How to get your startup found on Quora
TL;DR
Quora is a question-and-answer platform where people ask questions and others answer from experience. Profiles, answers and Spaces are free, and Quora Ads start at a $5 minimum daily budget per campaign. It suits founders who can write clear answers to the questions their buyers ask before they buy.
What is Quora?
On Quora anyone can ask or answer, and readers upvote useful answers. Four parts matter for a startup:
- Profiles. A personal profile shows your name and a credential line such as "Founder at Acme". Quora's platform policies also let you open an account that represents a legally incorporated business or organization.
- Answers. Your replies to questions in your field, shown in the feed and the email digest.
- Spaces. Topic communities with admins and contributors; you can start your own.
- Quora Ads. Promoted Answers, image, video and text ads, lead gen forms and app install ads, managed in Ads Manager.
About the domain authority of 93: it belongs to quora.com. Links in answers carry nofollow, so the benefit comes from readers who click through and from answers that show up when people search the question.
Who should use Quora?
Good fit:
- Founders whose buyers research in writing first, with questions like "which invoicing app suits freelancers?" or "how do I find a co-founder?".
- Founders with hands-on experience in a field they can explain plainly.
Skip it:
- Founders who only want to drop links. Quora collapses or removes answers that need an outside site to make sense and look promotional.
- Affiliate marketers. Quora's business guide says "Affiliate links are not allowed."
How much does Quora cost?
- Profile, answers and Spaces: free.
- Quora Ads: the pricing page sets a $5 minimum daily budget per campaign and states there are no account-level minimums, no setup fees and no required spend commitments. Bid types: cost per click (CPC, manual or automatic), cost per thousand impressions (CPM), cost per video view (CPV) or High Volume Conversions.
How do you share your startup on Quora?
- Sign up on quora.com and add a credential that names your role. Quora asks you to disclose your affiliation in the answer or in the credential shown with it.
- If you plan to mention your product in answers, set up a Professional Business Profile. Quora's guide on writing as a business says answers that pitch products or services must be linked to one. Add a logo, a short tagline and a brief bio.
- Find questions your buyers ask and answer them directly. Quora allows self-promotion "only in the context of a sincere, helpful, and direct response"; anything else counts as spam.
- Join or create a Space on your topic. Spaces Policies ban posting the same content repeatedly, excessive promotion of one product and questions posted to advertise a business.
- For paid reach, open Quora Ads Manager and start one campaign at $5 a day.
Tips to get more out of Quora
- Put the answer in the first two sentences, then show where your product fits, with one link at most.
- Use "Take questions" to tell your followers and topic followers that you answer questions on a subject.
- Check your stats page weekly and write more on topics that already get views.
- Turn your best organic answer into a Promoted Answer, since it has proved it holds readers.
Our verdict
Quora pays off for founders who write useful answers and say who they are, and it punishes link dropping. The free side costs only time, and the $5 daily minimum makes ads cheap to test. Write ten good answers before judging the traffic.
More options: see all founder communities. Planning the launch around this listing? The Fe/male Switch startup game walks women founders from idea to first customers.