8 ms·

Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site

53 points by barmstrong 17y ago

rubyrescue 17y ago
good suggestions. rank for long/medium tail keywords is incredibly important. it just takes time and concerted effort to do the work to promote your site and most people, particularly developers/hackers don't want to spend time on 'chores' like that.
- barmstrong 17y ago
  Agreed...as a hacker I definitely avoided marketing for a while and felt it was "beneath me" or something. I think you still have to be careful, most of the stuff in the "internet marketing" community for example is ridiculous and scammy. But you definitely can't ignore marketing as an entrepreneur.
- vaksel 17y ago
  here is the question about the long tail words, do you need decent page rank for just your main site's homepage, or do you need page rank for all those other pages too?
  - barmstrong 17y ago
    They don't need page rank, even your home page doesn't if it's long tail enough. Once upon a time I was tutoring people in finance. I registered the domain name HoustonFinanceTutor.com since that's where I lived. Within a few weeks I was #1 in Google for the search "houston finance tutor". It was a brand new website with zero page rank. It ranked there just because i had the keywords in the domain name, and this on-page factor was enough. Play around with it...
j_baker 17y ago
I'm not sure I agree with #2 unless your competition is really truly despicable. I think that if you use that method against something that's really popular, it will come back to bite you.
- tdoggette 17y ago
  I disagree. The name of your competitor is one that draws the eye of people that are interested in the niche that you and your competitor fill, and if you really are better than them (or at least have different flaws), then it's likely some of that traffic will stick. EDIT: I don't mean to say that "COMPETITOR sucks, use this instead" is a great direction to come at writing ads from, but rather something more like "COMPANY provides SERVICE better than COMPETITOR" might be effective.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  This is a lesson from Politics, if you focus all your energy into attacking your opponents it doesn't mean people will choose you, it just means people will choose not to choose. This tactic does not extend to business. You don't 'win' by having the most users, you win by making the most money, and having a wide open market is stupid and dangerous for a company. This is the major failure with Apples 'PC and Mac' advertisements, it doesn't tell us why we should buy a Mac, just why we shouldn't buy a PC. This tactic presently works for Apple because the people who know the difference between a PC and a Mac are likely aware of the pros for Apple, they just need to be overwhelmed by the cons of a PC. For a new product, your consumers have no knowledge of your pros, and slandering your opponents does nothing except clue them into their failures. The prime example here is again in politics, slander is a tactic always taken by the right-wing parties, however when your claims are hollow and see through they can fail by record numbers. This happened in the UK when Labour gained the majority with Tony Blair, the conservatives launched a slander campaign that not only alienated voters from the conservative party but had no effect on keeping liberal voters out of the polling booths, they essentially handed parliament to Labour. The conservatives here in Canada keep playing the same tactics and have yet to get a majority through their tactics. Again the same could be seen with tactics used against Obama, but they were baseless claims and liberal voters came out in force, conservative voters staid at relatively the same levels but decreased vastly in percentage.
  - barmstrong 17y ago
    Great point. It works as a gimmick to get a click, but after that you need to focus on your benefits probably.
MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
I think the 37Signals and Joel Spolsky examples are a little misleading. Maybe this goes without saying, but when blogging to get traffic, be sure to remember your desired audience. 37Signals and Spolsky's audience is web developers, like many HN readers, so they can promote their apps on a tech blog. If your audience is grandmothers or tweens, don't expect to get much traffic from your blog about Rails programming.
- j_baker 17y ago
  Indeed, you should probably have a blog about grandchildren or boy bands.
- barmstrong 17y ago
  This is a valid point. Your blog should ideally be related to the business you are launching. Luckily, this frequently happens just because people's interests tend to line up that way. But even if they don't, you'll get some interest from people just because they know who you are and are interested in what you're doing. And they may know know someone who would be interested in it...etc. So the permission asset is a pretty flexible tool, but obviously most valuable when it's on topic.
- patio11 17y ago
  My blog is about 99% not relevant to the interests of my typical customers, but it is still useful as a friendcatcher. There are a couple hundred people who care about what my business is doing, as a consequence of blogging and other social activities over the years. This gives me an automatic boost to marketing of new sites/products/etc. For example, in 2010 when I get my new site off the ground, I can with a high degree of confidence predict that it is going to pick up a few dozen links in the first week from people who know me and care about what I'm doing separately from their (lack of) desire for my new site. Nothing says you can't also have a customer-focused blog, too. I got around to installing one on my site a few months ago but haven't found time to write for it in a compelling manner yet. That will be another topic for 2010.
hello00768 17y ago
welcome to: http://www.wowowbiz.com/ http://www.wowowbiz.com/ The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jorda-n,prada,ad-idas, also including the jeans,shir-ts,bags,ha-t and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept the paypal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time. http://www.wowowbiz.com/ http://www.wowowbiz.com/
mcantor 17y ago
I think it's kind of funny that "needing good content" is listed as a "con" in #3.
- barmstrong 17y ago
  Valid point :) I guess I was saying that with your brand new site, you might not have good content yet if it's supposed to be user generated. So it's a con because it's a chicken/egg problem.
  - mcantor 17y ago
    That's a fair explanation. I think I understood the spirit in which that point was intended; it just stood out to me because of how often people harp on content being #1. I liked the post overall, for sure!
bcl 17y ago
Not a terribly useful article. 2. Tell people your competition sucks - unethical. 4. Seed your site using Mechanical Turk - unethical, depending on the type of site you have. 5. Have a blog - should be 'Have a Popular Blog' He leaves out useful techniques like twittering about your new site using popular hashtags associated with its subject. Or posting it on Facebook, creating a fan site and encouraging your friends to spread the word.
- david 17y ago
  Telling your people your competition sucks isn't unethical, you're just making them aware that you can provide them with more value. If you can't live up to your claims, you'll feel the backlash. I can see that using Mechanical Turk could be unethical for certain sites (e.g: dating sites), but it could also be pretty useful, and was something I hadn't thought of at least. Also, I don't see how your complaint about #5 applies to blogs but not twitter or facebook sites.
  - bcl 17y ago
    Instead of saying the competition 'sucks' I would instead explain why my product is superior to their. Accentuate the positives of your product, not the negatives of the competition (which, if they have already used the competitions they already know well enough). As for #5, yes for a Facebook group it would need to be popular. But with twitter you can attach relevant hashtags to your post, resulting in it showing up in searches as well as for those that follow you.

