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Ask HN: Niche app customer acquisition?

1 pointsby nopalalmost 14 years ago
I recently launched a new service for monitoring SSL certificates [1], and I'm trying to figure out how to find customers.<p>I built this service because of a need I had, one that I thought others would have as well.<p>My service does couple of simple, useful things: lets you know if your certs are going to expire and lets you know if your certs are misconfigured or not working.<p>I initially saw the value in this type of service as being a simple way for people to set up reminders about when their certificates are going to expire. (No more need to worry about who the CA is emailing)<p>But now I think there may be more value in the validation piece.<p>Basically, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to target customers that would find my service useful.<p>I have a couple of targeted AdWords ads running right now and I have a reddit ad scheduled for later this week.<p>I've had some thought of writing an app that looks for expired SSL certs on the web and emails the domain owners, but this seems too spammy (maybe even illegal). I also thought about approaching a smaller registrar for a partnership, but I don't think any will go for working with such a new startup.<p>Does anyone have any tips for acquiring customers for a niche product?<p>BCC comes to mind, and maybe my type of service is similar in that I'll just have to wait until people with a need start looking for a solution, but I'd love to take a more active approach to customer acquisition, if possible.<p>[1] https://www.certician.com/

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