We're a team of two guys, for the first time in our life we built a web app over nights and weekends. This is like our side pet project and we actually think it is pretty awesome. Essentially it is a wiki where users can create & edit not only their own academic genealogy, but also anyone they know.<p>Like everybody else did, we posted a short "Show HN" here on Hacker News, we submitted a link to Reddit, we got a few thousand visits & close to ~100 signups, we were pretty excited initially. Then, a couple days later, once the traffic dried, we're now left in a zombie state of less than 10 visits a day and no new signup any more.<p>Our target users are science major undergrad/graduate students, postdocs, professors, and researchers in general. But the question is, how do we reach them, how can we let them know that there is this cool app they should definitely check out, what shall we do besides the "Show HN" and submitting to Reddit?<p>We're just two "average Joe" junior developers, and we have absolutely no marketing experience at all. So, we're here to ask HN: what should we do then? Would appreciate any constructive ideas/advice/suggestions/criticisms. Would love to hear what you have done to market/promote your side projects or startups, what works, what does not work, etc.
What are you doing for viral growth? Like, why should I tell my friends to sign up?<p>Have you thought about setting up some type of system to automatically create profiles for people? You could scan in the front page of a printed thesis (where it lists the advisers), extract the names, and then add pages if they don't exist for those professors and PHD people. Then, when a PHD student googled themselves, the phdtree link would show up.
There is only a slim chance that this type of idea will work. That's better than nothing, and many successful startups were given low chances initially. But the vast majority of stone-soup ideas where the users add all the content fail. You should set criteria for success (such as 20% of academics online in 3 months) and be ready to move on to another idea if you don't meet them.
Here's a list of 20 ways to get traction for your site.<p><a href="http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/04/in-the-pursuit-of-traction-have-you-considered-all-verticals.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/04/in-the-pursuit-o...</a>