Word of mouth is one of the the oldest ways and it can still be very useful. It tends to work best when your product is actually any good though. If you have a product that really is amazing you won't have to manipulate people into paying for it, and you won't be able to stop people from telling others about how great it is.

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cowlevel 18 hours ago | parent [-]

chess.com and lichess

Despite lichess being better in every way except marketing, it's still #2.

It's very impressive word of mouth got it to #2, but marketing experts are marketing experts.

	▲	rationalist 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The "lichess" name is terrible, the way the word itself looks is off-putting. It's like why they use sharp points in the hazmat symbol, it just looks bad even if you don't know what it means.
	▲	countWSS 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		the name matters, chess.com= automatically associates with something central about chess. (dot com) lich-ess can be read as lich-chess or leeches, both leave repulsive associations, effectively sub-conscious anti-marketing.