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I like the list, but I wouldn't dismiss paid advertising so quickly. Set up a testing budget and keep testing until you make it work. Groupon, LivingSocial, etc

by il 16y ago

I like the list, but I wouldn't dismiss paid advertising so quickly. Set up a testing budget and keep testing until you make it work. Groupon, LivingSocial, etc are seeing tremendous growth from their AdWords campaigns. Investors and potential acquirers are goig to be a lot more excited about a scalable user acquisition model like AdWords than fleeting success on social media.

vacanti 16y ago
Agree though I was writing the post more from the perspective of getting first 1,000 users. Focusing on adwords, facebook is good for going from first 1,000 users to first 100,000 users. And, investors will definitely get excited if you figure it out.
- jiffylu 16y ago
  Mint used a combination of paid search and SEO/blogging strategy to get their first couple thousand users. Dave McClure and Noah Kagan worked on that for over a year while Aaron Patzer & Co. worked on the product. Dave talks about that in this video (Skip to 30:40): http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262665259 http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262665259
wazoox 16y ago
From my experience, simple AdWords used to work great, but don't anymore without a dedicated landing page.
- chalst 16y ago
  I agree, modulo s/dedicated/tailored/. You can make your splash page work as a landing page, provided you craft the splash page side-by-side with your text ads.
patio11 16y ago
It took me more than a year to figure out how to "crack the AdWords code", but I get an awful lot of users (and sales) attributable to AdWords. Until then, it was basically just "throw a dollar a day at it, see what works". (YMMV if you are in very rich verticals.) I got curious about this yesterday, so I made a page charting it. http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/adwords-stats http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/adwords-stats I really wish I could just wave my hands at it and scale that up by a factor of 10.
- falsestprophet 16y ago
  You could build 10 more goofball web applications. edit: this is not an insincere suggestion
- silverbax88 16y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, but what is YMMV?
  - born2web 16y ago
    YMMV = Your Market/Mileage/Method May Vary

by il 16y ago

vacanti 16y ago

Agree though I was writing the post more from the perspective of getting first 1,000 users. Focusing on adwords, facebook is good for going from first 1,000 users to first 100,000 users. And, investors will definitely get excited if you figure it out.

jiffylu 16y ago
Mint used a combination of paid search and SEO/blogging strategy to get their first couple thousand users. Dave McClure and Noah Kagan worked on that for over a year while Aaron Patzer & Co. worked on the product. Dave talks about that in this video (Skip to 30:40): http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262665259 http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262665259

wazoox 16y ago

From my experience, simple AdWords used to work great, but don't anymore without a dedicated landing page.

chalst 16y ago
I agree, modulo s/dedicated/tailored/. You can make your splash page work as a landing page, provided you craft the splash page side-by-side with your text ads.

patio11 16y ago

It took me more than a year to figure out how to "crack the AdWords code", but I get an awful lot of users (and sales) attributable to AdWords. Until then, it was basically just "throw a dollar a day at it, see what works". (YMMV if you are in very rich verticals.) I got curious about this yesterday, so I made a page charting it. http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/adwords-stats http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/adwords-stats I really wish I could just wave my hands at it and scale that up by a factor of 10.

falsestprophet 16y ago
You could build 10 more goofball web applications. edit: this is not an insincere suggestion
silverbax88 16y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but what is YMMV?
- born2web 16y ago
  YMMV = Your Market/Mileage/Method May Vary