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How did you get your first paying customers?

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Hi everyone 👋 Would love to hear what you did to get your first paying customers outside of your family and friends group. We’re about to roll out our product and I’m curious what has worked for you. Thanks for sharing 🙏
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Had a 50% discount on my very first product and after promoting this ( by writing an article on Medium ) , I got my first customer quickly. So a discount worked for me
interesting. many on PH seem to do discounts as well when they launch. do you have a link to the article?
link please 😊?
It seems like Finn uses the same handle on Medium.com like on PH, so you could easily find his articles :)
I ´m sorry, totally forget replying. I had already deleted the initial article but it was similar to this one
Its funny, my first paying customer was the day after I ended a 50% off deal.
Twitter DMs Cold emails Brand partnerships are our biggest source
nice! would love to hear more about what you're doing with your brand partnerships. do you mind sharing an example? thanks a lot
Sure. If very much depends on your product. Checked out MicroMove and you're a health & wellness app as I understand it. I could see you partnering with other wellness apps that aren't competitive like meditation apps, sleep apps etc. You could do a webinar together, guest post, straight up link exchange to/from existing content etc. You could also do social media give away competitions and not just with other apps but physical goods like protein bars/products, neutropics, vitamin companies, wellness retreats etc. The list is endless. Here's an example of a webinar I did last week that was a joint webinar with a partner where we talked about partnerships for giveaways/sweepstakes etc.
Whoa, I didn't realise that would embed 🤦‍♂️😂
thank you so much for writing all this. very insightful. have shared with the team and we will definitely explore this further. seems like you're interested in wellness?
Absolutely interested in wellness. I'm no fanatic but I believe a lot of issues most people have are under our own control. In my early 30s I had 'back issues', high blood pressure and was borderline pre-diabetic. My excuse was that I was away from home 3 weeks out of 4 and often would work full days in five different countries in one week. Lots of hours 'sleeping' on planes instead of hotel rooms. All those issues I fixed for myself with reasonably simple lifestyle changes. I'm no saint and still have bad habits but at 51 I have zero back pain, long way from pre-diabetic and only slightly high blood pressure. So yeah, kinda into wellness and active lifestyles.
Founder led cold email to prospects
good old cold outreach :) love it
never fails
Well, I guess most get first-paying customers from networks. I would say it's better to go hard sell to people you do not know, this is a skill that every startup needs to learn. Here 3 simple ways you find them * Go to startup networking events/marketing meetups to find those early adopters * Write cold emails and LinkedIn messages asking people to try and buy * Keep listing on sites and keep improving your SEO. Keep writing FAQs till you get discovered for something unique your early customers want to solve. It's simple to write but super hard to execute. Once you overcome to the initial hurdles the flywheel moves and as you iterate it starts spinning faster Don't sell to people whose problems you cannot solve it will kill your energy and ability to move faster.
this is packed with good knowledge. Thanks for sharing 🙏
I started a whole podcast about this exact topic! It's called the First Customers podcast. I've learned that some of the most successful companies take time to connect with their target audience and build trust within the community they aim to serve with their product or service. After learning from the community, they launch with their messaging, product features, or service structure right on target. To learn about the stories, sales strategies, and tactics of other founders and entrepreneurs listen to the show: Youtube: Podcast Platforms:
that’s smart! Thanks for sharing; will check it out :)
He found Twinr organically and setup a demo with us. After the demo he was convinced and purchased a subscription.
that's great, congrats!
thank you 🙏
Thats awesome!
I literally walked door to door to speak with business owners.
ouff 🔥 this is probably the hardest way to sell. But if you can do this you can do anything! Respect 🫡
We read the book TRACTION and started taking notes from there. So far we've... - Launched our own website - Launched our own blog - Worked on SEO - Got our social accounts setup (DMs) - Cold emails 6 months after launching, we got our first paying customer.
congratulations! where did your first customer come from?
I'm working on an online marketplace for people to rent and lend items (). My first customer came from Facebook Marketplace - they wanted to rent a power tool (not buy one).
good stuff
I'm impressed how no one wrote ProductHunt 😂 Well, for Collabwriting we've got our first 10 paying customers by launching on ProductHunt. ➜ We were #3 product of the day ➜ We've made an irresistible short-lived Lifetime Deal Offer ➜ We've tested a lot beforehand our pricing, messaging & value proposition ➜ We've only launched our MVP Product launching platforms give you a spike in visitors. So for us the main goal was to test if anyone would be interested in paying for our MVP and the bigger vision. Don't hesitate to create a great offer for your early adopters. For us the interviews alone with our first paying customers, were one of the best things that happened since we started 😄
thanks great stuff! nice to hear that you got your first paying customers from here. lifetime deal offers is something we're also exploring. and i'm sure that interviewing first paying customers really helped you further define your ICP and get many valuable insights. congrats!
go with the LTD just make it short-lived (2-3 days) 😄 Their only purpose is to prove to you that you have super-early PMF. Be aware that if you are planning on raising money investors really dislike LTDs so keeping them only as a proof and not a business model is important 😄
noted. thanks :)
I would like to tell not about my first paying customer, but about first payments I got from my pet-projects. I started my tech career with creating custom add-ons to Minecraft. After completing the first version of one of them, I started to publish it through author-content-delivery systems. But the launch is not only about writing code and publishing release. It is also about marketing and support. So I started to write on different forums, chats, groups... And after the first month of hard-working, I got my first payment.
boom! 👏
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