Ask HN: How you attract your first customers (exclude PH and HN)?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16127889

by middle1 • 9 years ago

10 11 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Cold emailing local leads and meeting them in-person for a conversation.

Your network and your networks network. For most indie-hacker-y type businesses you should be close to the problem and know people who want a solution.

vinrob92• 9 years ago

I run a productized service (design as a service) called Manypixels.co (https://www.manypixels.co) -- I got to $10K MRR by doing only two things:

1. Reaching out on niche Facebook groups to my target market (in my case: Entrepreneurs). I would simply say something along the line "Hey guys, I built this. Do you see value in this? Yes/No -- Why not?")

2. Creating content on Reddit / Indie Hackers about how we got to $10k MRR and being transparent about my learnings.

In the future I plan to do : 1/ More direct sales (via Angel list for example) 2/ Content on more marketplaces (Medium / Bootstrapped.fm / ...) 3/ Referrals 4/ ??? (open to suggestions here) :)

middle13• 9 years ago

you want to say you receive around 50-70 subscribers/orders and you gonna be cash positive after designing all these orders and much more for just $10K? This is not a business model, you just this it is just in first month

middle13• 9 years ago

sorry I cut the end: later you will change something to https://www.godesignergo.com/ pricing model with limiting

zapperdapper• 9 years ago

In addition to the suggestions here, you could write some guest posts on relevant blogs.

twobyfour• 9 years ago

B2B or B2C? Makes a huge difference!

middle13• 9 years ago

I can even divide B2B into 2 parts: small businesses and enterprise level

dev-ious• 9 years ago

I'll go a step further,

small businesses with money

small businesses with NO money

ecesena• 9 years ago

Blogging. Assuming you’re using your product yourself, if you blog about why you’re using it and which problems you’re solving, you’ll find in the mass people that share the same issues.

Note: I’m assuming b2c/smb (given your profile), and I’m assuming you’re still trying to get product/market fit. Of course, if you can get a customer paying $10 buy paying $9, then go for paid ads.

skr808• 9 years ago

A marketplace! Somehow integrate with Shopify, Github, AWS, Jira, Salesforce, Segment, Heroku, Zapier, ..., etc.

Ask HN: How you attract your first customers (exclude PH and HN)?

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