I don't think you can guess in advance which marketing channel is going to work for you, you need to experiment and see what brings results. There's a book Traction that goes deeper into this, if you haven't given up yet. Good luck, both in business and marriage! :)

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg.

This book is really amazing and filled with a lot of practical advice. Can't recommend this enough.

the book Traction that is co-authored by the creator of DuckDuckGo is a good resource.

I also learn a lot from reading posts or listening to the podcasts on indiehackers.org

I think the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg is really good: tractionbook.com

Traction is an easy read and an excellent jumping off point into the "growth strategy" space.

I just read Smartcuts, Made to Stick, and Traction - a great trio of books to get your mind in the right spot as you pursue a market to create a product.

Traction is also good book

Here's a good article on Traction (which promotes the book with the same title and the book is Amazing!)
https://medium.com/swlh/the-19-channels-you-can-use-to-get-t...

Also it depends on which kind of project is that, are you targeting specific people? Can you tell a bit more about it?

There is a book called Traction that outlines more than a dozen plans and emphasis on trying more than one to see what works for your case. What works for StartupA isn't what works for StartupB. Try and test

read the book Will It Fly by Pat Flynn, he lays out a method for finding out how to reach your target market.

Also there is a book co-authored by the creator of DuckDuckGo called Traction that is very useful in testing out marketing channels.

Everything by Patio11 [0]. Traction by Gabriel Weinberg [1]. Also, see IndieHackers community [2] if you are interested bootstrapping.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...

[2] https://www.indiehackers.com/

After having a product - Traction (book) - hit #2 on PH a few weeks ago, I can say that PH drove more and higher quality traffic than several other well-known blogs we were mentioned on.

PH is great and Ryan is awesome - really excited to see where PH goes after the raise!

Inspired by the book Traction, written by Gabriel Weinberg, I decided to add a widget! This is the announcement blog post with an example of the widget.

What do you think about it? I think I need to improve the design, but I'm not sure how to keep it simple and neutral.

I recommend adding Traction (http://tbook.us) to the book list (and possibly removing Gladwell -- Traction is much more helpful if you're starting a company).

This feels like someone has read one of the EOS books and rewritten it with different terminology to avoid copyright infringement.

I guess it's also spun around a new startup rather than fixing an already operating business.

If you like what you read here then look up Traction and Get A Grip.

If you haven't already, I can recommend reading the book Traction - http://tractionbook.com

Gabriel and Justin have done a good job of not just identifying marketing channels loaded with successful case studies, but providing the business framework for testing them on an ongoing basis to keep "moving the needle".

I enjoyed Traction https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...

It's written by the founder of DuckDuckGo and he talks through all the different potential marketing channels and how to choose what's best for your company.

I thought it was pretty actionable and there wasn't much "fluff".

Here are the resources I've found most helpful:

Sales
-------------

Steli Efti: his YouTube videos + blog posts at blog.close.io

Smart Calling by Art Sobczak

Question Your Way to Sales Success by Dave Kahle

Marketing
-------------

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg

1. 10% Happier

2. Traction

3. Unshakable

4. Shoe Dog (This has been my favorite book thus far of 2017, I did not think it would of left such a lasting impression on me about life and success and business)

5. Start with Why

6. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck

This is an excellent read by Justin Mares (co-author of the excellent Traction book).

tldr;

Find out if people actually want your product before you build it.

`80/20 Validation: The Cheap and Fast Way to Prove a Business
How to easily test a business idea in 2 weeks with less than $100`

https://sumome.com/stories/80-20-business-idea-validation

Having a full time job is a timesink, thankfully I find it easy working abnormal hours. Plus on the other end it gives me a good salary + whatever I make on my own.

Regarding marketing we are in a similar spot. Only 10% of time goes to marketing and paid advertising doesn't work. I recommend reading Traction (http://tractionbook.com/), it gives you a good model on how to go about growing your company.

