I have a startup (SaaS, web-based tool for scientists to make molecular videos). Looking at your site, I don't see how to tell if this would have any value for me. What are these "directories"? Why would I care about being submitted to them? Maybe you should have more info about what the directories can do for a startup. Do they just drive random traffic? Create interest with investors? Increase my SEO somehow?
It's looks interesting - congrats on your first indie project.
My main concern is - is a directory that anyone can submit to in bulk through a service without even knowing what the directory is really a directory that is going to drive value to be on? Are those really the types of directories that the kinds of people you want (e.g. paying customers vs bots) will be using? Without a list of directories and an understanding of what the 160 are, I'm frankly more worried about opening up for a lot of spam than anything - I'd rather be on 3-4 well chosen, high quality directories than try and hit as many as possible to get a big number of directories listed and end up creating more noise to sift through.
I wonder if focusing more on the quality of directories instead of the quantity could help you get more signups and users?
Congrats on your first launch! I launched a service like this in 2014 on HN as well :)
I'd really encourage you to focus on quality vs quantity here. I see you have 366 sites in your google sheet. Having spent A LOT of time going through those sites in the past, I am certain that 70% of those listed are either low quality, inactive, or irrelevant. I found the best success for customers when I spent most of my time sourcing/curating the list of only the most relevant and actively maintained sites. That's where you can deliver value.
This is a cool idea, but I'm worried (like a lot of other commenters) that a "rapid fire" approach like this may not work, and could get you banned from a lot of communities. As a developer I need help with marketing, but I also don't want to spam a bunch of communities (especially ones I use, like HN).
I would definitely put more information about (1) The messaging you are using, (2) who you post as (do you post as the owner?), and (3) the directories you submit to (it looks like all 160, but further comments seem to indicate that it's a subset).
I wonder if it would be more valuable to find a good messaging formula for a few specific communities, and post things that way? I would be much more interested in a service that not only posts, but also follows comment threads and answers questions. Thats probably a more premium offering, but worth considering.
about 20 years ago there were services like this for your newly created website. all these site they submitted to were low quality and never generated any traffic. history repeats
I was coming to find this comment. Back then, most people looked to Google PageRank[1] as the source of truth for the value of the your website. That "value" translated into a lot of interest in advertising dollars, particularly if you ran a blog with PageRank > 7.
The interesting part was that PageRank was only "recalculated" on a somewhat infrequent basis, so you ended up with tons of domains that that weren't really human readable, just gobs of regurgitated text meant to throw off any "unique" filters, and hundreds of links to outbound sites. In early iterations of the algorithm, sites like this scored highly, and those "services" that would help you build backlinks, etc. basically just plugged your domain on these trashy sites with the hope the algorithm would see this "highly rated" site linking to your site.
Maybe a little bit before that there were similar services for Shareware applications. These were typically free, or one-time purchase, however, and would submit your program to all the websites listed automatically. Although many of the sites were junk, the combination of a few good directories and the long-tail of a bunch of low traffic directories was enough to launch a new shareware program.
That's the service that came to mind for me when I read the headline.
Has anyone actually found these directories to be useful? I suspect the only people browsing these sites are our founders and not potential clients. Do they really offer any SEO improvements?
HackerNews is listed as one of the directories. When I submitted my project (soon to be startup) I got a ton of support and advice, it was invaluable. That being said, I don't think it would have worked if I hadn't made a very personalized message and responded to all the comments.
Exactly, if you can't be bothered to submit it yourself and chat with potential users, or even just other makers providing feedback, then you probably won't succeed.
The buttons on the page says “choose plan” for each of the alternatives, but these are one-time purchases right, not monthly recurring ones? I’d probably go with “order” instead for the text for anything that is a one-time purchase, as “choose plan” to me implies recurring billing.
Very similar to backlink services right? You add your link to a bunch of link lists to improve your SEO... not quite organic, but it must be somewhat viable...
Product Hunt is in the table, but on the website it says you don't submit to Product Hunt. Has the website just not been updated or was Product Hunt included in the table by mistake?
