How to get first paying customers without an audience
Reaching the right people is difficult when you lack a large social-media following or a big advertising budget. This bottleneck leaves founders struggling to secure initial paying customers and get their business off the ground.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1participating in relevant online communities
- 2creating useful content
- 3Posting in beginner communities
- 4Finding people who already want to learn, answering questions, and reaching out individually to offer the app for feedback
- 5Trying different ideas or suggestions from other business owners
- 6trying to target solo practitioners or really small firms who are frustrated with big CRM providers and more open to new tools
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“reaching the right customers is proving to be an entirely different challenge.”source ↗
“I don’t have a large social-media following or a big advertising budget.”source ↗
“I've been struggling with what to post or say to people to help grow my business.”source ↗
“Does anyone have any ideas on how I could grow my business without sounding too repetitive or desperate in my posts”source ↗
“every conversation went the same way. They'd say it looks good, come back when you have some clients using it, then we'll talk. Which is funny because how am I supposed to get clients if nobody's willing to be the first one.”source ↗
“I built Quoliv on my own, it's a learning app that teaches people how stocks and finance work, lessons plus a practice mode. Live on the App Store, free. Took about 2-3 months .”source ↗
“Problem: I built the whole thing before thinking about distribution. Now it's live and basically nobody knows it exists. I posted in a few beginner communities and got polite nothing back.”source ↗
“For anyone who's launched something with no ad budget, what actually worked to get your first real users?”source ↗
“everyone wants social proof before they'll touch it but nobody wants to be the proof”source ↗
“i am on the same boat”source ↗