I read Traction and Hacking Growth. Traction is a great book, HG is uninspiring - too repetitive and generally is about setting up growth hacking team in your company with emphasis on "developers are important they should contribute to the growth hacking"

Traction is a really interesting overview of all sorts of channels

On Writing Well by Zinsser

Traction by Weinberg & Mares

Predictable Revenue by Ross

Choose Yourself by Altucher

Learn Python the Hard Way by Shaw

Mere Christianity by Lewis

At your price point ($10-50 per sale, $10-500 lifetime value), it simply is not worthwhile to have anyone doing 1:1 sales. You should be acquiring customers via marketing.

There's a pretty famous book called Traction that introduces founders to marketing. It goes over 19 marketing channels, and after reading, you should have a good hunch about which 3-5 channels might work well for you.

Off the top of my head:

- Partner with climbing gyms. They all have a store that sells chalk and shoes and whatnot. Either sell them 50x of your product (this does require actual sales) or see if they have a model where they get a cut for every sale made.

- Influencer marketing. Reach out to people like Alex Honnold and ask if they'd be willing to try your product out for free and give you feedback. If they like it, ask if they'd be willing to help out by talking about it on social. Could eventually explore some kind of affiliate model where they get a 20-30% cut per sale they drive your way.

- Paid search ads. If anyone on the internet is searching for "climbing chalk" then they should end up on your site via paid ads.

- Retargeting ads. If anyone visits your website or puts something in their cart and doesn't buy, make sure you use Google Display and/or FB/Twitter retargeting ads. These will be the most profitable ads you ever pay for.

- SEO. This one is pretty hard because your site is relatively small/new, but if you write articles talking about why your chalk is better for the environment, you might get some traffic this way.

Some of this work does involve "sales", in that you're selling to gyms or recreational stores or influencers 1:1. BUT, just try to think about it from their perspective. You aren't "selling them on your product", you're "helping them make more money by promoting a cool environmentally friendly chalk brand".

Have you read the book Traction yet? It provides a very usable growth framework. More importantly, It also allows you to start thinking of marketing as a testable iterative process, and this simple change in mindset can do wonders for the engineer/hacker.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591848369/ref=as_li_tl?ie...

If you're looking for channel level advice get the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. Then think who your customers are, what you're good at, how much you can afford to acquire them (1/3 of the lifetime value is a good yardstick) then choose a channel that fits those things you've identified the best.

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (http://tractionbook.com/) is a must-read. You'll learn that marketing is massive and not all tactics work for everyone. It's usually through trial and error.

For example, inbound marketing is great but it takes a lot of time to build up an audience and generate traffic. If you're looking for more short-term sales, outbound marketing might be more effective. It is expensive though. This is where the importance of your objective/goal comes in (i.e. sell more, generate awareness, etc).

> Practical Aspect: How do I structure things with my co-founders.

Have a written scorecard with specific team member accountabilities, review weekly.

The People Component, getting the right people in the right seats will be a your most critical task. It's helpful to understand your core strengths vi-a-vis your co-founders. And making sure everyone is operating in areas of their unique abilities.

Recommend reading Traction by Gino Wickman > http://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/193...

Ha! Just had that binge too...

... Here's what I like:

On the business end:
- Badass by Kathy Sierra
- Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross
- Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
- Cold Calling Early Customers by Robert Graham
- Learn or Die by Edward Hess

On "refining your thought process":
- Mind for Numbers by Barbara Oakley
- Racing Towards Excellence by Jan Sramek
- Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin
- Case Interview Secrets by Victor Cheng (helps you think in a nice, structured way)

Professionally influential:

  - High Growth Handbook (general company building tips)
  - Traction (the one by Weinberg and Mares; engineer-friendy guide to marketing and growth)
  - Understanding Michael Porter (great intro to business strategy)
  - Monetizing Innovation (pricing advice)

Personally influential:

  - Thinkertoys and Cracking Creativity (how to be more creative)
  - Atomic Habits (how to establish good habits)
  - A Guide to the Good Life (friendly intro to stoicism)
  - What Got You Here Won't Get You There (building self-awareness)

Fun:

  - Richard Feynman autobiographies
  - The Martian
  - Shadow Divers
  - Ready Player One
  - The Myron Bolitar Series (mysteries with a good sense of humor)

Clever Marketing gig from DDG's CEO Weinberg (as recommended in his book 'Traction').

