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Show HN: I gained 50k users for my app with NO marketing (paylinkz.app)

15 points by tawrahim ↗ HN
Hi Hackernews,

Last year around February, I found myself having to pay contractors for various services that they provided me as I completed my new home. An occurring question that kept coming up with each conversation was - how do you want me to pay you or do you have “X” payment app on your phone that I can send the cash to?

I realized that some preferred Venmo, others preferred cash app - some had neither only relied on PayPal. Being the software engineer that I am, I figured why not build an app where a person can just list all their payment apps and then I can pick which ever worked for me. Similar to linktree but ONLY for payment apps

So I did just that, built the app - [https://paylinkz.app/](https://paylinkz.app/) and released it to the store without any fan fare - I didn’t even tell my close relatives because I could care less whether they used it or not. I also didn’t want any high expectations from anyone so did it in silence

10 months later we have 50k users with $0 spent on ads. It is worth noting that the initial audience that I had in mind were not even the people who used it the most. Today some of the use cases I have seen on the app are people using it for fund raising, mariachi bands, barber shops, landlords and Uber drivers for collecting tips, fantasy leagues...

FWIW - this is not my first rodeo at building an app and I think luck must have favored me this time around. It also helps that it is something that the market needed but never had. Although I was lucky in 2022, my goal is to put some effort into marketing to see where this goes.

Would love some overall feedback!

23 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 55.0 ms ] thread
avinassh
How are you planning to monetise this?
someotherperson
I imagine OP would perhaps be able to charge a subscription for more customised branding (for businesses) at some point. Maybe even referral payments from the payment gateways for new sign ups?
moralestapia
Could you share more about how you "gained 50k users for my app with NO marketing"?
_justinfunk
How did I get 50k users with no marketing? I was hoping that posting a Show HN saying I did would help get me there. /s
warent
yeah my BS detector is going off. this is a thinly vieled click bait marketing spam
jgust
It's in the app store(s) which is arguably a form of marketing.
warent
is it? I clicked the Play Store link on their website and it goes to a 404
jgust
is what?
warent
> It's in the app store(s)

> Is it? (in the app stores?)

blahblah1234567
Doubtful. Don't believe everything you read online, kiddos :D
nicolaslem
I have a web app with 9231 users with ZERO marketing. Want to know the secret? The users are me and 9230 bots.
tawrahim
I am happy to share screenshots or recorded video if that makes you feel at ease
drbeast
> Would love some overall feedback!

Yeah why don't you explain the app in more detail because that link throws a 404m

wallawe
This is just spam. It provides no value in the form of describing how you got the 50k users and is basically just an ad. Flagged.
tawrahim
Author here, as I mentioned in my post it was nothing but pure luck and building something that the community wanted but never had. I wish I had answers for you. Been an active hacker news reader for a long time and the last thing I would do is to spam a community where I get valuable tech news.

Not sure why this was flagged but I am happy to provide video evidence and even show it live on a call if that makes you feel at ease

wallawe
It's clickbait because your title is about growing your app to 50k users and then you say nothing about how that happened.

There is a reason it grew quickly. You could have provided value by diving into the ways (word of mouth, articles being written about you, etc).

Or if you had just done a normal show HN and described your product, it wouldn't have come across as spam.

tawrahim
Fair and thanks for the valuable feedback! I will make sure to post again following the guideline that you outlined
davbryn
I'm doubtful, simply because most people wouldn't trust an unrated app which is named using txt speak to handle their wallets. Happy for you to prove me wrong! You only have a handful of reviews in both of the major app stores...
dsr_
>Last year around February, I found myself having to pay contractors for various services that they provided me as I completed my new home. An occurring question that kept coming up with each conversation was - how do you want me to pay you or do you have “X” payment app on your phone that I can send the cash to?

This is a great application for a form of payment called a Check, or Cheque. It works with all banks as long as they're inside the same country, provides a durable receipt, and can be traced, cancelled and re-issued. All the contractors I've ever dealt with accept them, usually on the same terms as cash.

tawrahim
Author here -- for sure was not expecting this amount of feedback. To be honest as I did not do anything special to gain that traction as I mentioned in my post. A community of fantasy league picked it up and started creating links with it and sharing their payment page via facebook which eventually led more and more people to see it.