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Comment by nifski | Hacker News Reader

Hey,

You’re right about it being a bit more difficult to market in an age of constant AI slop.

Personally I have two products that I have created that actually solve a problem, whether or not the product is good or bad doesn’t even matter because getting users is the key.

I would advise you start with friends and family first, just to get some valuable feedback.

Influencer ads and TikTok promotion also is promising — atleast compared to cold outreach or LinkedIn

Hunting for discords or telegram channels or finding where your core audience hang out (not necessarily in real life even though that is useful info) so that you can reach these people and showcase the product.

Ps. I wouldn’t pitch the product like a sale or like you need users. I would pitch it by asking if they could help take a look as I am researching. If you lead with research you will get users

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Ah, the research angle is good! And my take-away from what you write is mostly the need to be visible, in whatever form, be it in the users communities, or otherwise?

We have excellent feedback from the users who do find us, so there is product market fit for the subset of customers that have a need for our product strong enough to actively search for it, but maybe that's an issue in and of itself: the fraction might be too small, and furthermore, for the (hopefully) larger segment of the user base that don't have a need strong enough to actively go looking, we need to be sufficiently visible for them to chance upon us...? which I guess drives home the message even more that visibility is key...

Thanks!

These are good hints that have worked for us as well.

> whether or not the product is good or bad doesn’t even matter because getting users is the key

I feel this is true more now than it has ever been! Ideas used to be cheap, execution the bottleneck. Now execution (of product development) has sped up so much that distribution is the bottleneck.

agree with the premise here (distribution is hard; get users or die) BUT there's no better marketing than a GOOD product that brings people real VALUE

get a 1000 users to your site → 1% conversion → 10 users. if those 10 users have a shitty experience because the product SUCKS, then all of that effort getting them there was wasted.

the alternative is making a GOOD product that people actually WANT to use and can get EXCITED about. you keep it SMALL and work with a limited subset of people who are interested in what you have and are willing to try it in exchange for the PROMISE that it will bring them VALUE. if (and only if) you can truly deliver value for this small group, their excitement and optimism WILL radiate outward. from there, it's about surfing these small waves, paying close attention, and very carefully choosing bigger and bigger waves to surf.

as softwarians we MUST make GOOD products that people WANT to use!!!!! throwing away money on advertisements until you have anything GOOD is a waste of time and effort.

I'm all for word of mouth and things radiating out, but doesn't that need some viral factor of sorts that makes the product one that's shareable? We have customers raving about our product actually, and saying they would be incredibly sad should it go away, but are struggling to leverage that into further sales...

Affiliate marketing _does_ work to an extent, and is a kind of rideable wave I suppose?

Do you have concrete examples?

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