curse of competitors did not fall, and everything else described was applied with really good results. So we can say that everything described is verified by personal experience.
Read more about Filipe Kaplan at http://www.facebook.com/pudfans
And that's how I do it.
About me
(you feel a strange feeling about describing yourself, but if you read it and wonder who this guy is ... in fact, I'm just trying to help).')
I made a blog with 5 million readers, an advertising exchange that spans more people than Facebook, wrote a book that was 12th on Amazon, and did a whole bunch of all sorts of different strange things that are popular and bring money . I created a new growing social shopping company . I am an angel investor and advisor in a dozen different companies and one university . I attend several magazine covers here (estimate the number of views and comments of people who would like their “daddy to be as cool” as me).
Introduction
The best sites seem to fly magically by themselves. The truth is that each site requires some kick to get the first 10-100 thousand users. Consider this a list of accelerator kicks for your business. But remember that "nothing kills a bad product faster than good marketing." Now you are warned.
Start of discussion
In April 2000, I launched Fuckedcompany.com, a blog that described the crash of dot-coms. The blog had 5 million readers per month, a decent income and in the end I sold it.
Blog marketing started when I joined a large online web development community. “Hey, look at this ass, what a freak,” I wrote with a link to my website. This was the beginning of a hot debate about my blog. Hundreds participated - mostly gratefully, some with hate. I elegantly walked out of the discussion and only watched as 24,000 new users registered on the blog this week. There is a line between spam and a useful contribution - I think I was able to keep from moving the line.
With Blippy.com, we also chose a controversial path. Instead of telling people “this is a good site to tell friends which restaurants you go to” (which Blippy did), we made a more ambiguous message on the topic “show everyone your credit card statements”. This led to a lot of attention and PR (more about this in the “Press” section below).
Remember that your product does not have to be ambiguous to create controversy around it. If you compose electronic music hang in the company of country lovers. They will hate you, and that's good. If it brings at least one new user to a dozen haters, I will do it.
Almost everything can lead to disputes and controversy. If there is nothing controversial around your product, it’s boring.
Virus stuff
Importers of address books, auto-tweets, “send it to 5 friends and get special access,” etc. I have never been a fan of such things, but they are popular.
One of my sites, Fast140, sent a tweet when it was first used (indicating that it would do so). My other site Mobog.com imported the address book and allowed me to invite everyone you know. Importers of address books ceased to be effective around 2007, and I should have removed it already.
If you are creating apps for Facebook or something using Facebook Connect or Twitter, these things can still be effective, although the window of opportunity is already closing for them.
Affiliate programs
Pay people to drive other users. This works naturally in cases where you keep a site with a paid access.
One of my sites, Hitmelater.com has an affiliate program. It works fine. Supporting a successful affiliate program is more work than it seems. You can’t just post a link for affiliates and wait. Instead, you need to look for affiliates, teach them, hold promotions and stimulate them. The best way to get an idea of how a good affiliate program works is to join this or this .
It is even possible to find an affiliate program manager who will work only for a percentage.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What is good with search engines is that you don’t need to do anything — if you have a good service or good content, Google will take care of people finding it.
Tweaks can help increase their number. But at the beginning of a startup, a waste of time on SEO seems empty. The gain is unlikely to be significant.
My TinyLetter free mailing service is on the first page of Google for a free mailing request (notice what I did?). All I had to do was give the site a good tag and Google did the rest.
Press
Press is a great way to get new users. The easiest way to be mentioned in an article is to tell a journalist a good story about your idea. Do not write press releases. Do not hire a PR firm.
Instead, think about the story you yourself would like to read. Choose a journalist you like who could potentially want to write it. Tell him the idea in 2-3 sentences. Contact him via e-mail. If you do not know his address - guess it. Ping him on Twitter and Facebook.
If the author does not respond - try with another. But with only one at a time, they do not like when the same story is given to their competitors.
Also - tell not just a story about your company, gain the trust of a journalist by disinterestedly providing him with finds and ideas for articles not related to you. Karma!
Bad idea of the article: “I launched the thing and you should write about it.”
Good idea article: “Facebook broke something. And by the way, this has to do with my shnyage. ”
Good idea article: "I just got 20 million to launch my stuff."
Good idea of the article: "My competitor got 20 million, but my stuff is better."
Good idea article: "Shnyaga my competitor is unreliable and can kill you."
Good idea of the article: “I’m not at all sure that my shnyaga is legal.”
Celebrity support
Ask someone famous (really famous or at least on the Internet) to use your site. Let him write a tweet about this or make a video on Youtube.
Contact him through his manager, a PR firm, a lawyer (does not interfere with a little google), Facebook, Twitter, a page on MySpace (still effective), information on Whois, etc.
Offer him a combination of nothing, money and / or appeal to his objectivity.
"Biz Dev"
Let the big company promote you. At Blippy, we made Sephora advertise us for free on our Facebook page with 1 million fans, just because we did support them on our website.
BillShrink got T-Mobile to say “if you don’t believe we are the cheapest, go check on BillShrink.com, an independent service.”
Think about something cool that can be done with a large company and contact their employees on LinkedIn, Facebook through BranchOut , which is free and better for this task. (clarification: I am a BranchOut investor).
Offline events
Conferences can be tedious, but they helped launch a number of companies successfully.
Offline events work best when your product is tied to the real world. Evite started with country conferences, with the condition that you have to sign up to participate using Evite. Yelp did something similar too.
Most party launches (and SXSW conferences) are completely ineffective at getting new users.
Be creative
Read about the famous Twitter screen at the SXSW conference.
I know a company that promoted a game called "Shrooms" by distributing sachets of (harmless) mushrooms at a gaming conference, almost bringing the matter to arrest.
Richard Branson drove a tank through Times Square in front of a huge Coke billboard to advertise Virgin Cola (not sure if it actually worked). Hugh Hefner bought an estate in Los Angeles and invited celebrities to hang out with naked people there.
Groupon promotes online advertising with a positive ROI (yes, not creatively, but it works). YouTube allows you to place semi-legal content on MySpace pages. Facebook and Digg made widgets, and now thousands of sites use them with a link to them.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed exploring these ways to promote your site. Final tip: As entrepreneurs, we are immersed in our products. Try to forget for a week or more about the product itself and instead dive well into the thought of promoting it.
Thank you for reading.
- pud
From translator
Although the article came out quite recently, but it turned out that we in SkyDNS had already used most of these tips in absentia before reading them and were able to increase our user base well over the last month. Here, before the curse of competitors did not fall, and everything else described was applied with really good results. So we can say that everything described is verified by personal experience.
Read more about Filipe Kaplan at http://www.facebook.com/pudfans
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/119566/
All Articles