
Ask HN: I've got one user. What's the best way to get more? - griffinmb
I created a small application, and got one user. It&#x27;s absolutely a hobby project -- so I&#x27;m not advertising, and I&#x27;m not looking for thousands of users. That being said, it&#x27;s exciting to have people use things you make! I&#x27;d like to get small numbers of people to use it, but I&#x27;m not sure how.<p>What are some low-key ways you have grown hobby projects? Is it just something you let happen naturally?
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siquick
Read this book ASAP

[http://tractionbook.com/](http://tractionbook.com/)

and read [https://growthhackers.com/](https://growthhackers.com/) to get ideas

Another trick - post your URL in Ask HN posts ;)

~~~
griffinmb
Thank you for the recommendations! I'm always up for a good book.

The book seems like it's targeted for rapid growth rather than the
small/steady growth I'm looking for. Is that the case? I'd be interested in
reading it either way, but I'd like to hear more.

The URL is [http://www.scriptcat.io](http://www.scriptcat.io) :)

~~~
michaelbuckbee
The book is great and definitely about systematic steady growth.

You can get the gist of it from this Slideshare:
[http://www.slideshare.net/jwmares/traction-trumps-
everything](http://www.slideshare.net/jwmares/traction-trumps-everything)

But the basic exercise is to go through each of the 19 different channels and
see if there's something you could do and then pick the couple that make the
most sense, try those and repeat.

So for Scriptcat it'd be something like:

CONTENT MARKETING Write interesting content for port best practices, what to
check, what should be open when.

FB/Twitter Ads You'd need to charge to cover the costs of this, but you could
see ads like: "Do you know what your ports are doing while you sleep?"

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Partner with ISPs to get their signups using your system.
Some of them have add-on ecosystems.

What you're looking for is a system where you can put X in and get Y users out
of it (ideally without a lot of time and effort on your part). I think you're
already a good way along the path because you've created a useful service.

~~~
griffinmb
Wow, thanks for the great info! I just bought the book, I'm excited to get
into it. Your ISP suggestion is really interesting... it's got me thinking
about a lot of channels/partnerships I hadn't even considered.

------
nchudleigh
Product Hunt is a great (and free) place to start

Personal Networks, writing blog posts about what you've learned, interact with
people (genuinely) on twitter (and obviously link your project in your
account), Reddit is also good. With any of these respect the community and
don't spam them (you don't seem the type given your post here, thought I would
mention anyways)

If its technical and you know where the people are who benefit go and interact
with them. Help them with something they need help with. Then get them to try
it, find issues, fix 'em, rinse repeat.

It takes a lot of footwork!

~~~
chdir
PH isn't great because of lack of transparency. See related discussions.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739875)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10741827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10741827)

There's OpenHunt, it's slowly gaining momentum www.openhunt.co

~~~
mod
If "ask hn" is any measure, OpenHunt is actually rapidly losing what little
momentum it had.

~~~
kyriakos
yeah I kept checking it ever since is was featured here but it seems to be on
the way down. very few submissions with very little votes. too bad. it's a
good idea.

------
jay_kyburz
We are in a similar place right now. I'm looking forward to seeing what people
have to say.

Blight of the Immortals only has about 50 daily active users. We would like to
grow a little to get a better idea about what people like and don't like about
the game.

[https://blight.ironhelmet.com](https://blight.ironhelmet.com)

We've run some Facebook and Google ads and it looks like it costs around 35 -
40c a click. We only get about 10% sign-up so we are paying about $4 a user.
(From what I have read that's about what to expect)

