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Ask HN: How do you get visibility if you're suuuuper bad at marketing?

4•ClipNoteBook•2h ago
Hi, I built a small tool that I have used daily for a long time. A few friends and classmates also use it and they keep telling me it is genuinely useful. But I am stuck on distribution. I am a student, I have no budget for ads, and I am not good at marketing (i try but i'm super bad). When I mention it in other communities it often gets treated as self promotion and I get blocked.

If you were starting from zero today, how would you get the first 100 real users in a clean way? I would love specific ideas like where to share, what kind of write up works, how to approach niche communities, or what you would build into the product to make sharing natural.

Thanks.

Comments

OmKadam•2h ago
Do super personalized outreaching
ClipNoteBook•2h ago
Thanks, that makes sense, but when you say personalized outreach, do you mean emailing people, DMing them, replying to relevant threads...? What is the best way to do it without looking spammy?
CuriouslyC•1h ago
I've had a similar problem in my personal development journey.

I haven't solved it, but my experience has lead me to believe that building in public and blogging/vlogging your journey (why you started and what you learned) is promising. That type of content drives brand and product hype via views/engagement, helps you filter ideas (if your vlog is getting no traction, maybe not a great product?) and avoids promotional post rules in a lot of communities.

My new years resolution is to dial in my content driven development pipeline.

ClipNoteBook•32m ago
Thanks for the reply. To be honest I love the coding part, but getting users or even testers to actually try the tool is a nightmare for me. I am still trying to figure out a clean way to commercialize my projects without getting flagged as spam everywhere. And yeah the building in public idea is exactly what I just started doing. If you are curious, I have a blog page for the tool where I am writing what I am learning. Happy to share the link: https://clipnotebook.com/blog

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