[mobitar]

Getting the first 100 users has actually been the easiest part of the process. It's getting 100 daily new users that's really hard.

For Standard Notes[0], here's what I did:

1. Comment on privacy related HN posts about a privacy-focused notes app. That would have gotten me 40-50 users.

2. Write articles[1] on encryption/privacy/webdev. Some of them made it to frontpage HN, some didn't. That might have gotten me to 500 users.

3. Repeat. Tirelessly. Painstakingly. Depressingly. Just keep going doing small things every day. Eventually they start to compound.

[0]: https://standardnotes.org

[1]: https://journal.standardnotes.org

[freehunter]

>It's getting 100 daily new users that's really hard.

I'm part of a local business networking group, and we have members with businesses of all shapes and sizes, from "just launched two months ago" to "I hit 20 employees seven years ago". We were chatting about picking up new followers on social media and I mentioned that you have to celebrate the little successes. One member chimed in "yeah, we got 1000 new follows in Instagram in the last week, which was neat" and I thought to myself "I said little successes". I recently hit 700 total, which was nice.

It does start to have a compounding effect, though. People start giving you word-of-mouth, or take you more seriously when they see how many others are using your product, etc.

[abetusk]

This seems great. I'm a big fan of open source but I often hear criticisms from people who are deathly afraid that they can't make money if their source is libre.

Do you have anything to say about the difficulties of running an open source shop? Do you worry about competitors taking your code and standing up their own sites?

[mobitar]

Honestly the app being open source is the least of my worries. The source code isn't the hardest part of running this operation. It's really the persistence in keeping going every day, even though some weeks you may see so little results. That's a very hard thing to do, and I doubt someone else will have that same passion with something they didn't make themselves. Other than that, the brand is more important than the code. You can copy the app but you can't copy the message in an authentic way.

[iends]

I couldn't find pricing information at all on your site for extended...