I like the list, but I wouldn't dismiss paid advertising so quickly. Set up a testing budget and keep testing until you make it work. Groupon, LivingSocial, etc are seeing tremendous growth from their AdWords campaigns.

Investors and potential acquirers are goig to be a lot more excited about a scalable user acquisition model like AdWords than fleeting success on social media.

It took me more than a year to figure out how to "crack the AdWords code", but I get an awful lot of users (and sales) attributable to AdWords. Until then, it was basically just "throw a dollar a day at it, see what works". (YMMV if you are in very rich verticals.)

I got curious about this yesterday, so I made a page charting it. http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/adwords-stats

I really wish I could just wave my hands at it and scale that up by a factor of 10.

You could build 10 more goofball web applications.

edit: this is not an insincere suggestion

Forgive my ignorance, but what is YMMV?

YMMV = Your Market/Mileage/Method May Vary

Agree though I was writing the post more from the perspective of getting first 1,000 users. Focusing on adwords, facebook is good for going from first 1,000 users to first 100,000 users.

And, investors will definitely get excited if you figure it out.

Mint used a combination of paid search and SEO/blogging strategy to get their first couple thousand users.

Dave McClure and Noah Kagan worked on that for over a year while Aaron Patzer & Co. worked on the product.

Dave talks about that in this video (Skip to 30:40): http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262665259

From my experience, simple AdWords used to work great, but don't anymore without a dedicated landing page.

I agree, modulo s/dedicated/tailored/. You can make your splash page work as a landing page, provided you craft the splash page side-by-side with your text ads.

I love how-to blog entries = its a tutorial, a cheat sheet, a process guide. Especially when, like this one, they give fairly detailed instructions on services, techniques, and sequencing.

I agree, but I think instead of saying "How to do XYZ" it should be "How I did XYZ". Just because it worked for one person doesn't mean it will work for all.

My only problem with a lot of these "How to" blog lists is when they fail to provide context. (not saying this one particularly, just a general observation)

The best way to get your first 1,000-10,000 users is to land a successful angel, mentor or advisors.

Someone like Sacca, Dave McClure, Naval or Kevin Rose can bring tens of thousands of users--instantly.

In fact, the way I pitch myself as an investors is:

a) product feedback b) help raising your seed/1st round c) bring your first 10,000 customers

If you're a first-time entrepreneur and haven't gotten traction, it's going to be really hard to get you or anyone like you as an angel, mentor or advisor.

It's easy to get traction if your product is good looking, fits a need, solves a problem, etc.

Really. I make investment decision on what people have built, how good it looks, the UX, the business model and NOT what they've done in the past.

I would take someone with NO experience who made a stunning product over someone who worked for 20 years at five startups but who shows me an ugly product with bad UX, etc.

Build something of value and you'll have TOO MANY angels up in ya business! ya hearD?

It's similar to how it was (and probably still is) for anyone coming out of undergrad in the early 2000s. Every employer seemed to want someone with experience, but how is one to get experience without being employed? The top angels/investors/mentors seem to want entrepreneurs with experience or traction but it's awfully tough to get to that point without a good angel/investor/mentor helping along.

I know this will vary from startup to startup, but how do you know when you have traction?

I think the easiest answer to this is: when people are coming to you versus the other way around. I think this is true even outside startups, just in general once you're wanted you're over - at least the initial - hump.

Will TechCrunch write about a site that already has users? I thought they just wanted exclusive scoops on brand new stuff.

They care more whether the site has been covered by someone.

There's always some exclusive story that can be spun, at any stage of a company's life. It just takes creativity.

TC is great but is waiting for TC coverage worth waiting on getting users? Esp since there is no guarantee you'll get TC coverage.

I don't think so.

TC Coverage < Real Users

It's also important to consider if TC readers are your target audience. I've seen big pageview spikes from TC and other widely- (or poorly-) targeted press coverage that didn't convert very well, whereas coverage in much smaller but better focused publications resulted in more overall conversions.

I'm not waiting; I have users. But I don't have 1000 users and would like to. The only suggestions in the list I haven't implemented yet are TechCrunch coverage and a (good) demo video.

they used to be like that, but these days they seem to be morphing more into tech business news. Topics are generally acquisitions, funding, the occasional plucky newcomer and long-time sweethearts like twitter.

The article mentions 1,000 visitors is fairly easy and getting them to stick is the hard part. But what is a good number of users that stick around? And how about what is a good benchmark for visitors as well?

That's a really good observation. I am also launching a free service geared towards a specific niche audience and we are trying our to acquire more and more users. I think that in addition to getting some press on tech blog like TechCrunch, we should probably target industry specific bloggers more since that is where our true customer may be.

Great article! I am currently in the first stage of starting up my company and will start implementing most of it as soon as we have enough material to do it successfully.

It sounds a lot easier than it really is. What's a good entry page for a blog? Right to the content?

thats a really interesting article, thank you! How did that work for you?