The post makes sense, DDG makes sense, good timing, ok no news to most of us but a good way to get people again talking about DDG.

Considering that DDG is 'just' a Yandex whitelabel (before Bing) with some extra features, especially the no tracking, it's surprising how big it got with Weinberg's Marketing hacks. Congrats!

My goal for this year was to read 10 books. Not a huge challenge but I'm happy I managed to complete it. I'm currently at my 16th book - so I might say that's pretty good.

Here's my 2016 reading list:

#1. Zero to One - Peter Thiel - 3.5*

#2. The Alchemis - Paulo Coelho - 3.5*

#3. Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston - 3*

#4. Traction - Gabriel Weinberg - 4.5*

#5. How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie -4*

#6. Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations... - Frederic Laloux, Ken Wilber - 4*

#7. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work - Mason Currey - 3*

#8. Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Robert T. Kiyosak - 3*

#9. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs... - Eric Ries - 4.5*

#10. Meaningful: The Story of Ideas That Fly - Bernadette Jiwa - 3*

#11. Elon Musk: Inventing the Future - Ashlee Vance - 4*

#12. Rework - Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson - 4.5*

#13. Anything You Want - Derek Sivers - 4.5*

#14. South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami - 3.5*

#15. As A Man Thinketh / The Path Of Prosperity - James Allen - 4*

Currently I'm reading If This Is a Man / The Truce by Primo Levi - and so far it seems to be one of the top 3 books I've read this year - definitely a 4+* book.

It seems like you have had some progress but lack strategy, or a vision - ie what is your business here to solve. So instead you are placing lots of bets to see what works.

Look up the EOS methodology, or read the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg, it’s a good read with lots of helpful tools.

Ultimately if you like your team, want to do something to change the world, have the support of your backers, perhaps do some services consulting and sell your time for money.

This approach will give you income, and at the same time you can start noticing problems in your clients you can help them solve with a product.

It’s the easiest way to get started, and the revenue provides you a longer runway. The client logo’s and case studies help with your credibility too.

I've found writing a book, blogging, and building a Facebook group to be the most effective way to build my brand.

Of course, everyone has different strengths, so it depends on what your strengths are.

I would read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (the CEO of Duck Duck Go). It is about different methods for gaining traction with your startup. Some of them also are effective for building your personal brand, for example, PR, unconventional PR, social, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, viral marketing, engineering as marketing, tradeshows, offline events, speaking engagements, and community building.

Unconventional PR essentially means doing publicity stunts. Ryan Holiday wrote a great book about this called Trust Me I'm Lying.

Best of luck!

A list I put together a while back: https://www.encona.com/posts/product-manager-resources

Overview books:

* Inspired

* The Product Manager’s Desk Reference

* The Lean Startup

* Agile Product Management with Scrum

Interview preparation (good for breadth, even if you’re not applying for jobs):

* Decode & Conquer

* Cracking the PM interview

Other good books for PMs:

* Hooked

* The Design of Everyday Things

* Zero to One

* Traction

Nice question. I am just wondering if anyone will disclose their current killer acquisition hacks. Moreover, the question heavily depends on your business, so is it B2B, B2C, online, app, bot, etc.?

However, a good read on this which tackles all ways of user acquisition/Marketing is 'Traction' from the DuckDuckGo founder. It's not an exciting book but gives an ok overview.

You could also just start with the channel which seems most obvious, set up analytics from day one and iterate over and over. With this approach you should get a good feeling if your acquisition strategy works and if yes you should optimize. Otherwise move on to the next channel.

Edit: When you search for Traction on Amazon.com there's also another one on #1 (good Amazon search hack from another other author btw) which is not the mentioned book (the one I mean is blue-ish)

Why Nations Fail (amazing!)

