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✉️ Finding the right way to acquire customers

Happy holidays indie hackers!

I recently hit the first 7 customers (5 paying, 2 are still in trial) for my startup Affistash, but I am still pretty unsure, because everything moving forward seems pretty foggy for me. I currently have 170 users, but I don't want to seem spammy trying to convert them through popups and emails...

Stats

I feel like I can't develop a strong customer acquisition channel, since I am not experienced in marketing. Even the fact that me and my co-founder managed to get 5 b2c paying customers and 2 b2b customers in the first 10 days since our startup launch day on ProductHunt feels pretty insane, because we didn't focus specifically on any channel.

In the end, I am just looking for some advice from anyone that has managed to master this skill, in their entrepreneurial journey. Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks and I hope you guys have the best holidays with your loved ones! 🎄

on December 24, 2022
  1. 4

    Been writing around Micro SaaS around various ideas and here are some pointers.

    • You can also leverage PH, BetaList by launching a few side projects that can drive traffic to the main product/site.

    • You may try LTDs. Some of the platforms that bring LTDs are AppSumo, PitchGround, etc. Also, note that many Facebook groups help launch LTDs for you for their followers, and some of these Facebook groups have more than 100K followers. So, overall it can drive some good revenue for you if your product solves a good problem that the audience is interested in.

    But the only catch here is - Most of these platforms charge 70% of the sales and give you only 30% of the revenue. Let’s say you make $100K sales, you get only $30K. It's still a good deal as these platforms do the heavy lifting for you, and you get some early users for your product.

    But there are some disadvantages also with this approach.

    • If your product is still not mature, you will see people reporting all over the place, which may damage your product sales later.
    • You will see a heavy influx of sales during the LTD promotion time, and if you have no support staff, this might get too overwhelming with a lot of time going into support and answering queries.
    • If you ever need to sell your company, the LTD userbase could still be a liability as there is no new revenue coming from this userbase.

    The plus side of LTDs:

    • You can grow an early userbase
    • You get a lot of feedback from early users
    • You get traction (assuming the product/feedback is good)
    • You get some money that you can reinvest back into the product

    If you are wondering if you cannot give your product for a Life Time Access, just note that in most cases, 70% of the users who buy LTDs would actually never use it. That's the type of audience who buy LTDs. But again, this is only an observation from usual LTD discussions.

    1. 2

      Thank you @upenv, good advices at least for my launching!

    2. 1

      I appreciate the advise; however, I'm not convinced that my platform would be the most appropriate for LTDs https://rollingball3d.com

    3. 1

      Thanks for the advice, I actually thought about this route, but I am not sure that my platform would be the best fit for LTDs, since our approach is mostly b2b, around 70% of our revenue comes from businesses listing on our platform. We also have our b2c revenue as well, so in that case, it might work.

      Anyway, maybe leveraging PH would work, since I am mostly looking for tech startup owners as my customer, so that would be my main target.

      Thanks again for the advice and happy holidays!

  2. 2

    Just do a systematic action - place your product wherever possible. G2.com worked best for us: within a year our startup getscreen.me was in the TOP 10 in its category, and now clients come regularly from there.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the advice, I actually think that G2, might work great for our product, so I will give it a try for sure. Also, are you using affiliate marketing, as a way to drive traffic for your startup? Just curious xD

      1. 2

        We currently do not use affiliate marketing, but plan to do so in the future