What's the right way to scale a startup from 0 to 1M customers without lot of $$$ spend on PR and Adwords in the beginning?<p>It's difficult to come out from code incubation - directory submission,<p>Chasing PR is one way but who covers a non-ycombinator or funded startup. No one bothers to write about you or even return your email or tweet :( - that's reality.<p>Spending on adwords seems to expensive affair - doing it via forums will take ages to scale..<p>I know lot of startups would have undergone the same situation. So would love to see your comments.<p>Where or how do we start? What are the companies who have seen exponential growth?<p>If our background helps, We - http://www.Clickdesk.com - are new to live-chat space but we are lighting fast, Google-AppEngine based, allow agents to receive Chats on Skype and Google Talk, allow visitors to call from Browser without installing anything new and from local access numbers. Eg: customer in Japan calls a local number in Tokyo to reach you business...<p>Hope this post will help others.
1. Figure out how much money you make from an average customer in total.<p>2. Experiment with ads and affiliates and such and keep the cost per new customer below the one you figured out in 1.<p>It's really that easy.