Chimpanzee Politics (interesting)

Corporate Confidential (paranoid, but worth a read)

Developer Hegemony (red pill for developers!!!)

Bargaining For Advantage (reasonable)

Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in Narrative-Driven Decision Making (abstract as hell but rewarding)

Thinking Fast and Slow (loved it)

The Elephant In The Brain (seriously underrated)

The Brain That Changes Itself (inspirationally freaky)

The Power of Habit (good!)

The Secret Barrister (mildly disturbing)

Thinking In Systems (huge fan of this book!)

A Short History of Truth (meh...)

Man's Search For Meaning (brooo... I am so sorry)

Thinking In Bets (meh.. really meh)

The Road To Ruin (alright. Interesting even.)

Lying For Money (lots of fun!)

Great Answers To Tough Interview Questions (what it says on the tin)

Traction (good overview of marketing tactics)

Lean Customer Development (pretty good)

The Mom Test (eye opening)

Lean B2B (solid playbook)

Principles (instant classic)

Traction by Justin Mares, Gabriel Weinberg - would probably reread

Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday

How to Fail at Almost Everything by Scott Adams - great read
Scaling Up By Verne Harnish

Great By Choice by Jim Collins - love the whole series

The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes - probably worth a reread

How to Win at the Sport of Business By Mark Cuban - good read

Elon Mush by Ashlee Vance - need I say more

The Hard Thing about Hard Things By Ben Horowitz

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg - probably need to deeply absorb this - a lot of good stuff

Copy This! By Paul Orfalea - another good "small business" entrepreneur book

The E-Myth Revisited By Michael Gerber - 2nd time read. Got more out of it this time.

The People's Tycoon (Ford) by Steven Watts - I love reading about businessmen from this age

Scrum by JJ Sutherland Jeff Sutherland - good read for development teams

Agree w/ andersthue's suggestions. Here are a few others I listen to frequently.

I like all of the Gimlet media podcasts. https://gimletmedia.com/ Specifically Startup, Mystery Show, and ReplyAll

Hardcore History and Common Sense are favorites of mine: http://dancarlin.com

99% Invisible by Roman Mars http://99percentinvisible.org/

Startup School Radio from ycombinator is pretty good https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-school-radio/id9...

What's the Point is a podcast from fivethirtyeight about data
http://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/whats-the-point/

Traction by Jay Acunzo at Nextview Ventures is another great one http://nextviewventures.com/blog/category/traction-podcast/

Dating: give everything a quick try: Tinder, speeddating, okcupid, socializing (dancing classes). Then see what works best, and put your effort into that one.

Marketing: try everything before you start focussing on the best (I think the book Traction describes it like this).

When I was looking to make my own logo and pinned it down to hiring on fiverr, I let a few different artists do a quick, cheap sketch. Then I hired the best to do the full thing.

I think it comes down to: first, get a quick & cheap taste of everything ("go all over the place"), then slightly start focussing on the things that work for you.

Ah, if only there was a 'Best way' - but there isn't. Indeed, the nature of marketing is that most successful promotional techniques are quickly replicated by others and their effect diluted.

Instead, ask yourself:
1) Who are our clients / users?
2) What are their pains, how does our app solve those, and why would they buys/use our app?
3) Where are those clients - and therefore how do we get in front of them?

As an extreme example, the best way to promote a fashion app for 16-year-old girls will be quite different to a finance app for high net worth individuals.

I heartily recommend the book Traction for a thorough list of options and how to approach them. (The list is included in the free preview, if you're strapped for cash, but the extra information is worth buying a copy.)

Best of luck!

