I’m 19 and I’ve just launched my first iPhone app! (Part 2/3)
Hey! First of all, I would like to thank each one of you for so huge engagement in my previous article (Part 1/3)! Over 3000 people have seen it! It was such an amazing experience for me reading all your messages and tweets! Thank you for that! It gave me so much more motivation to keep working on improving my skills! In this article I will show you how I found the first users for Proud. I hope you will find it valuable!
The best places to find early adopters
After creating social media channels, it’s the right time to start looking for the first serious users that might be interested in your app. These people will have a different point of view on your app and what’s most important they will give you valuable feedback. I have found a few interesting places to submit your startup or app. I decided to focus on the best 3 to compare my results and reach. To my surprise we were featured on Betalist, Beta Page and Beta Family! From these sites we got over 500 sign ups, and about 50 daily active beta testers which was a great place to start with!
Then I asked myself: “What’s the best community for people like me and Piotr, who want to improve their productivity on a daily basis?” R.E.D.D.I.T.! I found a few interesting subreddits (subgroups), where I could find people that might be interested in Proud. Reddit has it’s own rules and set of behaviors, and my first task was to understand that community. I spent a few hours reading posts and people’s answers. Then I found people who were looking for some advices on planning one’s day, time management, creating habits and goals. I wrote a few comments and shared my experience and techniques I learnt during my work on Proud. I deeply understood the meaning of time in life and I realized that people are simply not educated enough in this topic. I believe knowing a bit more on that can help you live so much better life!
What did I exactly do on Reddit?
- I found the community of people connected to my product or service.
GOAL: Find students that have problems finding time to study on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GetStudying/
https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/ - I understood their needs and problems and built trust.
FOUND PROBLEM: There isn’t any well-known time management technique and it might be the problem why we usually don’t have time. We can’t do what we actually want. Such things lead to stress and frustration in our lives. - I solved someone’s problem.
PROPOSED SOLUTION: Share your own experience, think how you deal with similar problems. Tell your story, communicate and comment others’ posts, engage with them. After some time, invite people to beta testing. Many of them will be curious and happy to discover something new that might change the way they live :).
I posted our blog there, and we had over 1300 new visitors on our website. We also acquired over 100 emails during a one week work. Even though I didn’t get many up-votes, it led many people to our blog but hey, the whole game is about trying and testing, isn’t it? The more creative you are, the more results you will have!
Success may be accompanied with using affirmations, reading quotes and self-development books. That’s why I found subreddits with people that crave self-motivation. Here’s how I tackled this one:
- I found the most successful coaches, and motivational speakers.
- I collected quotes, and theirs thoughts.
- I found some design inspiration, create few versions.
- I posted it on subreddits connected with that niche.
- I engaged with people, answered them and gave them what they wanted. Few of them were really inspired and they wanted to have such motivational wallpaper on their smartphone.
- I created a couple versions with different resolutions. I shared a dropbox link to download with them.
- Some of the people were curious about the logo design and that was the time when I could write about Proud and my work.
Thanks to that our quote with the logo of Proud has been seen by over 42000 people. This meant, new website users, new emails, and a few highly engaged people on Twitter. Because of Reddit I also found a girl who recorded a voice-over to our promo video of Proud. Thank you Amy, you are the best!!!
GOLDEN RULES:
— Do the research about your community. Of course, it doesn’t have to be Reddit. If you are looking for DIY designers — you should find them on other social media sites like Pinterest.
— Understand their needs and problems. Try to solve theirs problems. They will be grateful enough to help you even more!
— If you get to know your client enough, you will be able not only to sell your product, but also to change one’s life, which is something worth trying!
— Try different things to reach out your goals, sometimes the simplest ones are the best ones!
Product Hunt
It’s actually one of the best places that connects many interesting people who want to discover things that really matter. If you have never been a Product Hunter user, here is a strategy which has proven to work for me.
- As you probably know PH is connected with Twitter, that’s why you can easily stay in touch with everyone.
- Edit your profile, write who you are, and what you are doing. Don’t forget to add your product/app’s website link.
- Share great products you find interesting.
- Connect with CEOs or makers.
- Provide valuable feedback or join their beta communities. There are many startups or apps that still try to improve their products. Show how much you care about their ideas. Do it truly, never be fake! Everyone wants to be appreciated.
- Write an email about the product that you tested. Show them that you are supper happy that you can help somehow. (Hey, don’t spam, and if you truly don’t like it, don’t send fake emails!).
- Follow people on Twitter, like and comment their stuff.
- I highly recommend to create Twitter list of PH Influencers, it will make it easier to work on and reach out to these people. If you are not sure on how to do that check out this: click.
- If you spend enough time you can make some great connections. After 30 hours of providing feedbacks, finding right people and startups, I met one of the greatest men: Jason Grad. He posted our game Mindivision on PH in the gaming section. I can not tell you how much enthusiastic I was at that time!
Those experiences and hard work taught me: THE POWER OF CONNECTIONS. If you have one, you are already half a WINNER!
We already launched Proud on Product Hunt, I’ll write a separate blogpost about that! It was an amazing experience, we didn’t suspect such an engagement and so many valuable feedbacks, we were truly surprised by that! Thanks to all of you at Product Hunt for such support!
Marketing is all about people that truly care about the things you do.
Nobody said that working on your own product will be easy. You should focus on the things that might bring you some results and try your best to get the most of it and improve your work. Here is the list of groups and communities where you can find game designers, marketers, developers that will help you with developing your app. Shoot them a promo video, or screenshots from you app/game. Ask for their honest feedback and meet the relevant people.
App Entrepreneurs and Marketers Group
iPhone App Development & Marketing
Indy App & Game Developers Group
App Development Mastermind
Toucharcade — keeping you in touch with the latest in iOS gaming.
I started my journey with app marketing when I was 16. I’ve been learning through online courses, books and articles available on the Internet. I know that I did a lot of mistakes, but I know it’s crucial when you are learning. There is one thing that you should remember when you work on your startup, product or app: everything changes, the things that were proven yesterday, might be outdated today. Each product is different, so you have to find your own path and strategy. Try many things, make mistakes, learn from them and rock the world!
Since I finished my high school a few months ago, I started working on Proud on a daily basis. I collected over 1000 emails and beta users. We’ve been nominated for Best User Experience at Central European Startup Awards.
We launched Proud 12 days ago, and we already have some successes!
— We have over 580 up votes on Product Hunt and the up votes are still increasing!
— Proud has been featured on several blogs and tech magazines. The articles have been written in many different languages! Polish, Chinese, German, and there is even a review on AppAdvice, and The Next Web.
— Our promo video has been watched by more than 3000 people!
— We have very first review on Youtube by the best productivity youtuber Francesco D’Alessio.
— 300 people are waiting for Proud on Mac! You can join our mailing list here: http://bit.ly/ProudOnMac
You can find Proud here. New Year is a new opportunity to step up, step forth and grow! Start 2016 with Proud!
Special thanks for Piotr Szwach & Pierre Vannier!
