

Ask HN: The trouble of promoting an online startup - westy92

I am working on TaggedBack.com, which allows for an easy way to catalog your belongings in case you lose them.<p>I have tried all the ways I can think of to promote it: Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, StumbleUpon, AddThis links, Live Twitter stream on the homepage, Android App, HackerNews, Reddit.<p>I am still having trouble grasping a constant stream of visitors. Any ideas on how to promote it? Any tips are much appreciated, thanks!
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ig1
I think you're selling to the wrong audience, your product is very very hard
to sell. People will worry about stuff getting lost only after they lose it.
The insurance industry spends a fortune in advertising to counter this
problem, you're never going to be able to charge enough to make that a viable
strategy for you.

What I recommend you do instead is actually sell your product to the insurance
industry (perhaps as a white-label product) for their customers. It provides
direct value to them as they can use it to reduce fraudulent claims and manage
accounts more easily as well a providing a value-add for their service.

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jeffmould
Your site looks good and a great idea! A couple of observations though:

1\. I understand what the service is based on your comment above and reading
through the website, but it is not completely evident to me at first glance
when visiting the site. When I get to the site, the first thing that jumps out
at me is to enter the tag # or serial # of an item I found. If you are trying
to draw users in, I would suggest focusing more on getting people to signup
and enter their things. Maybe put a link for people who find something and
want to try and track down the owner.

2\. There is no privacy policy or TOS that I could find. If I am going to
enter my info I want to know you are going to keep it private.

3\. While I could care less, some people may have a concern having a link
between items they own and their Facebook account. Facebook doesn't have a
good privacy record, and it would concern me that they could now know specific
items I own and target advertisers to me based on that info.

4\. You are looking for a constant stream of visitors, but the site is more of
a signup once, enter your items, and never visit again. There is nothing to
engage me once I have signed up and entered my items. Not sure what you could
do here, but a couple of ideas may include (a) alerting me when product
recalls, updates, upgrades, etc... are available from the manufacturer for a
specific item; (b) creating a forum of users with the same products to discuss
topics related to the product. Of course all of these would require some opt-
in notifications to the user, but could enhance user engagement to some
extent. Another idea, would be to allow the user to report an item stolen and
automatically search sites like eBay and/or craigslist for matching items that
recently were listed for sale in the user's area.

Good luck though, I really do like the idea. I have had things stolen from my
car and home and a service like this would have been very helpful in filling
out the police reports.

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NickC_dev
This is definitely a neat idea, but I think it's a tough sell for the social
media crowd. Unless I live in a high crime area, I don't really feel the need
to tell my friends about the service.

I'd say your best bet is getting reviewed by some high traffic blogs.

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Jontuckerusa
You could try blogger outreach to find people that may be interested in
writing about it. Not to link drop, but I literally just put up a post
saturday at imjontucker.com that may be helpful. Lots of links and tips re
finding bloggers. Let me know if its helpful.

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stc
Any success stories of people successfully regaining lost items through your
service? What about "losing" some items in popular spots around the country
that have been tagged?

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ecto
Just asked the same question here, basically:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2218427>

