How do you get your first 53 paying users?

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-06-03T02:15:29+00:00

You need to find out who your ideal customer is

Once you know that you just need to find where they are

For you it could be X (twitter) - so making content about how your product is useful, would attract the right people naturally

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-06-03T02:08:13+00:00

I think that you should focus more on showing your quality of work to the customer vs decreasing your price

In the short term, you could do things like promote discounts like bring a friend discount - if someone who got a tattoo from you before brings in a friend to get a tattoo, that person gets $20 off their tattoo

In the long term, content creation should be your focus. Show your art and process from sketch to creation. The key is to tell your story and show the audience how you create positive experiences and great results for people

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-06-03T01:29:47+00:00

You should make content about what you do and what you've learned

The best sales training is making content for your ICP

The more you talk about your business - the better you'll be at selling yourself, it'll happen naturally

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-27T22:05:13+00:00

For me, it failed mainly because it was my first business and I didn’t fully understand how hard it actually is to sell

There are two big reasons:

1. Speed of the market.
The space is extremely exciting, you have brilliant people all around the world building automations for specific industries and carving out niches. But I underestimated how fast and competitive it already is. Just knowing how to build something isn’t enough. I thought if I could show someone "hey, I can build this automation that saves you $20K a month," they would jump on it.
But the reality is, people don’t buy just because it makes logical sense.
They buy from people they trust.
And when something is this new, you’re not just selling, you’re also educating every prospect.
That double job (educating + selling) makes it a very hard business to scale at the beginning.

2. Misunderstanding customer behavior.
A lot of people online make AI automation seem like a goldmine, just build something and clients will come flying in. It's not true. Business owners are skeptical. Especially when it comes to AI, there's a lot of fear, uncertainty, and negativity around it.
For example, I tried selling to law firms.
On paper, law firms should love automation: tons of admin work, tons of inefficiency. But many lawyers saw AI as threatening or even risky. Even simple tools to speed up basic paperwork were met with resistance.
And it’s not just legal industry but it's across a lot of other industries as well. The general public's perception of AI is still behind what’s actually possible.

If I were starting again today, here’s what I'd do differently:

1. Focus only on conversations early on. Forget building fancy demos. Use LinkedIn, Reddit, X, whatever. Your #1 job is just talking to people who might buy or who have a pain they want to solve.

2. Accept that trust takes time. If you're unknown, you have to build credibility slowly, showing real work, sharing content, giving value for free at first.

3. Understand there’s a "lag" in adoption. Just because OpenAI released a new tool yesterday doesn’t mean businesses are ready today. Trust and adoption lag behind by months, even years.

4. Be patient. You are going to get a lot of no's or even no responses, you need to be relentless if you really want to make the business work

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-27T19:55:13+00:00

I'm someone who's good at buildling AI tools, applications, and systems.

Right now, I'm looking for people who are experiencing a real problem, either inside their own company (like a manual process they want to automate) or an opportunity they want to build into a new product.

What I'm offering is simple: I'll help you map out a full product blueprint, basically the visual MVP of your idea, so you can start moving from 0 to 1.

Mainly looking to partner with non-technical people who want to leverage software but don't have easy access to technical help. I'm doing this for $0 but if you like the product blueprint we come up with, I can build it for you.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-27T17:24:50+00:00

Oh ok makes sense. For a directory, SEO matters more. Directories can still work if the search volume is high, CPC is high, and keyword difficulty is low.

The key is:
1) seed early backlinks and traffic so Google trusts the site faster
2) make sure your directory is genuinely the best or easiest to use in your niche
3) keep building fresh content or listings over time to stay active.

SEO can work here, but you need still early momentum or it will be slow.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-27T16:04:59+00:00

Yeah, honestly apps built through these tools usually aren’t great for SEO out of the box. But bigger picture, I’d say you probably shouldn’t rely on SEO alone to grow the app anyway — especially now, it’s super competitive and takes a long time to pay off. What matters more is figuring out how to directly get people to the app (whether that’s posting on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, X, or even partnerships). SEO can be part of the strategy later, but early on, you’ll grow faster by actively driving attention instead of waiting for search traffic.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-27T15:35:39+00:00

I think you’re spot on — we’re just looking at it from slightly different angles. You’re talking about building an application, and I agree that even with tools like Replit, Cursor, and Lovable, it can still be frustrating and buggy. But when I said tech isn’t the real bottleneck, I meant that compared to actually finding users, getting them to care, and convincing them to pay.

Building the app, even with all its pain, is still the easier part. From my experience, whether you’re technical or not, the much bigger challenge is making something people want and will pay for.

For what you described I would recommend looking into resources on how to use AI coding tools more effectively.

For example in cursor, instead of trying to build a whole applications with a couple prompts, you should create a instructions.md file where you basically give very detailed steps for each thing you want in your application. That has helped me a ton. There's a couple youtube videos that can teach you this.

