Ask HN: What are some ways to get my first 1000 users for my parenting website?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443446

by kunalspunjabi • 12 years ago

6 6 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Opening this up to the entire Ask HN community.

I have been working on a website for babies and parenting, like babycenter (http://www.tinyadults.com, still under construction). In order to get to product-market-fit, how do I find my first 1000 users (parents being the core user-group)?

Rather than say "try posting on parenting communities", I would appreciate more specific links / tips and ideas. Thank you for reading and sharing your ideas!

ASquare• 12 years ago

Get your first 10 from people you know. You must know parents or know people that know parents.

Do your problem/solution/MVP interviews with these people. Then use them to refer you to others that may have the same issue/be interested.

Pour gas on your social networks - Facebook, twitter, linkedin whatever. Spread the word and force close friends to like/share/retweet etc to maximize reach.

That should get you to your first 50-100 easily.

Beyond that, in parallel, post to /r startups and /r parenting on reddit. Submit link to Betali.st and ProductHunt and do a ShowHN.

With all of this, you should get to your 1000 number.

benologist• 12 years ago

This is good advice except focus on parenting communities, not startup websites. Parenting communities are almost entirely your ideal customer vs. just a subset of startup communities.

http://mashable.com/2011/01/21/parenting-social-networks/

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237922

need_the_auths• 12 years ago

I'm going to be a parent very soon, and my first piece of feedback is my kid isn't a tiny adult -- she is a child. TinyAdult.com brings up mental images of people with various forms of dwarfism, and child labor of yesteryear.

I may be an outlier in my opinion though.

brudgers• 12 years ago

Visiting the link, it looks like another blog. The posts appear to be sporadic and at least on the front page, related to pregnancy more than parenting.

I'm a parent. My parents are parents. Parents isn't a market segment. Announcing a baby name or picking a doula where not issues for us. Decide who the site is really for beyond "anybody who visits". Figure out a value proposition.

For a blog, the only proven one is really good content.

Good luck.

PeterWhittaker• 12 years ago

The headlines read a bit like those from supermarket checkout magazines.

That's a bad thing for me, but it might serve you and your core audience well.

(My daughter is 20. The idea of taking parenting advice from random Internet sites and strangers is anathema.)

tomkuhn• 12 years ago

I am going to be a father soon, so I found interest in exploring your site. Interesting articles. I find parenting very time based though. For me, I only care about pregnancy for the next 6 months, then I will care about newborns, then toddlers. I was not able to find a way to view just the articles I was interested in, aka pregnancies. This should be where using your categories should be used so make navigating your content easier.

Ask HN: What are some ways to get my first 1000 users for my parenting website?

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