We still have a lot of cool stuff to add, but we make about $2 per new
account, so I guess that means we are about halfway there :)

~~~
Agustus
Let me give you my user experience and see if you can help us play your game
more: About seven of us played a game of Blight of the Immortals in turn-based
mode, namely because we all have jobs and would be unable to get to the
devices appropriately. The turn-based functionality is an add-on that causes
immense game issues where characters can be held for long periods of time in
stun spells, sometimes because of recharge rates and other items indefinitely.
That being said, we love the game, just the quirks of having the turn base sit
on top of the real-time throws some wrenches in.

The items for you to take this up a notch are the following: 1\. Update things
from time to time to make it newer-ish. The game does not feel like it has
changed any of the times that we have played it over the four years (has it
been that long)

2\. Turn based for the die-hard workers.

3\. Figure out the Iron Key for paying to play for a period of time. That
really worked out for getting us to have one person pay for a key and then we
could all play. If a person wants to get new friends to start a separate game,
then you have an in for a new key purchase.

4\. Ask your users, send an e-mail out to everybody and ask them what their
issues are. Ask those that love it to post on their facebook / twitter / etc.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Hey Agustus, Thanks very much for the feedback!

The new Blight of the Immortals is an all new game built on the ashes of the
old game.

The game infact didn't change from about 2010 when I stopped working on it
till just a few months ago when we opened up a beta of the new game.

We haven't reached out to the players of the old game because we're still
fleshing out the content and adding new features. We've started doing a little
advertising to see how well things like the home page and tutorial are
working.

When the only traffic to the site is ads, you can get a good idea of how the
game stands on its own.

The only way the game will be big "success" is if we generate enough cash to
do paid user acquisition.

------
threesixandnine
Is the app you are talking about the one in your profile? If so I personally
think it's great. I am sure you will find few more users now that you posted
here.

If I were you I would personally go to small-mid-big biz in your area and
pitch them this tool. I know that Internet is the thing but real money and
connections are offline....just a hint....

~~~
griffinmb
That's the one! I'm glad you like it :)

I think talking to businesses personally would be great, but I wouldn't even
know where to start with that. Do you have any suggestions? (books, articles,
personal experience?)

~~~
threesixandnine
You just have to do it. Either be bold and go straight to their doors or
schedule 5 minute meeting with person in charge. Try to get the meeting with
people with budgets and not with us monkeys that run their equipment for
peanuts ;)

There is no silver bullet for this and while books and articles can be of help
it will never describe what you do and feel once you are before people you are
pitching your product. You have to overcome any issues with that yourself. You
just have to do it. I am still sometimes anxious so don't worry. It's
normal...

People will tell you to post on the Internet but they know jack shajt. You
will get freeloaders and hardly any feedback from those users. Once you land 3
serious biz users those are gold mines. Better spend the time and $200 for a
dinner with them.

------
lazyant
I also wrote a few years ago an "nmap as a service" tool, had some challenges
like false positives, how to authorize automatically, slowness, UDP ports,
using different origin IPs in case I was blocked etc. OP email me if you want
to exchange notes.

~~~
griffinmb
That would be great! I'm at work now, so I'll shoot you an email tonight (I'm
assuming it's the one in your profile?).

~~~
lazyant
yep

------
bakztfuture
"Do things that don't scale"

[http://paulgraham.com/ds.html](http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)

~~~
griffinmb
I read that! It was definitely a catalyst for this question. I emailed my one
user and let them know I'd be happy to personally help in any way I could. No
response yet :)

~~~
griffinmb
I want to reply to afarrell, but I can't.

I think going to meetups would be great! That might actually be my best bet
since it's person-to-person and majority technical. It's definitely the target
audience at least.

My site is [http://www.scriptcat.io](http://www.scriptcat.io) \-- basically,
it emails you if it detects a new open port. "Pingdom for open ports"

(Edit: I could've sworn afarrell's post initially asked what the project was)

~~~
prawn
If a post doesn't have a reply link, click on the timestamp and you should see
a reply form there. I believe this is done to discourage deep, nested
arguments.

~~~
griffinmb
Nice, thanks for the tip!

------
pbreit
I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "hobby" project but if prospective got a
whiff of such a thing, I suspect they'd pass. I would at least try to exude
more seriousness about the product, unless it's a game or something frivolous.

~~~
griffinmb
That's a really interesting point. Maybe "hobby project" wasn't the best word
choice. I just wanted to emphasize that I'm not looking for rocket-ship growth
(or even money), just a way to slowly get users who will find use in my app.

~~~
pbreit
You can be very serious about something while not striving for rocket ship
growth. "Hobby" makes it sound like you'd have no qualms shutting it down with
a moment's notice which prospective customers can frequently detect and is
obviously not compelling.

------
AdamWoods
Nobody is going to simply stumble across your application, so it's your job to
start promoting it! That doesn't mean paying for advertising, but marketing
doesn't always cost money.

If you're keen to have more people use it, you need to be able to clearly
answer:

What is the benefit of using your application? What does your tool do to make
people's lives easier/better? How can people access your application?

Then you start with your own social networks. Explicitly ask people to use
your tool as testers, find people who you think would benefit and approach
them directly. Tell people why it's cool and ask them to share it - then go
from there.

