How to promote your startup with no followers

How to promote your startup with no followers

1) Reddit subreddits.

• entrepreneur
• saas
• sideproject
• bootstrappedsaas

Be genuine, tell the story, from the start. No marketing. Make it sound like a story or diary entry. 

2) Hackernoon.

They allow one branded article per startup. Brings good backlink and trafffic. But don’t just promote, but again ,
give more than you take. Use stories, guides, lessons, analysis etc 

3) Launchpads

List for free

• DevHunt
• Product Hunt
• uneed
• micro launch
• betalist

Or buy sponsored spot.
E.g. devhunt.org brings sales to listingbott.com every day almost due to this banner:

4) Directories.

Paid: Betalist, 1000tools, futurepedia.
Free: betapage, saashub,..
Automation: use listingbott.com to submit to 100+ directories (from a db of 10,000+).
Directory ads: pick smaller directories that sell a week/month banner for $100.

5) search for posts and reply with your tool.

Don’t spam, make sure it’s actually relevant.
Ideally look for actual questions. 

6) Sponsor influencers.

Find small influencers (3-10k followers). Make sure they have real stats, simply read their posts and comments to see.
The price is around $100 too, can bargain down to $50.
But influencers almost never bring positive ROI. 

7) Sponsor newsletters.

Same here, pick small newsletters.
Once I paid for Product Hunt newsletter ad and got zero sales. Just wasted money.
But right after a small one brought me sales. 

8) Sponsor events.

• hackathons
• workshops
• education programs I did it with one a month ago and it brought 100+ sign ups for $999.  

9) Cold outreach

• emails
• LinkedIn (don’t do it on X, you’ll be instantly banned)
• telegram DMs It works if you find relevant emails, not just anyone. Also keep the message short. 

10) affiliate partners.

I have about 100 partners in total, some do pretty well.
There are marketplaces for affiliates or do cold outreach to find them. 

11) Channel traffic from directories.

It’s easier to win traffic for directories than for main projects. Make several directories for your audience and place your banners there.
To quick start

• use unicornplatform.com to build them
• guide to learn johnrush.me/directory-guide

12) Free side projects.

Same as with directories.
E.g: is on top 10 by traffic source for unicornplatform.com .

It’s a free project. Purely for traffic. That needs no maintenance and has no costs. It grows on itself via SEO.

Comments

[chovy]

Solid list. Point #5 is underrated — replying to relevant posts with genuine value is probably the highest-ROI activity on here, especially early on. The key is having a steady stream of angles to comment from, not just your pitch.

One bottleneck I hit was running out of fresh takes. You can only say "hey check out my tool" so many times before it gets stale. What helped was using content idea generators to brainstorm different hooks and angles around the same product. I've been using postammo.com for that — it spits out viral-style content angles you can adapt for replies, threads, or even Reddit stories.

Also +1 on small newsletters over big ones. The targeting is way better and you're not competing with 50 other sponsors in the same issue.