
Show HN: Checklist of over 100 directories to submit your startup - serhadiletir
https://www.eggradients.com/startup-directory
======
antirez
AKA how to lose time pretending you are working for your startup. Much better
spending the same time acquiring a single customer by talking with people,
doing things that do not scale [1].

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

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tmoravec
Why do you think that my _particular_ audience frequents either of these
directories? Entrepreneurs should go after their customers, first and
foremost. Submitting to irrelevant directories is not only lost time. It's
dangerous because it suggests that we are doing something useful and that we
don't have to chase the real audience anymore.

~~~
pmiri
I'm always wary of startup founders sharing startup launches to each other.
Big red flag. Completely skews all advice/critique/reception.

~~~
mkirklions
Yep, I posted my website asking for critique, half the users were complaining
about my 4s load time and didnt mention a thing about the information
presented.

Thousands of people use my website a week, apparently they dont care about 4s
load times.

My actual audience has bothered me to create more content more frequently.

~~~
p0nce
Only on HN I heard that my products were ugly. None of thousands of users ever
reported that.

~~~
davidw
Yep: I have a side project that I used stock bootstrap with. People on HN
invariably complain about that. Actual users? Not one, ever.

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gnicholas
A couple years ago, I saw a similar submission list for startups. Having
recently launched, I took the list very seriously — checking out the sites and
ranking them in order of desirability, then submitting to a couple sites each
week with language that I had tailored to appeal to each site based on what
they covered.

Nothing happened. A month or two later, I decided this was a waste of time.
But before closing the remaining browser tabs (which were the ones low on my
priority list), I decided to submit a one-sentence description to the
remaining sites.

The next morning, I heard back from one of the sites [1], which not only
wanted to feature my startup [2] — they also wanted to license our technology
to make their website easier to read!

If there's a lesson to be learned from this N=1, it's that shorter is sweeter
when it comes to pitches.

1: [http://www.springwise.com](http://www.springwise.com)

2:
[http://www.beelinereader.com/individual](http://www.beelinereader.com/individual)

~~~
smt88
It sounds like the lesson you learned was to find and pitch potential
customers. If that isn't the top of a founder's priority list, there's a
fundamental problem occurring.

~~~
gnicholas
Any site that has a decent amount of text on it is a potential customer of
ours, so all of the websites we submitted to could have licensed our tech.

The only difference is that I used a short pitch for the last ones and long
pitches for the first ones.

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philbarr
Whilst this is pretty handy, I balked at the "let us submit for you for $89".
Like - eek! Really?!

Also - the "get the pdf version" is really a dark pattern since you're not
allowed to download it without first paying some non-zero amount that you
laughably get to choose. Might be a bit nicer to say, "buy the pdf version".

~~~
canterburry
Interesting, I actually found the $89 a bargain given how long it will take to
just create accounts on all these services before I can submit anything. That
alone will take hours.

My worry is just that this service will quickly get marked as a spammer and
probably blocked or downvoted as a poster in many places.

~~~
goatherders
Agreed. $89 is basically 89 cents per submission. My time is worth a lot more
than that. I would be glad to pay for this service (and probably will) just
for the backlink juice.

~~~
onion2k
_I would be glad to pay for this service (and probably will) just for the
backlink juice._

You should be _very_ wary about doing that. Some of the link in the list are
news sites (eg Mashable). If someone at a news site sees you're spamming them
they'll be a lot less likely to cover your startup favourably in the future.
While you might get some 'backlink juice' out of it, you could also be burning
some very valuable bridges.

~~~
goatherders
I don't think the chance is high that someone is going to NOT cover my company
because they remember that some months prior I submitted a link to their site.

~~~
onion2k
_You_ didn't submit the link though. When a journalist does a quick search of
their email to see what correspondence there's been before they won't see you.
They'll see Eggradients, and whatever Eggradients put in that initial
submission. That might be something great. Equally it might be terrible.
Imagine if it said "Eggradients client ACME STARTUP is really good. Please
contact Eggradients if you would like to know more!" Do you really want that
to be the first contact your startup has with the media?

~~~
goatherders
And that would be different from a standard PR company submitting me...how?

~~~
sporkologist
One is spammy, the other isn't

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detaro
So you advertise that you'll submit people's stuff to hackernews for money, on
hackernews? I guess nice of you to give the admins a heads-up for the anti-
spam systems ;)

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SmellyGeekBoy
How is this SEO spam on the front page?

~~~
SamUK96
I like how SEO articles like this one are trying so desperately to not seem
like SEO scumlording anymore due to everybody realising over the past few
years that it's mainly a very grimy/scummy industry full of fraud and
grubbers. Go look at the google trend for "SEO" [1] (isn't very statistically
rigorous, but y'know...).