53 points by barmstrong 17y ago

good suggestions. rank for long/medium tail keywords is incredibly important. it just takes time and concerted effort to do the work to promote your site and most people, particularly developers/hackers don't want to spend time on 'chores' like that.

barmstrong 17y ago
Agreed...as a hacker I definitely avoided marketing for a while and felt it was "beneath me" or something. I think you still have to be careful, most of the stuff in the "internet marketing" community for example is ridiculous and scammy. But you definitely can't ignore marketing as an entrepreneur.
vaksel 17y ago
here is the question about the long tail words, do you need decent page rank for just your main site's homepage, or do you need page rank for all those other pages too?
- barmstrong 17y ago
  They don't need page rank, even your home page doesn't if it's long tail enough. Once upon a time I was tutoring people in finance. I registered the domain name HoustonFinanceTutor.com since that's where I lived. Within a few weeks I was #1 in Google for the search "houston finance tutor". It was a brand new website with zero page rank. It ranked there just because i had the keywords in the domain name, and this on-page factor was enough. Play around with it...

j_baker 17y ago

I'm not sure I agree with #2 unless your competition is really truly despicable. I think that if you use that method against something that's really popular, it will come back to bite you.

tdoggette 17y ago
I disagree. The name of your competitor is one that draws the eye of people that are interested in the niche that you and your competitor fill, and if you really are better than them (or at least have different flaws), then it's likely some of that traffic will stick. EDIT: I don't mean to say that "COMPETITOR sucks, use this instead" is a great direction to come at writing ads from, but rather something more like "COMPANY provides SERVICE better than COMPETITOR" might be effective.
electromagnetic 17y ago
This is a lesson from Politics, if you focus all your energy into attacking your opponents it doesn't mean people will choose you, it just means people will choose not to choose. This tactic does not extend to business. You don't 'win' by having the most users, you win by making the most money, and having a wide open market is stupid and dangerous for a company. This is the major failure with Apples 'PC and Mac' advertisements, it doesn't tell us why we should buy a Mac, just why we shouldn't buy a PC. This tactic presently works for Apple because the people who know the difference between a PC and a Mac are likely aware of the pros for Apple, they just need to be overwhelmed by the cons of a PC. For a new product, your consumers have no knowledge of your pros, and slandering your opponents does nothing except clue them into their failures. The prime example here is again in politics, slander is a tactic always taken by the right-wing parties, however when your claims are hollow and see through they can fail by record numbers. This happened in the UK when Labour gained the majority with Tony Blair, the conservatives launched a slander campaign that not only alienated voters from the conservative party but had no effect on keeping liberal voters out of the polling booths, they essentially handed parliament to Labour. The conservatives here in Canada keep playing the same tactics and have yet to get a majority through their tactics. Again the same could be seen with tactics used against Obama, but they were baseless claims and liberal voters came out in force, conservative voters staid at relatively the same levels but decreased vastly in percentage.
- barmstrong 17y ago
  Great point. It works as a gimmick to get a click, but after that you need to focus on your benefits probably.

