Ask HN: Startup only has 2800 users after a year, should I do more marketing?

24 points

13 years ago

I committed the first code to Readlang (http://readlang.com) a year ago and have been working on it solo since then. It's a freemium webapp for reading texts and watching videos. So far I have 2800 signed up users, 70 of whom are paying a $9.99/year subscription.

My marketing strategy so far has consisted of:

- Blog feature updates (http://blog.readlang.com)

- Occasional tweets (https://twitter.com/Readlang)

- An intro video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntVQ2L5s6FI) and tutorial screencasts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I10qWoQEi5U&list=PLIGa-eWCssj9K_PpNGLnIs8vcENanVx3_)

- Posting to How-to-learn-any-language forum (http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=35462&PN=2) and Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/1m5ymj/short_demo_video_of_readlang_my_webapp_for/)

- Uservoice page (https://readlang.uservoice.com/)

- Emailing every user, and being responsive to any requests

Apart from the above, I've relied on word of mouth, with enthusiastic users blogging and sharing it.

People advise me that I should do more marketing. But I feel uncomfortable spending more time than I already do on this stuff. My instinct is to just make the product awesome and let it market itself. I enjoy announcing new features, but it feels like having a prominent presence on online communities and social media to spread a product requires more effort than I'm willing to spend.

Perhaps I need to find a partner to help out with marketing and community management, perhaps there are more efficient ways that I can manage this myself, perhaps I need to integrate vitality into the product somehow, or perhaps I should just carry on as I have been. Any ideas or thoughts would be very appreciated!

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