"Marketing" is a broad term; it's like saying 'what's a good book on software engineering?' What are you wanting to learn about marketing? There are interesting books that give you lots of tactics for early-stage startups (Traction by Gabriel Weinberg, for example); books that tell how to think about Brand Strategy (for example, Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller); books that delve into psychology (Influence by Robert Cialdini); and many other things. Marketing encompasses high-level strategy, brand, research, market sizing, messaging, positioning, product marketing, social media, content marketing, PR and earned media, grassroots marketing, and the list goes on. Within each of these topics there are many different approaches and philosophies. High-level pop books will be fairly light on how each of these work.

If you're an engineer looking to try bootstrapping a business (as opposed to going the venture capital route), try the “Startups For the Rest of Us” podcast. Start from the beginning. Or startupbook.net for mostly the same content in book form.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg.

This. A thousand times.

We are developers ourself. 4 years ago we built a great tool (a remote logger for mobile apps)[1] internally for ourselves. We had such a huge benefit from it when developing mobile apps, we thought this tool must be very useful to other developers as well. It was a no brainer to turn it into a SaaS product. But we had no clue about how to market it to people.

So we started reading every book on marketing out there (e.g. "Traction") and listened to a tons of product marketing related podcasts (e.g. "Smart Passive Income", "The Art of Product"). We tried many things over a period of 2 years. Nothing worked. After investing 100k€ in development and marketing money plus a lot of our own hours we were almost about to kill it. When suddenly, after the summer break, sales slowly started to ramp up. Without doing anything, but gaining traction on some of our blog posts about technology and development.

Now almost 5 years since inception we have a nice and stable business with 20k€ MRR and constantly growing. We stopped doing any marketing as you'd learn it from the books and focused entirely on creating value for developers through generating content that is also interesting for ourselves. And to be honest, it also makes you feel a lot better, not having to trick people into buying something.

There's probably still a lot we can learn and do better in order to "sell more", but we're quite happy with the current situation (financially) and really appreciate the feedback and praise we get from the developer community valuing our product.

Without wanting to self-promote our product too much, if you're interested in getting more details about our "failed marketing story" we've just published a blog post[2] on Indie Hackers about exactly this.

- 1: https://bugfender.com

- 2: https://bugfender.com/blog/bugfender-growth-from-side-projec...

Thanks for sharing your experience! At Prolific, we found that one good resource for learning about marketing/growth is this book called Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. It explains 19 different growth channels and instructs you around best practices on how to experiment with them.

On a very basic level, the best way to validate your market & marketing ideas is talking to the right target audience. Often you can do this in your personal circles, but sometimes you need a less biased sample (in which case Prolific might be able to help). Good luck!

One of my friends runs a few small SaaS businesses in parallel. He really likes a conference called MicroConf (http://www.microconf.com/) which focuses on bootstrapped businesses. That might be something to check out if you can make it.

One book that's great, regardless of what scale of company you're trying to build, is Traction by Weinberg and Mares. It talks about how to pick marketing channels for getting traction + includes an introductory section on each of two dozen popular marketing channels. Very useful if you're trying to get traction for your product and not sure where to start.

Finally, a lot of startup advice should apply to companies more broadly: focus on building something people want; it's better to have 100 customers that love you than to have 10k customers that like you; do things that don't scale at the beginning; etc.

There are tons of different ways to market your side project and what works for someone else may not work for you, of course.

I think it really just comes down to where your potential customers may be hanging out / searching. For my side project, I've had decent success responding to posts/questions on sites like Quora, where someone is looking for exactly what you offer. It's free too (besides for your time!).

The book Traction (https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...) gives a pretty solid overview of different marketing methods/strategies.

Yes, many are trying to sell you something but the amount of content available for people seeking information on digital marketing is enormous.

As a digital marketer, what I've found most lacking in most digital marketing guides and articles is the one-size-fits-all approach. Having worked in-house for a few brands at this point in my career, what works well for business does not work well for another. I've worked for businesses where you'd be hard-pressed to get three sales from Facebook ads a month despite significant spending. I've worked for others where you go through periods where it's almost impossible to fail when spending money on Facebook ads.

My advice is to build a framework/approach to what you're doing so that you can operate with flexibility in any situation. Once you have that, you can better contextualize any article you read and once you're familiar with how the different channels perform/operate for what you're trying to market, you can really contextualize anything you hear/read.

