A few days ago we decided to put our idea crowdsourcing startup http://www.yutongo.com from alpha/prototype mode into stealth mode so that we would be able to focus on finalizing the commercial beta release of our crowdsourcing selfservice application.
We have produced a viral startup introvideo telling everyone how our approach works and setup a nice landing page teasing some info on the application to launch as soon we are ready to. Quite obviously, we are now asking folks who visit our site to pre-signup by collecting their email address and some very basic additional info.
If you plan to start a web application with a certain business niche, which in our case happens to be web based innovation development, you want to make sure that you get yourself a nice mailing launch list (at least 1000 decent contacts for a b2b orientated web app) before you start collecting subscriptions and actually run your service.
Our startup yutongo.com
http://www.yutongo.com – ongrowing ideas
Ways to collect pre-signups that worked quite well for us
This is our list of 8 top tools that worked out best (or better: is working, prelaunch is still on) for us to create some pre-launch buzz that converts.
betali.st: Check this out and use the paid review option. It’s a blog platform which is specialized for startups in pre-launch. http://betali.st/startups/yutongo
erlibird.com: Great place to present your startup a little bit more in detail to a community of early adopters. Use the paid option. http://erlibird.com/go/yutongo
startupxexchange.co: Great concept. It’s an exchange platform for startups who are willing to trade some buzz through facebook or twitter with other startups. I put your startup on my facebook page, twitter or blog post, you put mine on yours.
1800banners.com: Banner advertising. Of the cheap kind, but fairly effective if you use the several targeting options offered on the site.
makeuseof.com: Also a good place to collect contacts from an intersting user group. Again: do use the paid review options. Why? It’s fast and you don’t have too much time. One issue with makeuseof.com: They put a lot of typing mistakes in our review. Besides that, it’s a great way to create some buzz.
microworkers.com: Microworkers is a crowdworking site who is often used to organize dubious tasks like paid facebook likes or signups. However, if you are not into these kind of activities, there is still a way to use microworkers to promote your startup. Among other tasks, you can ask crowdworkers to spot forums which are relevant to your startup niche and to place promotional forum posts. If done right, these measures actually can convert.
Google Ad Words: Also works, but obviously quite expensive.
Facebook Ads: They work if you target your ads well. Most success with Facebook ads we had with rather small target groups.
In case you were wondering: Just pointing out that yutongo or the writer is NOT affiliated with one of the websites mentioned above. We are just users.
What didn’t work out for us:
Junk-Traffic of all kind: Bulk traffic and pop-under ads (your whole website shows up in a popup) where you pay 10$ per 10’000 clicks. Although it actually is human traffic, it didn’t convert in the end. But in any case, we think you should try it. I do think that junk traffic can work in some ways or for some startups.
What about you?
What were your experiences with generating pre-launch sign-ups?
The Bootstrapped Startup 
Great compilation, well done Sandro! – Christoph