Jenny Wilson 
Most browser extension SaaS products never reach 100 paying users — not because they are bad products, but because the developer shipped the extension and waited for users to find it. They do not find it. The Chrome Web Store is not a discovery engine for new products. You have to bring users to your extension yourself, especially in the first 90 days.
Here is what actually works, what does not, and in what order to try things.
Your Goal in the First 30 Days
Do not optimize for scale in the first month. Optimize for learning. You need to talk to the people who are most likely to pay for your extension, understand exactly why they would pay, and use that understanding to sharpen your positioning.
This means your first 30 days should focus on finding 5–10 people who actually want what you built and getting them on a call or into an email thread. Those conversations are worth more than any amount of SEO, paid ads, or viral launch strategy.
Specifically:
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Find the community where your target user lives. Subreddits, Slack groups, Discord servers, LinkedIn groups, niche forums. Every extension solves a problem for a specific kind of person. Find where those people talk about their work.
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Be a genuine participant, not a spammer. Contribute to discussions for a week or two before mentioning your product. When you do mention it, do it in context: “I built something that solves exactly this problem, would you be interested in trying it?” A personal, contextual invitation converts at 10x the rate of a generic link drop.
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Offer free access in exchange for feedback. Your first users are not paying customers — they are advisors. Give them free access and ask for 30 minutes to understand their experience. The feedback will change how you describe and price your product.
The Launch
After you have initial feedback and have refined your positioning, launch publicly. The goal of launch is to create a burst of activity that seeds your Chrome Web Store reviews and ranking.
The channels that move the needle for small extension products:
Hacker News (Show HN): Submit a Show HN post. Write a clear, honest title that describes what your extension does and who it is for. Include the origin story: why did you build this, what problem did you personally have. HN is skeptical of marketing language but very receptive to builders sharing genuine projects. A front-page Show HN day will drive 500–2,000 visitors. Most will not install. Some will.
Product Hunt: A well-prepared Product Hunt launch can drive significant installs. You need support from your network to rank on launch day — ask everyone you know to upvote, leave a comment, or share. The key is launching Tuesday–Thursday morning (San Francisco time) when traffic is highest. Invest in quality screenshots and a genuine description.
Relevant subreddits: Not r/SideProject or r/startups (these are full of other builders, not buyers). Find the subreddits where your target user discusses the problem your extension solves. A post in the right community can convert at 5–10x the rate of a generic launch post.
Your own network: Email everyone you know. Not a bulk newsletter — individual emails to people who might genuinely care. “I built a tool that might help you with X, I know you deal with X because of Y.” Personal emails convert. Mass emails do not.
Chrome Web Store Reviews
The Chrome Web Store ranking algorithm weighs reviews heavily. An extension with 10 reviews at 4.8 stars ranks dramatically better than an extension with 0 reviews — even if the no-review extension has more installs.
Getting reviews is uncomfortable for most developers. Do it anyway. After a user has been using your extension for 7–14 days, trigger an in-extension prompt: “If you’re finding [Extension Name] useful, a review on the Chrome Web Store helps others find it.” Link directly to the review page for your extension (the URL format is chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/[extension-id]/reviews).
Time the prompt based on usage, not time. A user who has triggered your core feature 10 times is much more likely to review than a user who installed 14 days ago and used it once. LightningAddon includes chrome.storage utilities that make tracking usage-based prompts straightforward.
Never offer compensation for reviews — Chrome’s policies prohibit it and it produces fake-sounding reviews that sophisticated users distrust.
Content That Compound Over Time
Paid ads stop working when you stop paying. Content keeps compounding.
For an extension SaaS, the highest-ROI content format is articles that answer specific, high-intent questions your target user types into Google. Not “10 productivity tips” (too broad) — more like “how to batch export LinkedIn connections” if you built a LinkedIn extension.
The searchers finding those specific articles are people actively looking for a solution. They are your highest-converting traffic source, and the article continues working for years after you publish it.
Write 3–5 of these articles in your first 90 days. The LightningAddon blog — what you are reading right now — follows this pattern. Every post targets a specific question an extension developer might search for.
What Does Not Work (Early Stage)
Paid advertising: The unit economics do not work until you have a high-converting landing page and know your average customer lifetime value. Spending $500/month on Google ads before you have 20 paying customers almost always results in $500/month burn rate and no useful data.
Twitter/X: Effective for building an audience over months or years. The engagement-to-conversion ratio for direct product promotion is very low unless you already have a relevant following.
App store optimization alone: ASO is important but passive. You need active distribution to seed the reviews and installs that make ASO effective. Optimize your store listing from day one, but do not wait for organic discovery to find you.
Building features instead of distributing: Every day you spend adding a feature instead of talking to users is a day where you might be building the wrong thing. The most common failure mode for developer-built products is a beautifully engineered product that nobody knows exists.
The 100-User Milestone
Your first 100 paying users will likely come from 3–5 concentrated efforts: one launch event, one community post that went well, one content piece that ranks for a valuable keyword, and word-of-mouth from early users who love the product.
Track every user’s acquisition source if you can. Ask people how they found you. The pattern will clarify where to focus — and where not to spend more time.
Getting to 100 is a milestone, not the end state. But the work you do to get there — understanding who your users are, what they value, and what makes them tell others about you — is the foundation for everything that comes after.
