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Comment on Ask YC: Source of users for early stage startups

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Create a persona of the audience you think would like you're offering. Coders? Single moms? Rap enthusiasts?

Find out where they spend their time online and hang out there. If it's a forum, post a lot and have a signature link back to your site. If it's a blog, comment a lot (intelligently) and eventually drop a note to the blogger for some coverage or feedback.

SEO, SEO, SEO. As part of your persona thinking, figure out what your audiences searches for and be high in those results. Don't guess. KNOW. Do keyword research.

Social media aggregators (digg, etc) require that you be funny, controversial, or useful. If you can tweak your initial offering so that you (or better yet, your ever-changing content) can meet these criteria, you can perform well.

Word of mouth/virality. If having 10 active users doesn't result in growth, you should improve your product until it does.

We're targeting single coding hiphop moms. It's going quite well.

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