best ways to get users with a $0 budget

you just shipped something.

now you need users, and you have no money to buy them.

that is fine. at this stage paid marketing is the wrong tool anyway.

when the product is new, you still do not know whether people need it, whether it solves a real problem, or who the buyer actually is.

what you need right now is the conversation behind the number, and paid channels do not produce those.

and speed matters more than reach right now.

this stage does several critical jobs at once, and skipping it is how startups end up scaling something nobody wanted:

• you test hypotheses
• you learn who your audience is and what they actually need
• you improve the product with real feedback

so the goal is simple: launch fast, test, talk to people, fix, repeat.

once something clearly works, you add paid channels on top of it.

below is the most up to date list of free ways to get users, scored from 1 to 10.

worst first. the best one is at the bottom.

1. seo (5/10)

the version of seo most founders think of is the version that stopped paying.

pew research tracked 900 us adults and found people clicked a search result in 8% of searches that showed an ai summary, against 15% of searches without one. only 1% clicked a link inside the summary itself.

so informational blog posts now feed google's answer instead of your traffic.

what still works is narrow: comparison pages against competitors people already search for, and programmatic pages built from data you already own.

• when to use it: after you know who your buyer is and what they type into a search box.
• what it requires: 3 to 6 months before the first real traffic, plus a data source you can turn into hundreds of pages.
• what it converts into: compounding traffic with buying intent, once it lands. best for: products with an obvious competitor people already look up by name.

> full guide from @kalashvasaniya: https://x.com/kalashvasaniya/status/2017089820951269453

2. short-form video (6/10)

the largest genuinely free reach available to anyone right now. tiktok slideshows, reels, shorts.

low score because it is shaped for consumer products. if you sell a b2b tool, skip this one and move down the list.

the mistake founders make here is trying to be creative. the job is to find formats that already work in the app ecosystem and rebuild them for your product.

• when to use it: consumer app, visual product, something you can demo in 5 seconds with the sound off.
• what it requires: volume. 3 formats a day, dozens of posts before one lands, and formats you can replicate in under 15 minutes.
• what it converts into: installs. occasional 100k to 1m view spikes. very little brand.

> full guide from @LinoLeighton: https://x.com/LinoLeighton/status/2089068010107539613

3. reddit and niche communities (6/10)

works well, with the smallest margin for error on this list. get this wrong and the subreddit bans you.

discord, slack and skool belong in the same bucket. same rules, same motion.

the rule everyone breaks: answer 20 questions before you mention your product once.

• when to use it: when your users already gather somewhere and complain about the problem you solve.
• what it requires: an account with history, real participation, and patience.
• what it converts into: spiky traffic, the most honest feedback you will get anywhere, and occasionally a thread that sends users for months. best for: b2b tools, dev tools, anything with a clear "i have this problem" subreddit.

> full guide from @om_patel5: https://x.com/om_patel5/status/2013443259033387059

4. geo / aeo (7/10)

getting cited inside chatgpt, perplexity, grok and google's ai answers.

this is the half of search that is actually current, and it is cheaper to win than google because the corpus is thin and everyone competing for it started less than two years ago.

worth noting from the same pew data: wikipedia, youtube and reddit make up around 15% of the links these summaries cite. that tells you where to be mentioned.

• when to use it: as soon as you have a product page and one comparison page.
• what it requires: structured content, a clear category name, and mentions on the sources the models already trust.
• what it converts into: small traffic volumes with unusually high intent.

> full guide from @harsehaj: https://x.com/harsehaj/status/2091690736211112005

5. viral launch on X (7/10)

one day of reach measured in hundreds of thousands of impressions.

it works, and there is a real system behind it. the honest caveat is the creator coordination stage, which is where "free" quietly turns into "relationships you spent a year building".

so treat this as the payoff for point 8 rather than a standalone tactic.

• when to use it: once you have something worth showing on video in the first 5 seconds.
• what it requires: creators briefed before launch day, a claim people want to argue with, and a reason to comment.
• what it converts into: impressions, followers, a signup spike, and dms from people you could not reach otherwise.