[1]
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=s...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=seo)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Isn't this just a minor pivot of now obsolete SEO directory spam?

Submitting to show HN, Crunchbase and /r/programming will require 3
dramatically different entries and info. I don't believe that's achievable for
$89 unless you want to do it badly. What cost your reputation?

~~~
SamUK96
But the linked startup is about SEO, i.e. spamming/abusing these communities
to generate links, by offering a paid service for it.

EDIT: I understand your comment now, yes it is. How this startup got funded I
have _no_ idea, it's a decade-old SEO "sh*tlording" technique :/

~~~
bdcravens
You assume it is funded. It could be a lone wolf with a submission script, or
access to cheap labor. The site itself is hosted on a site builder, and
payments are via Gumroad. (none of that is bad, but doesn't scream funded)

~~~
SamUK96
You are right, should of maybe included "if so". But still, surprising someone
would think covering up SEO shitlording with such a thin veil would fool
anybody. From the other comments here, it seems that the reason SEO is just
generally negative in 90% of its aspects, has been forgotten. People have a
short memory these days, and I'm sure that if people on HN have forgotten,
then it won't be long until we have link spam, algo spam, cramming, bots,
trackers, and the whole SEO shitlord shitlist back on the table.

Apologies for my French. It's just that HN is a lot smarter than this...

------
eruci
I'm amazed at the number of startups about startups.

~~~
SamUK96
_obligatory HN comment about selling shovels in a gold rush_

No but this is such a pattern in human history. Don't fight war, sell the
weapons. Don't mine bitcoin, sell the cards. Don't start a startup, start a
meta-startup (startup about startups). Easy $$$! Basically be the parasitic
side-liner supplying to the often-fruitless follies of mankind.

~~~
rainbowmverse
It's not too bad as long as you're making something genuinely good. I'm not
likely to ever make it big as a musician, but that doesn't mean Ableton or the
company behind Reaper are being shady by selling me software.

~~~
SamUK96
Of course, I was talking about being suppliers to rushes/"fads", i.e. the
industries/sectors that appear out of nowhere for fordubious reasons and with
ill-thought, i.e. wars, cali gold rush, 2002 internet companies, bitcoin,
MOOCs, Javascript frameworks. All these are bandwagons that arose and quickly
develop/devoloped to have many suppliers that exploit the confusion and
hysteria.

Take a look at GPU company stock prices over the past 2-3 years for me will
ye' ;)

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WhiteSource1
What's the benefit of directory submissions? 5 visits? If you think are doing
it for the magic word called SEO, think again

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serhadiletir
Thanks for all the comments. Gave me a lot of idea about the Q&A section on
the web page which I building these days.

The only reason I built the Submit Checklist is that create a feedback
generator. For this reason, the sending process takes a month if you willing
to pay me to submit for you.

Enjoy the list

Have a nice day

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gnicholas
What's the point of "submitting" to f6s? I only ever use them when I'm
entering into a startup competition run through their site. I never thought of
them as a place to submit startups other than this.

Seeing a site like this on the list makes me question the usefulness of other
sites that I've not heard of.

edit: Also, some of the FB groups are either completely inactive (last post
was months ago) or are satire (one sentence startup pitches).

~~~
city41
I'd argue what's the point of submitting to 99% of these? Drive by visits
rarely net anything, and I'd be willing to bet most of these won't even
generate drive bys.

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memset
This is neat!

To all of the naysayers - submitting to messageboards is a perfectly fine way
to get the word out about a product! Plus, I'd expect it to help with its
googlability. There's no question that it is better to talk to actual
customers, but where do you even find these people? How do you get them to
talk to you? How about message boards with communities of different people
looking to try out new ideas as a start?

~~~
urtrs
If you don't know how to reach your market you have already failed.

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elliottwilliams
What would be more interesting to me would be a list of places/social media
that my customers frequently visit, and then grab my company name on those
sites. Plenty of times I've asked customer how they've heard about me, and
then I race to that platform only to find out there are no good names related
to my product left.

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robodale
Wow, this reminds me of the days in the late 90's to early 2000's where you
would make a Windows downloadable application, and submit it to the hundreds
of near identical software sites.

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ospider
Why do I would like to submit to these directories if my startup were not for
developers? AFAIK, this would only attracts more copycats than real users.

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topicseed
I would not submit to every directory, but definitely a good starting point
just to get some backlinks, SEO juice, and mentions here and there.

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mabynogy
You're sure to have troubles if put your website into that.

But congratulations to the author for the work and the Show HN.

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jaequery
wasnt there a startup that submits your site to all these directories for you
for a price?

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notoriousjpg
> 1 month proces

Typo btw

