Getting users for the first time, ever.

[majesticbeans]

This is my first startup, ever. As a computer scientist, I've always been up to date with programming knowledge, but I never kept up with anything about running an online business, SEO, marketing, and all that jazz. I still don't know 90% of it. Basically, I'm on my own for the time being and I always run into problems that take me a while to figure out. For today, I'd like to be pointed to a site , article, blog post or what have you that will give me a general checklist of the basic things I need to do to. Everything I come across is always geared towards one very small part of building a customer base, and all I really need to know is where to start.

1) Make my website more visible ; give it more of an online presence. 2) Get the people that are already interested in the segment I'm working on to find my website more easily. 3) Make sure that there is little friction in the sign-up process

Or, if someone would care to draw up something for me, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[redtexture]

I will sidestep particular suggestions for a general comment.

One kind of general background is taking (many) steps toward figuring out who your market is, and not assuming that you understand the target population, which translates into: What is the business model that will work for your idea, and how should my idea change as a consequence of what I learn?

Steve Blank's venture / startup blog discusses fairly frequently the search (and iteration on the search, and the learning involved during the search) for a business model, answering the question: Who is the population that is willing to pay for the service? This is a distinctly different from the the search for, construction of (and iteration on) a minimum viable product or service.

Nobody really knows their market when they start, or how to find it. They discover it by trying many things, in many populations, revising as they go, from learning experience to learning experience.

Asking people to pay, right now, is a very instructive process toward discovery of your business model. You might have a perfect product, but no buyers. Find the buyers. Ask people why they're not a buyer.

See:

An MVP is not a Cheaper Product, It’s about Smart Learning http://steveblank.com/2013/07/22/an-mvp-is-not-a-cheaper-pro...

Who’s Doing the Learning? http://steveblank.com/2013/06/03/whos-doing-the-learning/

[majesticbeans]

Hi again. So, say I have a mailing list of about 500 people, and I want to know if they will pay for what I currently have has my MVP. How do I do that? Do I just open them up to registration and see what happens? Should I test on a subset of those people? If I need to pivot, can I re-email those same people in the test group that declined to purchase the first time around? And what if they did purchase and they are enjoying the original product?

Still a bit perplexed.

also: Is AdWords necessary?

[majesticbeans]

Thanks for that. My service up until this point has been basically a giant research project from Day 1. Before I built anything, I met with firms that work in the segment I was researching both large and small. Then I built from there.

Thanks for bringing up Steve Blank again. I have the 4 Steps and I should probably revisit that in addition to his blog .

[redtexture]

Another post with a similar line of thinking, on testing for paying customers:

Mark Suster - Why You Need to Ring the Freaking Cash Register

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2013/07/16/ring-the-freak...

Perhaps you've seen this too, about discovery of interested populations of potential users:

Paul Graham - Do things that don't scale (July 2013)

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

[chaddeshon]

I think Twitter ads are a great place to start. You can get setup with the in under 30 min. You can start with a very low budget. You can start seeing results as early as tomorrow.

To give you an idea, for http://www.BromBone.com we target the followers of just one account. The people who follow this account are very likely to find our service useful. Overtime we will expand to other accounts. We spend just $5 per day, and that will bring us about 20-25 visitors per day, plus a new follower or a retweet every once and a while. Our ads started running within 24 hours of setting up our account.

This probably won't scale well enough to get all the customer you need, but it can give you a starting point. It can allow you to collect some potential customers email addresses so that you can talk to them and figure out what they need. Or maybe no one signs up at all. In that case you need to make some bigger changes.

[majesticbeans]

Why Twitter over FB ads, or search engine ads?

[chaddeshon]

I think search engine ads could also be great. We haven't done them yet because we need to target very specific low traffic phrases. This has made it difficult to get our Adwords quality score high enough that Google will actually run our ads. We need to create more landing pages that are specific for those ads, and that is going to take time. When did get some ads show in the "Display Network". Near as I can tell, the visitors provided by those ads were not in our target market at all.

We've done Twitter and not Facebook because we are marketing to developers and IT/Eng Managers. I think they are more like to follow accounts about the tech they use on Twitter rather than Facebook.

[wikwocket]

It sounds like what you want are the basics of marketing. This is a common need for CS grads. Here are some places to start at getting traffic:

http://www.quora.com/Startups/Whats-an-effective-way-to-driv...

http://derwiki.tumblr.com/post/40523233923/getting-traffic-f...

If you post your site here, you may get some good advice. Alternatively, I have found criticue.com to offer excellent free feedback.

[majesticbeans]

Sheisse. Thanks.

[hschool]

Recruit them manually. This thread has a lot of great tips.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6041765

[livestyle]

I concur. I did this when building my craigslist alerts app.

I documented the process here http://blendah.com/post/37331434653/lean-startup-hack

[johnsonmkj]

http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo - This should get you a start on the SEO side of things.

[majesticbeans]

Thanks!

[pjnewton]

I do a bit of freelance marketing, copywriting, conversion optimization and the such. I'd be glad to chat if you want to email me. Address is in my profile.