

How to get 170k users in six months with zero marketing - timothyjcoulter
http://blog.corkboard.me/2011/06/16/how-to-get-170k-users-in-six-months-with-zero-marketing/

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ja27
I like the visual appeal of it. Evernote or Springpad have maybe 20+ times as
many features, but I end up using Corkboard because it's simple and looks
interesting.

I showed it to my middle-school daughter and on her own she used it to
collaborate on a project with another kid.

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allang
Agreed. The ascetic approach to features is what keeps me using it, even
though there are other services with 20x as many features. Very simple, very
useful.

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DanLivesHere
Totally misleading headline. Not OPs fault -- the problem is in the post. 171k
unique visitors is not 170k users.

Take my project, a daily email newsletter (<http://dlewis.net/nik> if you're
interested). It's about a year old, and I've had about 500k uniques over that
period. I have 5,000 subscribers.

I'm one of Corkboard's 171,000 people but I'm not a user of Corkboard. I tried
it for a few minutes and left, not coming back since. And honestly, if you're
not capturing people, that traffic is not all that valuable.

This isn't to say that you _aren't_ capturing people; hopefully, you are. Just
that you shouldn't conflate a visitor with a user. Visitors visit; users stay.

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thekevan
How did you get those testimonials from some rather interesting people? Did
you know them before you had this service?

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DanLivesHere
I know Jimmy, didn't know the others.

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gpjt
Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks like you've had 170k unique visitors
on your website, not 170k users -- quite different things, no?

The advice is good, though.

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sparkygoblue
As far as I can see, the site basically creates a public account for you
automatically when you visit it, so unique visitor = user.

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absconditus
I can only assume that what the author really meant is zero advertising. Most
of what is described falls under marketing.

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PagingCraig
I wouldn't say zero marketing :P

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mnml_
It doesn't load

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Hisoka
This is misleading because if LifeHacker hadn't found your article on
HackerNews, everything else probably wouldn't have happened. So I don't know
if I would want to build something people wanted, and not focus on
marketing... and hope one or two people spread the word to others. You
might've gotten lucky. Yes, building something people want is the first step,
but there's more.