A great start is reading Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. That book outlines typical channels you can try and acquire customers from. The book advocates casting reels in many lakes, seeing where the easy bites come from and then focus on those.

After traction, Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown is a great next step. That book advocates continuous experimentation to find compounding improvements, e.g. once you find a good acquisition channel, how do you approach improving/scaling it and how do you go about finding new acquisition channels.

You're obviously going to get a variety of answers because it really depends on your product and market. Saas vs hardware, consumer vs smb vs enterprise, mobile vs web, etc.

My advice is to read Traction and apply the framework to test out as many possible strategies as possible. There are tons of other blogs and strategies about growth but I find Traction to have the most practical and actionable format. Plus, I like having a hard copy. I've probably bought 5 copies of it for friends.

Create a Trello board to track your experiments and progress. You will find something that moves the needle–BUT it might not be what you expect. For example, I've had tons of success at trade shows in past projects.

Good luck.

http://tractionbook.com

Most of the books that changed how I think were effective because of the subject matter and not the specific book or writing style. I suspect other books on the same subject would've been equally perspective-changing. Here are some examples:

1) "A Guide of the Good Life." This is an approachable intro to stoicism and helped me become more conscious of which things are within my control and which things are outside of my control. I now spend a lot more time focusing on the former and a lot less time being anxious about the latter.

2) Books like "Traction" (by Gabriel Weinberg) and "Cracking Creativity" that take a fuzzy subject like marketing or being creative and show that you can get very far by following recipes/algorithms/heuristics. Skill like creativity are not purely innate; they can be learned.

3) "Economics in One Lesson." (Spoiler: the one lesson is: "economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.") After this book, I now think much more carefully about proposed policies/rules/business strategies/etc. "Subsidized child care" or "charge businesses per seat" can sound great on the surface, but specific proposals often have so many unintended or negative consequences that are not discussed, and it's important to weigh those consequences against the benefits.

4) A statistics textbook. I don't remember the specific book that was my first stats textbook, but learning about statistics made me a lot more skeptical and inquisitive about data. Now when I see a graph or number reported in the news, I think "are there ways that this might be misleading?" instead of "omg cool this is a graph in a popular magazine so it must be true."

try reading the book Traction that is co-authored by the founder of Duck Duck Go. There is also an audio version.

> I am a programmer who sucks at marketing

That's the mission critical bug that will kill your business ;)

Read these three books ~many~ times:

-> The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank

-> Traction by Gabriel Weinberg

-> No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan Kennedy

Then split your overall time 50% dev, 50% marketing.

Plan B: keep an eye on the contracting market in your area of expertise ...

Good luck!

Gabriel Weinberg's book Traction is a good resource in this regard. It's what my co-founder and I used as part of our guiding principle in terms of our basic marketing plan at the very beginning of the business, before individual people were hired to do any marketing work.

I would recommend all technical founders read that book. If anything it gives you a good frame or reference you can use to interview people with...

If you are going to interview a potential head of marketing, they should be able to explain the same high level thinking that the book presents, in terms of testing 1 or 2 channels, focusing on those channels until they are maxed out, and then opening up or using other channels for the next phase of growth.

If a rough growth plan doesn't invoke the same concepts as the book I would be skeptical they really know how to grow/scale a startup business properly.

On top of that, early on you should have a list of all the potential channels that could work for your business, in order to understand from the beginning how far you could probably scale your business, in order to make sure the venture is worth the time and building the product isn't a waste. If based on the uniqueness of your product, idea, service, etc there aren't many traditional channels available (or you couldn't make them work somehow) then that should be a warning sign.

Traction [1] is the book I can unreservedly recommend as it both lays out more channels than you were probably aware of, it also has a nice crisp framework for trying a few at a time and folding that knowledge back into your operations.

It's also very applicable for people where we're at (fellow one person SAAS founder here), which many other marketing books are decidedly not. This is important as now is not the time to be worrying about the proper branding position of your superbowl ad, etc.

