How to attract users to your startup

Original author: Philip Kaplan
  • Transfer
The most common question I hear from young entrepreneurs is “How did I get users?”

And this is how I do it.

About me

(you feel a strange feeling from describing yourself, but if you read this 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 covers more people than Facebook, wrote a book that was the 12th on Amazon and did a whole bunch of all kinds of weird things that are popular and make 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 journalcovers and here (rate 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 take off magically on their own. The truth is that each site requires some kick in order to get the first 10-100 thousand users. Consider this a kick list of boosters to your business. But remember that "nothing kills a bad product faster than good marketing." You are now warned.

Start of discussion


In April 2000, I launched Fuckedcompany.com, a blog that described the collapse of dot coms. The blog had 5 million readers a month, a decent income and in the end I sold it.

Blog marketing started when I joined the large online community of web developers . “Hey look at this ass, what a freak,” I wrote with a link to my website. This was the start of a heated debate about my blog. Hundreds participated - mostly with gratitude, some with hatred. I elegantly got out of the discussion and only watched as 24,000 new users blogged this week. There is a line between spam and a useful contribution - I think I could refrain from crossing the line.

With Blippy.com, we have also chosen 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 great attention and PR (more about this below in the "Press" section).

Remember that your product does not have to be ambiguous at its core in order to create controversy around it. If you compose electronic music, hang out in a country lover community. They will hate you, and that’s good. If this brings at least one new user to a dozen haters, I will do it.

Almost everything can lead to controversy and controversy. If there is nothing controversial around your product - it's boring.

Viral stuff


Address book importers, 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 the first time it was used (indicating that it would do so). My other site Mobog.com imported the address book and allowed to invite everyone you know. Address book importers ceased to be effective around 2007, and I should have removed it already.

If you are creating applications for Facebook or something using Facebook Connect or Twitter, these things can still be effective, although the window of opportunities for them is already closing.

Affiliate Programs


Pay people to drive other users. This works naturally in cases where you have a paid access site.

One of my sites, Hitmelater.com, has an affiliate program. She works great. Supporting a successful affiliate program is more work than it sounds. You cannot just post a link to affiliates and wait. Instead, you need to look for affiliates, teach them, conduct 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’s 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 that people find it.

Seo tweaks can help increase their number. But at the start of a startup, spending time on SEO seems like a waste. The increase is unlikely to be significant.

My TinyLetter free mailing list service is located on the first page of Google for free mailing list (notice what I did?). All I had to do was give the site a good tag and Google did the rest.

Press


The press is a great way to get new users. The easiest way to be mentioned in the article is to tell the journalist a good story about your idea. Do not write press releases. Do not hire a PR firm.

Instead, think about a story you yourself would like to read. Choose the journalist you like who might 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 him. Ping it 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 us not just the story of your company, gain the confidence of a journalist by selflessly providing him with finds and ideas for an article that are not relevant to you. Karma!

The bad idea of ​​the article: “I launched the thing and you have to write about it.” The

good idea of ​​the article: “Facebook has broken something. And by the way, this has to do with my shnyaga. ”

Good article idea:“ I just got 20 million to launch my stuff. ”

Good article idea:“ My competitor got 20 million, but my thing is better. ”

Good article idea:“ Shnyaga my competitor is unreliable and can kill you. ”

A good idea for 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 tweet about it or make a video on Youtube.

Contact him through his manager, PR company, lawyer (does not bother to google a little), 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 got Sephora to advertise us for free on our Facebook page with 1 million fans, just because we made them support on our site.

BillShrink got T-Mobile to say, “If you don’t believe that we are the cheapest, go check out BillShrink.com, an independent service.”

Think about something cool that you can do with the help of 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 have helped to successfully launch a number of companies.

Offline events work best when your product is tied to the real world. Evite started with country conferences, with the condition that you must sign up for participation using Evite. Yelp did something similar too.

Most of the lounge parties (and SXSW conferences) are completely ineffective for getting new users.

Be creative


Read about the famous Twitter screen at SXSW.

I know a company that promoted a game called “Shrooms” distributing bags of (harmless) mushrooms at a gaming conference, almost bringing the matter to an arrest.

Richard Branson drove a tank through Times Square in front of the huge Coke billboard to advertise Virgin Cola (not sure if it really worked). Hugh Hefner bought an estate in Los Angeles and invited celebrities to hang out there with naked people.

Groupon promotes online advertising with a positive ROI (not creative, but it works). YouTube allows you to host 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 learning about these ways to promote your site. Final tip: As entrepreneurs, we are immersed in our products. Try to forget about the product for a week or more, and instead delve deeply into thoughts about its promotion.

Thank you for reading.

- pud

From a translator

Although the article was published recently, it so happened that we at SkyDNS already in absentia used most of these tips before reading them and were able to build up our user base in the past month. But the competitors did not stoop to scolding, 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 Philip Kaplan inhttp://www.facebook.com/pudfans

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