

Ask HN: How to get the first 10 users? - msencenb

After doing a small launch last night for adsreloaded.com I received a few hits but no sign-ups. You often hear on HN that you need to focus on the first 10 users... then maybe you can reach for the first 100 etc. So my question is whats the best way to get those first 10 users? (Or even better the first 10 power users).<p>In my particular case I would like to target iPhone developers first to get a few on board before I start hitting the gas on attracting regular users so its an odd situation, but any general advice on getting users is appreciated.<p>Do people find discounts, direct email, a paid search campaign, or something else entirely the most beneficial for early stage signups?
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damoncali
Drive some initial traffic with these sites, in descending order of
effectiveness:

<http://feedmyapp.com>

<http://killerstartups.com>

<http://listio.com>

<http://saasdir.com>

<http://appuseful.com>

<http://netwebapp.com>

<http://getapp.com>

The top two are the most effective by a long shot, but the others will get you
some visits. Best of all, these tend to drive useful traffic, not garbage. All
are free, but you need to have a legit site (which you do).

~~~
msencenb
Excellent! Thanks for the links I will definitely submit my site... hopefully
other people will find them useful too :)

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ssebro
I'm an iPhone developer, and I'm smack-dab in the center of your target market
- just like drewcrawford.I actually had the same business idea that you're
working on about 5 months ago, and decided not to pursue it. I love HN, so
I'll share the design of my system/the thinking behind it.

The problem to me is that you're asking developers to partake in (at least on
the face value) ROI negative advertising. There's actually nothing wrong with
ROI negative ads, iff they deliver network effects that make the ads ROI
positive over time or the lifetime value of a user is more than the price of
the app. We (developers) d*mn well know that natural network effects are not
strong enough to make ROI positive when Apple is taking 30% of the pie each
time. And for most iPhone Apps, the lifetime value of a user is that $.99
cents that the user pays when they buy the app. So there are very few iPhone
apps who your current system can benefit. Because there's very few apps you
can help, you're unlikely to get any traffic at all unless you're already
famous/ willing to spend a ton on ads.

The solution is to embrace social networks and understand that sometimes,
people need to pay for the stuff they're getting.Less cryptically: 1)Integrate
with facebook connect and twitter.

2)Require users to send a status message to both, effectively endorsing the
app you're giving away to their friends. This solves your network issue as
best you can (and it's how they'll be paying you).

3)Instead of holding regular sales of apps, go the groupon route, where the
sale is almost a game, and the paid app that people can get for free changes
regularly. This way you can get people to tweet/update about your app, and if
you don't get the developer say 1000 downloads, you can say that the sale
failed, and give out no refunds for the app purchases. This would entice users
to seriously get their friends to download the app through your link (or
however you track CPM). Be sure to keep track of your users (and their
referrals) email addresses, so you can update them every 4 or so days with
your new app that you're giving away.

4)Stop trying to sell your site as "earning money", and instead sell it as
"get paid apps free". The difference in the psychology of the users that
you'll attract will be HUGE.Plus nobody wants to earn 20cents per hour, but
people would spend the same time to save $1.

5)I would start this business with the top 10 apps in the appstore, and
without their permission. For this to work, you'll need about $3000, but it'll
almost guarantee your success. People already know these apps, so you're
lending their legitimacy to yourself by giving them away. I would also send a
post to techcrunch (& etc) in advance about how you're "giving the appstore
away for free" - they love apple and would love to write about you, especially
if you send them something with a sensationalist headline like I just wrote.
You could give away doodleJump, then angry birds, then .... And go down the
list. If you want more of my research/ more tips for success in this business,
email me: stephen at brownianm.com

~~~
ssebro
Oh, and by the time you're talking to devs who want to sign up, you will have
a significant list of people who download anything you put in front of them-
and that contact/email list is going to be your power-play.

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drewcrawford
I'm an iPhone developer and I'm actively spending money advertising an
underperforming app. So I'm dead set inside your target market.

I clicked around a bit on your site, but I don't really understand how it
works for developers. Say I hand you $25. How many downloads will I get? How
much of that $25 goes in your pocket? Will consumers really take $.20 to
download a $.99 app? You compare your service to adwords and other
advertising. Is there the potential here to make more than I spend, or is this
more of a "brand awareness" thing with murky returns?

Looking at the 1.5 paragraphs for developers on your site I really don't get
it. All I need is something that says "spend $25 and get X downloads on a $.99
app". I don't see why you couldn't find room for that sentence.

~~~
msencenb
Thanks for the feedback let me right out a paragraph here and see if it
explains better:

adsReloaded is all about getting downloads. Let's say you have a 0.99 cent app
and decide you want to spend about $25 dollars on advertising. For paid apps
the price you pay users is at least the price of the app (so for a 0.99 cent
app the minimum payout to a user is 0.99).

Since your budget is about $25 dollars you take the CPD (cost per download =
0.99 in this case) and multiply it by the number of new users you want (let's
say 20). This puts your total advertising purchase at $19.80. I take 25%
(added to this number) + the price of one download (to moderate the
campaign/test to make sure the question is correct). So the total campaign
price for 20 users follows this equation: 19.80 + 4.95 (the 25% I take) + 0.99
(price of app) = $25.75

This $25.75 will get you 20 new users. Granted you will make back .70 cents
per user so really it will cost you $25.75 - 14 (your profit) = $11.75 for 20
new users.

This may be murky brand awareness to you but I think there is also a "word of
mouth" marketing piece here as well... and if you push it hard possibly even
extra downloads from moving up the app ranking lists.

Does this help explain more?

