Don't Pay to Acquire Your First Users
I don't necessarily agree with the author. Her suggestions for how to get early users are all good ones, and by all means, do them all if you can! Except producthunt -- that one's a rigged vote with its own secret influencers. Google around, you'd be surprised how deep the rabbit hole goes!<p>But back to my point: there's nothing wrong with trying some Google or Facebook ads. Don't spend too much up front! Google will try to get you to broadly target a bunch of generic words. You should resist that pressure and use their keyword research tool to home in on specific phrases that your potential customers often search for.<p>Once you have your phrases, just put in $500 and see what happens. If you pick up a handful of customers who pay you $1000 over the next 6 months, then you're golden! Put in $5,000 next time and see if you can turn it into $10,000. Honestly, this kind of thing works for some businesses and people end up dumping as much as they can into ads. Don't ignore this strategy just because it's not as "sincere" or "personal" or something.<p>[Edit] Fixed author pronoun.