How makers stay productive

RE: surveys - I've only one list (ultra-small hovering around 100 + in a field where I'm just mildly interested.) It took me 6+months (and growing to 100) to get exactly one guy to come back with a request. Including something unrelated to the list (which is about print-on-demand dropshipping, think t-shirts). What does he want? Conversion Rate Optimization/Growth Hacking advice. Will have a chat Friday.

RE: ad campaign - how to get excited? Think of it as part of the customer/user journey. And use it for testing messaging & trying to raise above the noise with the idea/product/solution… whatever you're selling.

How I did it before? I've usually used LinkedIn - with some success. 1500 connected, 30 answered the survey, talked to maybe 2-3. Then I had to kill the project as it was an engineering-as-marketing effort for the main project that didn't get launched.

Other ideas besides Reddit:

• Twitter has power search - I've used it but couldn't validate (I've lost interest or had no idea about monetization as far as I remember, it was a travel-related idea), still I've managed to spark conversation. You try to converse, then try to bring it over to DM. Follow them with the profile, then DM if they're not open to DM by default. Then you can bring up the questions.
• Insta DM campaign - may be able to pull it off. Didn't try but if your users are on Insta can work.

Parting thought: I really like the simple ways. One such is the way Pat Flynn approaches customer discovery. He discusses this in his chat with Noah Kagan (another guy who is good at this.) You'll find it in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBwJzpWWymo. He talks about how to approach small businesses as an example. But also his messaging, the questions he asks is great.

Best of luck!

Some things I have done: Posting to reddit (find where your audience is as well as general indie/startup subreddits). Post to hacker news. Its hard to get it ranking high but when you do you get some quality feedback. Find facebook groups that could help. General social media like you mentioned. Talk to friends about it.

Also make sure its easy for users to give you feedback in the first place! Simple solution I use is a google forms.

Early users will be hard and take time so dont worry about that. While you are waiting start a new project!

(uh i suck as markdown, couldnt get it looking nice :D)

Hi Steven

Just now checked out browsemelater, looks like an interesting idea. All the best! Coming back to getting early users, I guess you've already summarized most of the important steps like

1. Building in Public: in makerlog, Indiehackers, Twitter, etc
2. Send an email to your existing list
3. Interacting with online communities like Reddit.
4. Ad Campaign: I would rather not do that at this moment, don't spend money right now.

To this list, I would like to add

5. Do a cold email marketing campaign to your target audience. You're not going to sell anything, you're only going to kindly ask them whether they are interested in beta testing your product. From my experience, you will get a good response.

6. Try Ship in Product Hunt, you will not only get leads, but it will help you during the PH launch also.