~~~
btilly
Do I have this straight? Someone who can't get users is selling a service
where he tries to get other people users. There may be a problem here.

Also the sample numbers you provide has the developer losing $11.75 out of
pocket for the honor of acquiring 20 new users. Given that the developer is
trying to make money, this doesn't seem like a great deal. (Even worse, with
the quoted figures you could buy 20 copies of the app for yourself, and walk
away $4.95 richer. All of the mindshare etc benefits the developer is hoping
for wouldn't apply in that case.)

~~~
msencenb
I didn't say that... I did relatively well (8k total for a small quotes app) I
merely stated that I always had trouble getting blog writeups.

I understand that this doesn't seem like a great deal, my question to you is
how much money are people using a service such as admob losing in order to
acquire users (Are you able to acquire 20 new users for 11.75 for an app
priced at 0.99?)? I have seem some pretty terrible conversion rates (although
feel free to point me in another direction if you feel this assumption is
misguided).

Yes there is a certain level of trust as well.. but hopefully the site will
grow and this trust will be established. I'm not out here to make a quick buck
by swindling developers.

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michael_dorfman
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your site, but when I looked at it yesterday,
you're looking for people to download and execute iPhone apps, and get paid a
small sum for doing so, correct?

If that's the case, who is your target audience? It sure wasn't me, because my
time is more valuable than that-- you'd have to raise your rates by several
orders of magnitude before I'd be interested. Which is also why I don't spend
my time on the Mechanical Turk.

But, it seems to me that the people who do so are the kind of people you might
be interested in. So, if that's the case, why not spend some money there on
testing/market research?

In other words, pay people (via MTurk) to test out your service (which will
involve them also getting paid). In exchange for the "extra" MTurk money, you
can ask them a few questions about how well the service worked, and where they
think it should be advertised.

And, if it works well, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them become repeat
users, even outside of MTurk.

~~~
msencenb
You're understanding of the site is correct, at least from the user
perspective (non app developer).

How far would the rates need to be raised for you to be interested? The
reasoning behind my current price structure is that I often find myself
aimlessly wandering the app store and eventually download a few free apps and
usually get suckered into a paid app. My site (assuming it grows) would
provide a way to aimlessly get exposure to apps and either get paid a small
sum for trying out a free app, or get a paid app for free.

All in all though I think your idea of MTurk has merits and will certainly be
checking into this option.

~~~
shasta
So your audience is people who are willing to fill out forms and try random
crappy apps for 20 cents / hour... and who have iPhones.

Good luck!

~~~
msencenb
hahaha certainly seems a little ridiculous put this way :)

In all seriousness though .20 cents an hour is quite low. While free apps
certainly don't pay out much getting a paid app for essentially nothing is a
sweet deal (at least in my mind perhaps I'm wrong).

Developers putting their apps onto users devices and users (who might not
normally download apps) trying out new and exciting technologies while making
a little spare change doesn't seem to hurt anyone, in fact I'm banking on the
fact that people will find value in the service.

~~~
shasta
My advice: Don't even mention the $.10 minimum. Your sell is only possibly
"try paid apps for free." Paying nothing is better than paying out $.10 - it
cheapens your service.

And this would be so much better if you could avoid cash transactions in the
first place, and somehow just allow free app downloads.

~~~
msencenb
Point taken. I am currently iterating on the landing page so I'll try out a
few different variances that don't mention the .10 cents deal.

Maybe I'll even try and find some relatively cheap A/B testing software, that
would be a fantastic resource. Anyone know of any?

I'm assuming you mean "free app downloads" as in paid apps just downloaded for
free? This would be very nice... sadly I can't seem to think of a way without
a deep partnership with apple and the app store.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Google WebSite Optimizer does A/B testing and is free. You have to have
AdWords account though. I recommend you to create AdWords account anyway and
try to advertise your service that way. You would have to spend some money,
but not much, and the time you would save would probably worth it.

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pclark
"Ask HN: Review my startup" :)

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yurisagalov
You're getting a lot of feedback on the product... I'm going to give you some
feedback on the site itself. I'm not a designer, but there's a few things that
stood out to me when I clicked on your website.

First, there's too much text. The text is overpowering me. I forget where, but
there was an article/blog post a week or so that I read, which effectively
said:

1\. Assume your readers can't read

2\. Assume even if they can read, they won't.

This means that ideally your site should be almost self explanatory. Diagrams
> Words if you need to choose. If you can illustrate to me how it works,
you're doing way better than having me read it.

