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Over the past few months, I built and shared a browser extension completely from scratch. At first, it was just for me. But slowly, people started using it—and to my surprise, it grew to 1,000 users. Along the way I made plenty of mistakes, but also picked up some lessons worth sharing.
Here are 5 things I learned:
1. If you can find 10 users, you can find 10,000. Ten true fans are proof your product has potential. The challenge isn’t whether the product works—it’s whether you’re willing to keep looking for more people like them. The market is bigger than you think.
2. Don’t be scared of competition. I used to worry, “But others already made this.” The truth? No product serves every user. There are always gaps, overlooked groups, or niche needs. Competition just means the market is real.
3. Products don’t magically get discovered. I once believed “if you build it, users will come.” Nope. Unless you’re a big company, nobody stumbles across your project. You have to talk about it, promote it, share the story behind it. Even a great product needs a push.
4. Price for the value, not the competition. At first I copied competitor pricing. Big mistake. Every product has different positioning, experience, and audience. The real question is: how much value are you creating for users? Price based on that.
5. Don’t fear higher prices. I thought people wouldn’t pay if it was “too expensive.” Turns out, higher-paying users are often the best audience—they value what you built and help you get to profitability faster.
Final thoughts 1,000 users isn’t huge, but it’s a step forward. Building products isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Keep your confidence, price with courage, promote consistently, and believe: if someone is willing to use it, someone else will be willing to pay.
The next 10,000 users are out there.
By the way, if you care about focus and efficiency, you might like the tool I’ve been working on—NoTab [https://notab.pro](https://notab.pro). It lets you preview links, search, and translate—all within the same page—so you can get things done faster without endless tab switching. Give it a try if that sounds useful to you.
I believe this is a critical problem for many developers — building the product is relatively easy, but promoting it is the hard part.
I'm facing this challenge once again. In the past, whenever I ran into marketing difficulties with a product, I’d just set it aside and move on to building something new. But this time, I really want to solve the problem once and for all.
What are some effective ways to promote your own product?
I’ve already tried many approaches — launching on Product Hunt, building backlinks, creating videos on TikTok, and more — but none of them have brought significant results.
Are there any other proven or creative strategies I could try?