

Can you grow a startup only from organic traffic? - toutouastro


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trevelyan
My startup is still on page five of Google and our traffic is almost all word-
of-mouth. So it is possible but it is not fun. Very easy to get bitter when
you see the spam that floats above your stuff and hear people tell you that
Google rewards quality content, or when users write you to complain that they
cannot find you.

Anyway, I would not try it with multiple founders. It is hard enough to get
yourself to the point of making enough money to pay rent/food for one person
without strong distribution without having to worry about multiple partners.

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eblah
The company I currently work for started with zero marketing in the mid 2000s
(2004/2005). We grew into a multi-million dollar company. We're in the home
and garden e-commerce category.

We didn't really start doing any marketing until 2010 (Google TV, at that!).
Now, though, competition is a mess (tiny sites rank above established brands)
so we're almost forced to do some form of PPC. In some ways now, you're
completely at the mercy of Google and their latest algorithm update,
regardless of whether or not you follow the SEO rules.

To answer your question though, if competition is low it can definitely be
done, just do everything with SEO in mind, but design and write for users.

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ig1
Yes, there's plenty of other options such as PR, virality, social media, SEO,
etc. However in general if you're not paying for traffic (in addition to your
organic traffic) you're probably leaving money on the table.

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livestyle
I grew clalerts.org from 0-800 users via organic methods in about 4 months.

Google "craigslist alerts" I have links coming from a ton of tgose results.

Fyi Craigslist shut me down 3months ago.

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Concours
Hey Tom, this looks cool. Too bad you had to close. We have some users doing
exactly that on [http://www.feedsapi.org](http://www.feedsapi.org) , would you
consider adding it as a recommendation on your page? Thanks