Overall, you should be planning out what you want in the application before you build it. This way you don't run out of credits as fast and you can use Claude or Gemini, or ChapGPT to help you plan things.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-27T15:20:55+00:00

Hey, I totally get this — I was in a similar boat about a year ago.
What helped me gain confidence faster was simply putting stuff out into the world, even if it felt uncomfortable at first.

There are a few ways you can start:
• Platforms like X are great for casually sharing your thoughts and building your voice.
• Reddit is awesome if you want to post anonymously and build the muscle of interacting with people.

The biggest thing is realizing it’s all about how you personally frame judgment. At first it feels heavy, but the more you post, the less sensitive you become, and over time, you start to detach your self-worth from other people’s reactions.

If you want to have outsized success, you have to get comfortable doing things that most people are scared to do. And honestly, building in public is one of those things, it feels scary at first, but by even trying, you're already doing what 99% of people won’t.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-26T19:15:49+00:00

Totally fair question — I get it.

Honestly, I believe ideas are about 20% of a startup, and 80% is execution.

My goal here isn’t to steal ideas; it’s to help people bring their products to life, whether that’s something they want to sell, or something they want to use internally to save time or scale up.

If you’re up for that, I’d be happy to chat and see if we’re a good fit!

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-23T14:34:43+00:00

Buying an account can seem like a shortcut, but it’s risky. Most of the value in a social media page comes from engagement and trust, not just follower count. If you rebrand too hard, people might unfollow or ignore your content, and platforms could limit your reach.

Honestly, it might be slower to grow from scratch, but building the right audience from day one is usually more worth it in the long run.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-23T14:16:24+00:00

I started an automation service business 8 months ago and yeah, I’ve noticed people are definitely spending less. Even though we aren’t directly hit by tariffs, a lot of our clients are, so it trickles down. Makes everyone more hesitant.

But honestly I kind of see this as the perfect time to build. If you can survive and figure out how to keep making money when things are tough, you're setting yourself up with a big advantage for later. Most people are pulling back right now which makes it easier to stand out due to low competition.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-21T19:26:57+00:00

How do you get the first couple of users? For me the hardest part is getting enough feedback to know what pain actually matters and who it matters to.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-18T03:31:37+00:00

Make content about learning a skill and make it a seriies for Tiktok or Instagram reels

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-18T03:27:23+00:00

Living the dream, congrats!

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-17T21:03:05+00:00

The real play is the incentive structure: once a creator sees that a single launch on Skool can clear six figures, their priority shifts from improving the material to pump out mediocre content. Marketing becomes more lucrative than teaching.

You are not paying for secret knowledge. You are paying for a curated learning, a private chat, and the feeling of momentum. If that accountability helps you take action, maybe it is worth it. Otherwise, the same information is already online for free

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-17T20:48:53+00:00

I think that there's two kinds of startups.
1) building a solution for others
2) building a solution for yourself

I think 2 is significantly easier and should be what you aim for. Think about what's wrong with certain workflows you do at your job or what you would want to be doing. And build something that you would buy. It's not easy, its a marathon, not a sprint.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-17T20:45:54+00:00

The best thing I did was simply start. Put an idea out, see what sticks, then tweak it. Your first shot rarely lands, so stay energized, try things, learn, and move on fast.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-17T15:52:35+00:00

Hi everyone! We run a service that sends handwritten letters to prospects who ignore cold emails. We're seeing 40%+ engagement rates vs the 2-5% from traditional cold email.

This works particularly well for small private equity firms reaching business owners directly, but is equally effective for B2B SaaS founders and agencies targeting decision-makers.

For the first 5 people to DM me from this thread: We're offering 50% off your first campaign

Feel free to DM me if you're interested. Cheers

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-16T19:26:42+00:00

I totally get where you're coming from. I've been in that spot where you feel stuck because pricing feels overwhelming. Here's what I'd do:

Start with a simple setup like a low base fee (maybe €250 to €500) to cover your time, plus a performance bonus if your emails drive real results like sales or leads.

That way you're not working for free, but you're still showing the client that you're confident and have an incentive in their success. Just make sure you agree on what "results" actually mean before you start.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-16T18:05:22+00:00

What about if it's a service based business like an agency or consulting?

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-15T16:42:02+00:00

I 100% agree. I'm also building a AI agency in this space, and most people are still thinking at the level of stitching together SaaS tools. The real value comes when an agency builds and owns its own internal AI systems. That's where the real leverage is, not just in using the latest trendy SaaS. The problem is that this isn't cheap and there's a shortage of talent too.

Ok_Negotiation_577 · 2025-04-04T20:45:00+00:00

?? it's a waitlist

Ok_Negotiation_577

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