One last thing: there have a Slideshare[2] that moves through most of the book content which is a great resource as well.

1 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TY3ZOMS/

2 - https://www.slideshare.net/jwmares/traction-trumps-everythin...

Tesults (https://www.tesults.com) is the best way to report build and automated test results to your team consolidated in one place for all of your project's supported platforms, build flavors and branches. A web-based reporting platform ideal for plugging into any build, test or continuous integration system within 15 minutes.

That's a plug, it's uncomfortable and slightly embarrassing if you're not a super extrovert but I've found doing that enough across the web, over email, over twitter, to people I meet in person etc., in Google AdWords, getting a couple of bloggers to write about the existence of the app, helped acquire the first 100 sign ups. Now if you're asking about first recurring 100 users, or specifically 100 first paying recurring users, rather than 100 sign ups that's very different and much much harder. So what are you asking about specifically? For 100 recurring users I think don't bother acquiring 100, acquire just a handful and see if they stay and ask them why they didn't, chances are the products not as good as you thought and you need more features or ui refinement. Iterate and iterate. I was told that Tesults is absurd for how little it does once about a year ago, indeed it did suck back then, now it does a whole lot more. Some would say it still sucks, and compared to where it will be in one year it does indeed. Iteration and iteration and not giving up is needed for the 100 first recurring users but for the first 100 sign ups, shouldn't be too hard by just pitching like crazy and not being embarrassed. And developing a thick skin.

Edit to add: Traction (book) by Gabriel Weinberg helped me. There's also a non tech/dev guy called Grant Cardone who has written a book called The 10X Rule, that's helped me too.

The one skill / the letting go book by Leo Babauta. Traction
by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares.

It's a capitalistic market. When everyone does X you have to figure out what Y is which will differentiate yourself. When everyone uses linkedin to target then you have to find other channels.

Everyone should read Traction by Garbriel Weinberg. It's for startup marketing but job searching is basically marketing yourself in a world that has one dominant channel (recruiters). The efficacy of different channels is time varying as they get saturated- You have to find the one that works for you at any given time

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (http://tractionbook.com/)

Read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. Work on trying different marketing channels and sales processes until you have something consistent and repeatable that you can scale to another sales person. Then consider if adding money to that process will accelerate you in a way that is worth giving up equity and some control for. Also, too many cooks is a real concern. Think hard about the speed with which YOU want to grow the business.

There's several good blogs out there but I really suggest reading Traction [0]. It's well organized and very practical/easy to put into action. I've bought copies for multiple people (including my wife who recently joined a startup doing marketing).

Also you used the word "sell". Don't forget that sales is different than marketing. If you plan on doing real sales the book Predictable Revenue is great (though designed for slightly larger teams than just 2).

Good luck! And don't forget, NPS tools are good for brick and mortar businesses too.

[0] http://tractionbook.com

Things I completed:

1. Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

2. The Code Book - Simon Singh

3. Fermat's Enigma - Simon Singh

4. Deep Work - Cal Newport

5. Smarter Faster Better - Charles Duhigg

6. 1984

7. So good they can't ignore you - Cal Newport

8. Distributed Systems for fun and profit

9. Classic Shell Scripting

Things I partially read and hope to complete some time:

1. The music of Primes

2. Traction

3. Founders at work

4. Your Memory: How it works and how to improve it

Things I would recommend:
Fermat's Enigma and The Code Book are very interesting reads if you are into Mathematics. They are both written very well and you don't need to know too much of Mathematics to understand it. On the other hand The Music of Primes started of very interesting and then got a bit too heavy for an evening read. If you can chug along I think it would be a good one too.

Of all the self help books I mentioned I think Duhiggs Smarter, faster better is the one that stands out. It is more of an analysis of various teams and people and how they got to work efficiently.

Founders at work is a long read but something that you can read a chapter independently and that's why it is under half read but definitely something to look at.

