This is my first startup, ever. As a computer scientist, I've always been up to date with programming knowledge, but I never kept up with anything about running an online business, SEO, marketing, and all that jazz. I still don't know 90% of it. Basically, I'm on my own for the time being and I always run into problems that take me a while to figure out. For today, I'd like to be pointed to a site , article, blog post or what have you that will give me a general checklist of the basic things I need to do to. Everything I come across is always geared towards one very small part of building a customer base, and all I really need to know is where to start.<p>1) Make my website more visible ; give it more of an online presence.
2) Get the people that are already interested in the segment I'm working on to find my website more easily.
3) Make sure that there is little friction in the sign-up process<p>Or, if someone would care to draw up something for me, that would be greatly appreciated.<p>Thanks
I will sidestep particular suggestions for a general comment.<p>One kind of general background is taking (many) steps toward figuring out who your market is, and not assuming that you understand the target population, which translates into:
What is the business model that will work for your idea, and how should my idea change as a consequence of what I learn?<p>Steve Blank's venture / startup blog discusses fairly frequently the search (and iteration on the search, and the learning involved during the search) for a business model, answering the question: Who is the population that is willing to pay for the service? This is a distinctly different from the the search for, construction of (and iteration on) a minimum viable product or service.<p>Nobody really knows their market when they start, or how to find it. They discover it by trying many things, in many populations, revising as they go, from learning experience to learning experience.<p>Asking people to pay, right now, is a very instructive process toward discovery of your business model. You might have a perfect product, but no buyers. Find the buyers. Ask people why they're not a buyer.<p>See:<p>An MVP is not a Cheaper Product, It’s about Smart Learning
<a href="http://steveblank.com/2013/07/22/an-mvp-is-not-a-cheaper-product-its-about-smart-learning/" rel="nofollow">http://steveblank.com/2013/07/22/an-mvp-is-not-a-cheaper-pro...</a><p>Who’s Doing the Learning?
<a href="http://steveblank.com/2013/06/03/whos-doing-the-learning/" rel="nofollow">http://steveblank.com/2013/06/03/whos-doing-the-learning/</a>
I think Twitter ads are a great place to start. You can get setup with the in under 30 min. You can start with a very low budget. You can start seeing results as early as tomorrow.<p>To give you an idea, for <a href="http://www.BromBone.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.BromBone.com</a> we target the followers of just one account. The people who follow this account are very likely to find our service useful. Overtime we will expand to other accounts. We spend just $5 per day, and that will bring us about 20-25 visitors per day, plus a new follower or a retweet every once and a while. Our ads started running within 24 hours of setting up our account.<p>This probably won't scale well enough to get all the customer you need, but it can give you a starting point. It can allow you to collect some potential customers email addresses so that you can talk to them and figure out what they need. Or maybe no one signs up at all. In that case you need to make some bigger changes.
It sounds like what you want are the basics of marketing. This is a common need for CS grads. Here are some places to start at getting traffic:<p><a href="http://www.quora.com/Startups/Whats-an-effective-way-to-drive-initial-traffic-to-a-simple-landing-page" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/Startups/Whats-an-effective-way-to-driv...</a><p><a href="http://derwiki.tumblr.com/post/40523233923/getting-traffic-for-your-newly-launched-startup" rel="nofollow">http://derwiki.tumblr.com/post/40523233923/getting-traffic-f...</a><p>If you post your site here, you may get some good advice. Alternatively, I have found criticue.com to offer excellent free feedback.
Recruit them manually. This thread has a lot of great tips.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6041765" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6041765</a>
<a href="http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo" rel="nofollow">http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo</a> - This should get you a start on the SEO side of things.
I do a bit of freelance marketing, copywriting, conversion optimization and the such. I'd be glad to chat if you want to email me. Address is in my profile.