How to get your first 100 customers when nobody knows you exist

The first hundred customers are the hardest, and almost none of them arrive through the tactics people write about. There is no algorithm working in your favour yet and no reputation doing any of the work.

Start with people who already trust you

Your first ten buyers are usually people who know you. That is not cheating — it is how nearly every business starts. Tell people plainly what you are selling and ask them to buy or to pass it on.

Be specific. "I now sell X, it costs Y, here is the link" gets a response. "Check out my new page" does not.

Go where the problem is being discussed

Find the WhatsApp groups, Twitter threads and Facebook communities where people describe the problem you solve. Be useful there for a few weeks without selling anything. Answer questions properly.

When people know you are the person who knows about this, the selling stops being work.

Make the first purchase small

A stranger will not spend ₦50,000 with you. They might spend ₦2,000. Have something cheap that delivers a real result, then let it earn the right to sell the bigger thing.

Ask every buyer one question

"How did you hear about this?" — the cheapest market research there is.

After twenty sales you will see the pattern, and you can stop spreading effort evenly across channels that are not equally productive. SalesGit records where each visitor came from — referrer, campaign, device — so you can see this without asking, but the question is worth asking anyway because people tell you things analytics cannot.

Turn buyers into sellers

A happy customer will recommend you if you make it easy and worth their while. A referral link that pays a small commission turns your best customers into a sales channel — SalesGit has this built in, and for early-stage businesses it is often the cheapest growth you will find.

Expect it to be slow, then sudden

The first hundred takes months. The second hundred takes weeks. Most people quit somewhere around thirty, right before the part where it starts compounding.