from Hacker News

Show HN: I gained 50k users for my app with NO marketing

by tawrahim on 1/10/23, 1:07 PM with 21 comments

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!

  • by wallawe on 1/10/23, 4:17 PM

    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.

  • by moralestapia on 1/10/23, 3:57 PM

    Could you share more about how you "gained 50k users for my app with NO marketing"?

  • by dsr_ on 1/10/23, 4:24 PM

    >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.

  • by Brajeshwar on 1/10/23, 4:04 PM

    I don't think Markdown Hyperlink works here. Try `<https://paylinkz.app/>`.

    You might want to read up and get inspired by the India's UPI[1]. It is government backed and pretty much anyone can build toolings around it to transfer money between interested parties.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Payments_Interface

  • by avinassh on 1/10/23, 3:35 PM

    How are you planning to monetise this?

  • by blahblah1234567 on 1/10/23, 4:04 PM

    Doubtful. Don't believe everything you read online, kiddos :D

  • by tawrahim on 1/10/23, 4:26 PM

    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.

  • by davbryn on 1/10/23, 4:22 PM

    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...

  • by drbeast on 1/10/23, 4:04 PM

    > Would love some overall feedback!

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