[EDIT: formatting]

I’ve been spending a lot of time on this and really found the book Traction useful. Thesis is that every role has to have some clearly defined objective measurables that can indicate to the employee and manager success. I have not been able to apply it to our developers and engineers but it has been extremely effective in sales (sales development, management and sales ops).

I know within two weeks if a candidate is on track, above or below and can predict growth quite easily and can immediately rehabilitate the situation.

I'm around $5500 a month total from 2 Udemy courses and a launching Traction book. It breaks down like this (all links below):

My SQL for Marketers course on Udemy does about $1500 a month, and has been pretty steady since launching the course on Udemy in late April. This takes almost no maintenance, though I am starting to work on improving it in response to student feedback.

My other course, Productivity for Mac Users, is a simpler keyboard shortcuts one can use to be more productive on Mac. This one makes $400-800 per month, though average over the lifetime (launched in May) has been around $500.

Lastly, we launched Traction book 3 months ago, and it continues to sell really well. Even after splitting with my co-author, I make about $3500 a month from that. You can see full numbers breakdown in the blog post we wrote summing up our launch.

https://www.udemy.com/sql-for-marketers/#/

https://www.udemy.com/mac-keyboard-shortcuts/#/

http://tractionbook.com

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2014/10/getting-traction...

There's a lot more to marketing than getting on the front page of HN.

OP, I suggest you read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg, and The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, and consider if you've successfully identified who your customers are, and a valid channel for reaching them. Further ask if you've correctly identified a problem that those customers will pay to have solved, and whether or not your product actually solves that problem. How do you do that? Talk to customers. All of this stuff is in the Steve Blank book.

Also consider reading The Mom Test[1] by Rob Fitzpatrick.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=the+mom+test&inde...

Traction book seems interesting and is highly recommended by a lot of people. I plan to buy a copy and read it over the holidays.

I've got a few broad ideas for marketing - direct "cold-connecting" via LinkedIn, Angel; long term content strategies and Facebook/Bing ads.

Approaching brick and mortar businesses seems challening, especially since I don't have a background in sales. I have a feeling that online startups might be more approachable to begin with.

Adding Predictable Revenue to my next year's reading list. Thanks for the suggestion.

You should definitely hit me up. Google me my name is Vlad Mkrtumyan, we’re learning the opposite skill sets. currently I’m on my 3rd bootstrapped startup and I wanna learn programming to make my CTOs life easier.

I’ve sold everything from $500 a month CRMs (our 2nd venture) to 120k website projects, marketing campaigns, consulting, etc.

I’ve generated over 500k of revenue in my life, not a top 1% salesperson, but decent and on track. Next I’m trying to learn how to manage a sales team.

If you wanna get traction read: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg. If you wanna learn sales the easiest thing I would say to do is just start. Practice, go find something you believe in and do it. Get good at learning common problems on what you’re selling and showing people the Solutions as well as how to listen to them.

Make no mistake it’s definitely a skill like coding that anyone can learn if they tried it just takes a lot of patient and effort, but once you get past being emotional and caring so much on every detail it can be fun.

In terms of what to track it all depends on what you’re selling -but the basics would be: 1. Calls made 2. Where clients are in the pipeline 3. Revenue generated this month.

In terms of books you can google those, I think you should simply pick 5 and dive in, those 5 will help you find the next 5.

Here are the things that lead to my startup's success:

Get a mentor who's already been there

Read Traction by Gino Wickman

Read Traction by Gabriel Weinberg

Identify and engage a big enough channel that will sell your product for you.

Build the product that they want. You build what they want, and they'll enthusiastically sell it for you.

Transparent Startups looks awesome.

One way is to build projects for an audience that you either know or can reach. That might be something local in your city, HN, etc.

Another thing to consider is what your goal is — do you want regular users, paid users, newsletter signups, just feedback, etc?

There's also a regularly recommended book called Traction [1] that you might find useful. One of the authors is the founder of DuckDuckGo.

[1]: http://tractionbook.com/