> full guide from @0xfJuan: https://x.com/0xfJuan/status/2082138861136736272

6. early community of evangelists (8/10)

this one has no guide, because most founders treat it as a nice to have. it is closer to a moat.

when you are early and have no cash, competing with large companies inside their channels is a losing game. your advantage is the feeling that everyone involved is part of something bigger, a group of like minded people building the same thing.

your job is to create that feeling on purpose.

find the small thing corporations cannot give people. the thing users are quietly missing. then build everything around it.

and since you cannot offer money, work out what you can offer instead:

• free access and lifetime subscriptions
• access to a closed community
• giveaways and events
• direct influence on the roadmap
• in crypto, future tokens

you are shifting the cost from today to the moment it actually works, with a multiplier on the upside.

this is the same trade you make with your first employees and co-founders. you cannot match a corporate offer, so you offer real upside, freedom to operate, and a team worth joining.

treat your early community the same way. give them freedom, give them room to contribute, and reward them for it.

make it clear that you are in the same boat, that you will fight for them, and that if this works they were a meaningful part of it.

do that and you get an army of people defending your product and telling everyone about it.

quality beats size here. if tier 1 founders are discussing your product inside your community, that alone is something most companies will never have.

• when to use it: from your first 20 users.
• what it requires: something valuable to give that is not cash, and a founder who actually shows up.
• what it converts into: word of mouth, retention, defenders during your first public mistake.

7. networking and warm intros (8/10)

the highest leverage per hour of anything on this list, and the one founders postpone the longest.

it is the same skill whether you are looking for investors, first customers, hires or distribution partners: understand the other side's motivation, then be useful before you ask for anything.

i wrote the full version of this for investors, and the mechanics transfer almost unchanged to customers.

• when to use it: continuously, from day one.
• what it requires: research, patience, and giving value with no immediate return.
• what it converts into: introductions, design partners, hires, and money.

> full guide: https://x.com/PaulKlayVC/status/2095544871457059136

8. founder-led marketing (9/10)

the engine the rest of this list runs on.

launches work better, cold dms get answered, intros get returned, and communities form faster when there is a real person with a track record behind the product.

one caveat worth taking seriously. the argument that under roughly 500 followers your posts get almost no algorithmic reach, and that replying inside other people's comment sections beats posting into the void, went to 2.2m views this year. it matches what most small accounts actually experience.

https://x.com/lmkeev/status/1993325768215306243

the bar for content is simple: would you bookmark this if someone else wrote it?

— "results from my first 2 weeks of being active on X"

• when to use it: from day one, and then forever.
• what it requires: 60 to 90 days of posting before anything visible happens.
• what it converts into: inbound users, inbound investors, credibility, and cheaper access to every other channel here.

> full guide from @ansonlin: https://x.com/ansonlin/status/2074879329536774615

9. cold dms and cold email (10/10)

the best channel available to you today, and the one nobody wants to hear about.

everything above depends on an algorithm, an audience or a community deciding to cooperate. this one does not. you decide how many conversations happen today, and roughly that many happen.

it is also the fastest way to find out whether your product solves a real problem, which is the actual job at this stage.

one clarification, since i have argued the opposite elsewhere. i still think cold outreach is the wrong way to reach investors. with an investor you are asking for something. with a customer you are offering to remove a problem they already have. different game entirely.

targeted and manual is the whole point here. mass sequences belong in the next section.

• when to use it: today. before the landing page is finished.
• what it requires: a list, a specific reason to write to each person, and tolerance for silence.
• what it converts into: your first 10 to 50 customers, and the sharpest feedback you will ever receive.

> full guide from @adriannalakatos: https://x.com/adriannalakatos/status/2042490448766525532

what does not work anymore

these were all real channels once. keep them off the list until something changes.

product hunt (3/10) still fine for credibility and a badge. weak for customers. founders on product hunt's own 2026 discussion describe the same thing: too much competition, and users now skip anything with "ai" in the tagline. one recent launch reported 746 visits, 32 signups and 12 active users for a full day of work.

startup directory blasts (2/10) you get backlinks. users do not follow. and with search clicks falling the way they are, those backlinks are worth less every quarter. an afternoon of submissions, no measurable outcome.

"day 47 of building in public" (2/10) progress updates from an account nobody follows yet. the audience for your journey does not exist until you have given people a reason to care. teach something instead.

mass cold email sequences (2/10) gmail and yahoo imposed bulk sender rules in february 2024, and microsoft started routing non compliant bulk mail to junk on 5 may 2025. anything over 5,000 messages a day to those providers now needs spf, dkim, dmarc and a working one click unsubscribe, and gmail and yahoo want your spam complaint rate under 0.3%. spraying thousands of identical emails is now a deliverability problem that also burns your domain. 50 researched messages beat 5,000 generated ones.

blog posts targeting informational keywords (3/10) "what is x" and "how to y" articles now get summarised by google and never clicked. see the pew numbers above. write comparison pages and product pages instead.

that is the list.

if you are at the start of this, the honest order is: talk to people directly, build the founder account, and turn your first users into a community.

everything else is optimisation on top.

and if you are building in ai infrastructure, hardware and silicon, or physical ai, we would be happy to hear what you are working on at Begin Capital.