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Comment by iamclovin | Hacker News Reader

I'd be especially interested in apps whose potential customers included people who weren't web savvy. For e.g. in our situation, a huge number of people use Excel to manage their sports leagues right now and they are people who aren't tuned necessarily into Twitter, blogs, etc.

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There are usually conventions where the league organizers/coaches/members meet (e.g. http://www.nscaa.com/annual.php). There's a chance to meet a few hundred or thousand in one place. I'm not sure what your travel budget is, but a weekend at one of these could yield some good contacts.

Thanks! We're based out of Singapore, so trips to the US at this point are probably something we might not consider, but we're planning to hit a few of the sports conferences in South East Asia to spread the word.

Why not find somebody local and pay them a chunk + referral fee for representing you on the day?

If you vet properly it will be far cheaper than flying, cost a few hundred and could get you some solid contacts anyway.

A referral fee or affiliate program would definitely be helpful for engaging potential customers outside your reach.

Ideally, you could have "community (or insert geo location) managers" who have the knowledge to sell (or setup) your software for their leagues for a commission.

Other creative and potential affiliates would be trophy sellers, jersey printers, etc..

Just because it would be an affiliate or referral program, does not mean that it would have to be available to anyone.

Good Luck

That would be a good idea even if you were based in the US. You would be able to hit a lot more cities by using locals.

We're starting to market our salon software (about to release v1!) and are running into the same trap. Salon owners aren't savvy, generally don't read blogs, and rely on word of mouth/print marketing. Adwords keywords are also VERY competitive by the 'juggernauts' of the space.

Thus far we've relied on word of mouth and trying to make our product 'discoverable' but there's not much social stuff happening in the salon industry. We haven't solved this yet so I'd love to see what you guys come up with.

We're actually considering taking out a magazine ad.

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