~~~
griffinmb
Thanks for the response!

I think one of my issues is that the app provides a technical service, so it's
limited to programmer friends who are all mostly work acquaintances. I'm not
sure why, but I was hesitant to share it in the workplace. I suppose it's as
good a place as any!

------
hayksaakian
I read a little bit about what your app does -- scan for open ports.

I think "native" promotion is the best. Figure out who your best customers
could be and start watching ports on all their websites. Whenever one changes,
send an automated email saying something like:

"We noticed a potential vulnrubility in your site, if you'd like to know if
this happens again, reach out to me"

~~~
griffinmb
Thanks for taking a look at it! I like the idea of "native" promotion, and I
think you just made me realize another problem I have -- I'm not actually sure
who my best customers could be. I've just thought of it very broadly as
"people with websites". I'll think more about that...

~~~
hayksaakian
rethink it as "people who care A LOT about having their website hacked"

maybe as the other commenter said, you don't send a million emails, instead
you could do a twitter account or some other social media way to do it.

------
tyingq
One strategy that sometimes works is to help people see the tie between your
app/product and something else that's already popular.

One of the other comments here notes that your application does some kind of
scanning for open ports. Assuming the application has some kind of
integration...

That might be easy to link to, for example, Docker. A blog post showing how to
"automate security validation for newly created containers" might have a
broader audience that just "port scanning". Especially if you provide working
code, and some path to integrate more than just your app.

------
Grue3
I have the same problem, my project is extremely niche and I hoped it would
spread by word of mouth. I don't really use social media, so I don't self-
promote it. The big boost came when I posted my project on a specific
subreddit and it got a large number of upvotes. However the wave of users died
off quickly and a year later I get like 10 users per day and maybe once per
month it gets mentioned somewhere on the Internet.

------
xupybd
What is the application? Sharing it here could be a start?

~~~
griffinmb
Right now, it's a tool that emails you if a new port opens up on your site.
"Pingdom for open ports". I built it in response to a couple friends who got
their sites hacked after deploying updates with mongodb or elasticsearch ports
open.

The site is [http://www.scriptcat.io](http://www.scriptcat.io) (I submitted it
to HN previously).

~~~
jsnider3
You know have a new user. Why does it say I have reached the max number of
sites when I try to add a second?

~~~
griffinmb
Hey! Thank you! I limited the number of sites you can add by default to
discourage malicious use -- I've updated your account so you can have 10. Let
me know if you need more!

------
IshmaelF
Firstly, since it is a hobby, tell a few friends about it -- see if they would
get on your application, get some feedback from them and move on accordingly.

------
mid0
. u already started by asking for help

\- invite folks you know on an "sure to open your email/answer ur
slack/im/sms" message and

\-- invite folks you know little bit outside of that circle

\--- invite folks in forums your' involved with (give/take)

\--- invite folks on ur mostly active social media account

\---- you can submit to betalist.com if it's beta private only

\---- you can submit to producthunt.com if it's live and ready to be used

------
taprun
Why don't you ask your one user to help you?

~~~
griffinmb
My first step after getting that one user was to "do things that don't scale".
So I sent him/her a personal email letting them know I hoped they found the
service helpful, and that I'd be happy to help out in any way possible. And to
tell a friend.

No response yet!

------
scriptstar
Please watch this first and I am sure you come back here with more
enlightenment.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v47WEyeSMSA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v47WEyeSMSA)

------
prawn
You could post it here for feedback:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject](https://www.reddit.com/r/sideproject)

------
tmaly
if it is something any regular person on the street would use, get some
business cards focused on the application with the website and start handing
them out.

Who is your one user? Do they fit any particular category? Ask them if they
have friends that would use your software.

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i_feel_great
Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Depending on your network, a casual post here and
there can be noticed by a few dozen people or more.

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andrewchambers
one help would be to post a link so we can check it out.

------
onnnon
You need SSL for starters...

