I spent a year building fourteen products. Most of them are good. Some of them solve real problems. Almost none of them have users.

The reason is embarrassingly simple: I treated distribution as a post-launch task. Something to figure out after the code works, after the design is polished, after the landing page is just right.

That was wrong.

The build trap

Here's what happened. I'd validate a niche, build an MVP in a few days, ship it, post it somewhere, and wait. The product worked. The landing page converted okay. Nobody came.

Four of my products had solid problem-solution fit. Users who found them liked them. But "users who found them" was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because almost nobody found them.

What actually moved the needle

After months of near-zero traction across the portfolio, three things started working:

SEO comparison pages. Instead of trying to rank for head terms, I built pages comparing my products to established competitors. These pages rank faster because the query intent is specific and the competition is lower. One product (BeRecommended) went from invisible to getting organic clicks within weeks.

Building in public cross-posting. Writing about what I'm doing across Dev.to, Medium, Hashnode, and a few other platforms. Each post is a small distribution event. The compounding effect is slow but real.

Niche communities over broadcast channels. Posting in specific groups where my target users hang out beats shouting into the void on Twitter. IndieHackers threads, relevant subreddits, Quora answers with genuine context.

What did not work

Product Hunt without a community. Zero pre-launch audience means zero launch momentum. The algorithm rewards early velocity, and I had none.

Twitter without followers. Posting into an echo chamber of zero. Building an audience there takes months of consistent engagement before distribution pays off.

Paid ads without PMF signal. Running Google Ads before knowing if people even want the thing is burning money to learn what organic feedback would tell you for free.

The shift

I now treat distribution as a core feature of the MVP itself. The question isn't "how do I get users after launch" but "how does this product reach people as part of its design."

That means building comparison pages before the launch. It means writing the first building-in-public post the same week I ship. It means choosing niches where distribution channels already exist.

The product is not done when it works. The product is done when people can find it.

I'm Jakub, building Inithouse, a portfolio of small products looking for traction. If you're in the same boat, I'd love to hear what distribution channels work for you.