MicahWedemeyer 17y ago

I think the 37Signals and Joel Spolsky examples are a little misleading. Maybe this goes without saying, but when blogging to get traffic, be sure to remember your desired audience. 37Signals and Spolsky's audience is web developers, like many HN readers, so they can promote their apps on a tech blog. If your audience is grandmothers or tweens, don't expect to get much traffic from your blog about Rails programming.

j_baker 17y ago
Indeed, you should probably have a blog about grandchildren or boy bands.
barmstrong 17y ago
This is a valid point. Your blog should ideally be related to the business you are launching. Luckily, this frequently happens just because people's interests tend to line up that way. But even if they don't, you'll get some interest from people just because they know who you are and are interested in what you're doing. And they may know know someone who would be interested in it...etc. So the permission asset is a pretty flexible tool, but obviously most valuable when it's on topic.
patio11 17y ago
My blog is about 99% not relevant to the interests of my typical customers, but it is still useful as a friendcatcher. There are a couple hundred people who care about what my business is doing, as a consequence of blogging and other social activities over the years. This gives me an automatic boost to marketing of new sites/products/etc. For example, in 2010 when I get my new site off the ground, I can with a high degree of confidence predict that it is going to pick up a few dozen links in the first week from people who know me and care about what I'm doing separately from their (lack of) desire for my new site. Nothing says you can't also have a customer-focused blog, too. I got around to installing one on my site a few months ago but haven't found time to write for it in a compelling manner yet. That will be another topic for 2010.

hello00768 17y ago

welcome to: http://www.wowowbiz.com/ http://www.wowowbiz.com/ The website wholesale for many kinds of fashion shoes, like the nike,jorda-n,prada,ad-idas, also including the jeans,shir-ts,bags,ha-t and the decorations. All the products are free shipping, and the the price is competitive, and also can accept the paypal payment.,after the payment, can ship within short time. http://www.wowowbiz.com/ http://www.wowowbiz.com/

mcantor 17y ago

I think it's kind of funny that "needing good content" is listed as a "con" in #3.

barmstrong 17y ago
Valid point :) I guess I was saying that with your brand new site, you might not have good content yet if it's supposed to be user generated. So it's a con because it's a chicken/egg problem.
- mcantor 17y ago
  That's a fair explanation. I think I understood the spirit in which that point was intended; it just stood out to me because of how often people harp on content being #1. I liked the post overall, for sure!

bcl 17y ago

Not a terribly useful article. 2. Tell people your competition sucks - unethical. 4. Seed your site using Mechanical Turk - unethical, depending on the type of site you have. 5. Have a blog - should be 'Have a Popular Blog' He leaves out useful techniques like twittering about your new site using popular hashtags associated with its subject. Or posting it on Facebook, creating a fan site and encouraging your friends to spread the word.

david 17y ago
Telling your people your competition sucks isn't unethical, you're just making them aware that you can provide them with more value. If you can't live up to your claims, you'll feel the backlash. I can see that using Mechanical Turk could be unethical for certain sites (e.g: dating sites), but it could also be pretty useful, and was something I hadn't thought of at least. Also, I don't see how your complaint about #5 applies to blogs but not twitter or facebook sites.
- bcl 17y ago
  Instead of saying the competition 'sucks' I would instead explain why my product is superior to their. Accentuate the positives of your product, not the negatives of the competition (which, if they have already used the competitions they already know well enough). As for #5, yes for a Facebook group it would need to be popular. But with twitter you can attach relevant hashtags to your post, resulting in it showing up in searches as well as for those that follow you.