"Don't do any paid user acquisition until you can calculate your CAC and LTV.
It's very, very tempting to "experiment" and "test" various paid customer acquisition channels. You start with AdWords, then do some cheapo banner ads on a couple of ad networks, and soon you're hooked on some hard affiliate stuff and paying thousands of dollars a month to an Outsourced Program Manager"
Humorously worded, but I can tell you from loads of experience, this is flat wrong. Your LTV for customers you acquire from ads can be vastly different (in either direction) from ones you gain organically. I've had apps where it started out 3x CPA, then ended up 1/3x as the law of big numbers came into play and we had reached everyone we could target well.
Experimentation is how you grow and find your place in the market. From the start you should be throwing small chunks in different places, testing the signup flows of the people who come through them, looking for your highest ROI and most scalable method of customer acquisition.
If you don't have the self-discipline to wait until you're showing sustainable profits to throw the big budget in, and carefully monitor it throughout, then you shouldn't be running a startup. You should be waiting tables at Applebee's.
I concur with Matt. In addition, it is going to take you a long time after you turn AdWords on to the point where a) your account has built enough history to get decent pricing and b) you have gotten good at writing copy/landing pages for your niche. Start learning early for cheap. After you find the magic, pour money at it.
I think I was on AdWords for, crikey, over a year (at $1 ~ $3 a day) before I figured out that if I took advantage of Conversion Optimizer I could profitably exploit remnant inventory on the Content Network. Since that is widely held to be total drek (and priced to match), I do pretty decently.
It's very, very tempting to "experiment" and "test" various paid customer acquisition channels. You start with AdWords, then do some cheapo banner ads on a couple of ad networks, and soon you're hooked on some hard affiliate stuff and paying thousands of dollars a month to an Outsourced Program Manager"
Humorously worded, but I can tell you from loads of experience, this is flat wrong. Your LTV for customers you acquire from ads can be vastly different (in either direction) from ones you gain organically. I've had apps where it started out 3x CPA, then ended up 1/3x as the law of big numbers came into play and we had reached everyone we could target well.
Experimentation is how you grow and find your place in the market. From the start you should be throwing small chunks in different places, testing the signup flows of the people who come through them, looking for your highest ROI and most scalable method of customer acquisition.
If you don't have the self-discipline to wait until you're showing sustainable profits to throw the big budget in, and carefully monitor it throughout, then you shouldn't be running a startup. You should be waiting tables at Applebee's.