Next, your choice of color is bad. Nothing really stands out except "by trying
apps on your iPhone". That is to say:

"Earn money" doesn't stand out. Login doesn't stand out, and neither does
Register...

Next, in the "Get paid to try apps" paragraph, the color scheme isn't "crisp",
it's a bit hard to read IMO.

"Are you a developer?" Why yes I am! But holy-moly, that font is fine and i'm
not even at the fine print yet! Don't try to squeeze so much text onto your
website :)

Next thing that stood out to me, is the >> Login/Register buttons. They have
this odd white color to them on the left side and the top sides. It makes them
feel like they were poorly photoshopped, and even though it's tiny (pixel
wise), it's super noticable to me

Finally, you really have no "call to action". I arrive to your page, and I
don't know where to click next. This is mostly because your Register button
blends in with everything else. I'd probably make the registration red here to
contrast with everything else (others may disagree, but I think the color
needs to change). Forget about the login button. your battle is against people
clicking the back button when they first arrive. If they register, you've
essentially got them to buy in. They'll find where to login :) (you can put it
in the corner, or anywhere else really).

I hope this is useful, good luck! :)

edit: cleaned up my thoughts a little bit...

------
uptown
Just some aesthetic advice ... your site feels "heavy" and somewhat dated.

Try changing the content area to use a white background, and brighten up the
header and footer. The colors you use on the forum section of the site are
closer to what I'd aim for.

------
kranner
You might need to buy advertising to get your ad network going.

Two nits if I may:

1\. Instead of saying "adsreloaded.com is changing the way online advertising
works", you might try "adsreloaded.com is about to change". The former sounds
like you are trying to sound much bigger than you are at the moment. At least
it did to me.

2\. The blurb in the bottom bar is unusually designed. At first glance I
thought it was a testimonial, but I'm not sure now.

Edit: why not try advertising in the new Hacker Monthly magazine? Print
subscriptions are at 4K or so now, PDF are probably way higher and it's
reaching a lot of developers and bloggers.

~~~
msencenb
An ironic twist of fate haha

1) Agreed... I probably should try and sound like I'm 8 feet tall while still
an infant.

2) The design slants it as a testimonial... but seeing as the service just
launched I don't particularly have those yet. This will probably be changed
soon

Edit: fantastic idea... sending e-mail to inquiry about ads now :)

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smakz
Ideally you should of had 10 customers lined up before you even started
building anything. Draw upon friends and family -- you'll need close
relationships with your few first customers to know where you went wrong and
get continuous feedback.

Direct email/direct mail/paid search are all going to get you a high bounce
rate and very few customers. Save yourself some money and network with people
who might be interested in your service.

~~~
msencenb
This seems to be part of my problem. In order to get the ball rolling I need
some iPhone app developers to buy into the service. My family network doesn't
have any developers, although I know 1 or 2 friends who might be interested. I
definitely plan to leverage my friends/family network to get users; however,
this seems to be after the stage of getting the first 10 dev customers.

------
aymeric
1\. Ask friends and family

2\. Using Google Alerts, find people speaking about stuff related to your
website and leave comments

3\. Find the most popular forums for your target users

4\. Find the most popular blogs for you target users

5\. Join directories as mentioned by @damoncali

6\. Follow what is being said in Twitter

7\. Look for LinkedIn and Facebook groups

I wrote about it yesterday on my blog:
[http://aymeric.gaurat.net/index.php/2010/tips-to-kick-
start-...](http://aymeric.gaurat.net/index.php/2010/tips-to-kick-start-the-
traffic-of-your-new-user-generated-content-website/)

------
msencenb
Thanks everyone for all of the pushback on my idea so far it has been a very
constructive day for me as I continue to iterate on my product. (Thanks HN :)
)

I am a little confused on one point though and am hoping that some iPhone
developers can give first hand accounts. What kind of returns are you guys
receiving on adMob/Quattro/whatever ads? The iPhone developers I have spoken
too have had dismal returns (<10 downloads for a 50 dollar campaign) and this
was one of the problems I was hoping to help solve with adsReloaded.

Do any of you mind sharing your campaign numbers?

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stevederico
apperang.com pays users the price of the app plus a small incentive ~25cents
to download iPhone apps. I have used this to discover many new applications.

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tilb
I think you should reach out to iPhone and apps bloggers.

Improving your landingpage will also lead to more signups I think. Use some
images to communicate in a visual way what adsreloaded does. The text is also
not very clear. To me it is all much more a testing environment for app
developers than a new way to advertise apps.

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webwright
Forums and meetups. Find places where your target market congregates and show
up there. Participate in the conversation without being spammy (ideally, you
started doing this already). Ask for feedback on your product and maybe toss
in a special coupon code for members of that forum/group.

------
AlexBlom
Have you tried identifying the users elsewhere and reaching about by tweet /
e-mail?

~~~
msencenb
I haven't although I plan to do some direct e-mail later tonight. Has this
been effective for you?

------
ojbyrne
Friends and family?

