[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How to get first 10 paying customers?
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       Ask HN: How to get first 10 paying customers?
        
       My own network is not tech savvy or suitable to try my product. I
       am digging up cold emails but chance of success is pretty low.  My
       product is partially complete. Before I invest further time and
       discover harsh truth, how can I find customers to try it and
       ultimately pay me in a month?  Reddit blocks any promotional posts
       and it's hard to get traction here on HN without karma points.
       Please suggest that has worked for you.
        
       Author : usersys
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2021-02-14 18:32 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
       | doublejay1999 wrote:
       | give aways on reddit
        
       | heofizzy wrote:
       | I have yet to make my first dollar online from my saas side
       | project. But one thing that I am trying out right now is SEO. It
       | might take some time until you start seeing results. But if your
       | saas is solving a problem for your target audience, you can try
       | to create high quality content for that audience.
        
       | usersys wrote:
       | Edit: OP here. Since a few fellow hackers asked about product, I
       | will mention it here. I can't make edit my own post for some
       | reason (on brave mobile).
       | 
       | My product is offering ML models (classification, recommendation,
       | ranking) through web services. We are offering it for $149/month.
       | You own your data. You can make REST api calls to get output of
       | model. Let me know if you are interested. My email is
       | aimlmodelfarm@gmail.com
        
         | 0x1DEADCA0 wrote:
         | Congrats! Make a video of how to use it? Talk to people who
         | maybe have the problem youre trying to solve
        
       | shoo wrote:
       | If your product is something that market already demands, one
       | idea is to set up a site and run a small ad campaign.
       | 
       | "How to Kill a Startup Idea with Google Keyword Planner and
       | AdWords: A Case Study"
       | 
       | https://www.psl.com/feed-posts/psl-studio-kill-xylo
       | 
       | Earlier HN discussion:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22110004
       | 
       | I also recommend Rob Walling's book Start Small Stay Small.
       | https://startupbook.net/
       | 
       | The book is mostly a practical marketing guide written for
       | developers who are trying to bootstrap a business.
       | 
       | Walling argues for a market-first approach: identify a good niche
       | market of potential customers first (enough potential customers,
       | you have a practical way to reach those customers through
       | search/advertising/niche community newsletters or forums or so
       | on, not too much competition). Then, before building product, run
       | experiment to validate or reject your product idea based on
       | market demand & estimated conversion.
        
       | SinisterAlex wrote:
       | Usually - word of mouth and solving someones problem helps alot.
       | 
       | Can you share your product? Who knows, maybe you will get your
       | first paying customer ;)
        
       | ilaksh wrote:
       | Reddit has a paid advertisement feature. Has worked for me, at
       | least to get a few initial customers.
        
       | eimrine wrote:
       | Find some guys who may need your product and ask them to pay 20%
       | of the money your product shall save.
        
       | pedalpete wrote:
       | You say your "product is partially complete", how did you get
       | there without speaking to customers? If you've spent time on HN
       | in the past, you've probably read about speaking to customers
       | before building, or building to solve your own problem.
       | 
       | Since you say you are offering ML models through a web-service,
       | who else is doing that now? How do you think they find their
       | customers? Can you leverage their customer base to find people
       | that may be wiling to switch?
       | 
       | Step 1 is to identify who needs your product. Then find out where
       | those people are. It's a bit more difficult with Covid due to
       | lack of meetups, etc, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
       | 
       | However, if I were you, I'd take a serious look at how you got to
       | where you are? How did you build a product without knowing how
       | you were going to get customers? How you are going to know if
       | you've built the right product.
       | 
       | Rather than looking for "customers", at this point, I'd suggest
       | looking for "advice", find somebody who has the problem, and show
       | them your solution. Then ask them if it's something they need. If
       | not, why not? Find out what they do need, etc etc.
       | 
       | Love the problem, not the solution.
        
       | flave wrote:
       | Can you tell us a bit more about the product? B2C or B2B? Price
       | point? things like that.
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-14 23:02 UTC)