

Ask HN: has anyone else found it hard to get attention for their new startup? - hoodoof

Anyone got any inspirational stories to share about how it was hard to get any attention or traffic for your new startup, and hopefully you overcame this and found an audience and users?
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benologist
I think everyone struggles with this - building something is a lot easier than
building something popular.

Advertising may be an option. Find relevant communities you can be part of.
Write useful, industry-related content and share it with industry-related
blogs. Affiliate systems might work. For software/apps/games/etc 3rd party
marketplaces, publishers, distributors might help.

Persistance is the main factor though. Overnight success is usually backed by
hundreds or thousands of overnight experimentation and failure.

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philfreo
There's some generic advice, but perhaps it would be more constructive to post
about what your startup does / who your target market is, since that will
often change the strategy significantly.

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proexploit
I agree completely. Generating traffic / gaining users is different in a lot
businesses (to be extreme, you wouldn't try to sell a $50k/mo B2B subscription
via banner ads on a porn site).

You're very lucky in the HN is an intelligent community that will most likely
spend the time to point out where you can improve and what you're doing wrong
with experience in a huge range of businesses. What they can't do is distill
that information down so simply that it applies to all businesses.

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stevesaldana
I recommend jumping into topics that are relevant to what you are working on
and aim to be a subject matter expert on whatever it is. I got involved in a
conversation on HN related to my project (how to manage debt) and came away
with a lot of good feedback and a few signups. It didn't solve the problem
overnight, but every little bit helps.

