I compiled a list of 70 creative ways to drive traffic to your website
I started this list as a personal note on my iphone while figuring out distribution for my own SaaS. Every time I came across a channel that actually worked for someone, I wrote it down with a note on when it makes sense and when it doesn't.
I ordered it so the more creative and underused channels come first and organized it across 10 categories:
Offline and unconventional (physical mail, conference stickers, sponsoring 50-person meetups, ebooks)
Product-led and viral loops (embeddable widgets, public profiles, powered-by badges, referral programs)
PR and media (open-sourcing something adjacent, state-of-industry reports, HARO, roundups)
Cold outbound (trigger-based outreach, X DMs after rapport, reactivation emails)
SEO and content (programmatic SEO, free tools as lead magnets, original research, comparison pages)
Partnerships and integrations (integrations with bigger tools, co-marketing, affiliates, podcast guesting)
Paid acquisition (competitor brand bidding, Reddit ads, newsletter sponsorships, retargeting)
Social and personal brand (reply guy strategy, LinkedIn long-form, YouTube tutorials, build in public)
Communities and forums (niche specialty forums, Quora, Slack/Discord, then Reddit and HN)
Marketplaces and directories (listing on acquire.com even when not selling, niche directories, AlternativeTo, then Product Hunt and G2)
A few things I tried to be honest about:
Most of these take 4 to 8 weeks before you can tell if they're working. Picking 3 to 5 and going deep beats spreading across 20.
Some are obvious but most founders skip them anyway (refreshing old content, getting on niche directories, building a basic affiliate program).
A few are weirdly underused (sending physical mail to 50 dream customers, sponsoring 50-person meetups, listing your startup as 'open to offers' on acquire.com even when you're not selling, embeddable widgets).
Full list with notes on each here.
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PS: I'm growing IbexAI with my team. We're a Harvard-backed startup building an AI agent that scans LinkedIn and finds people who are interested in your product.
The list is useful, but the real edge is picking a few channels that compound with your ICP instead of treating distribution as a long checklist.
I love IbexAI’s approach of only focusing on the 3 most valuable LinkedIn intent signals instead of overloading users with useless data because most lead gen tools waste time on low-quality prospects. Curious how you balance real-time LinkedIn monitoring with avoiding platform rate limits and account safety restrictions?
We don't use our customers' accounts at all. So there is no risk of restrictions or bans.
The acquirecom tip is the one I keep coming back to.
Listing as 'open to offers' even when you're not selling — the signaling effect alone (that you have something worth acquiring) probably changes how some visitors perceive the product. Hadn't thought about it that way before.
The 4-8 weeks honesty check is also underrated. Most founders abandon channels at week 2 and conclude "it doesn't work" when they just didn't give it enough runway.
For anyone building in a tight niche (I'm early-stage, building for aesthetic clinics specifically): the niche directories and 50-person meetup sponsorships feel disproportionately high-ROI when your TAM is small enough that you can actually know where your customers congregate. Broad channels are noise when your ICP is that specific.
Saving this list. Thanks for putting it together.
Saved this, thank you.
One thing I'd add under product-led: privacy as a viral loop. I'm building docreplacer.online — AI doc generator where your real data never reaches the model (placeholders fill client-side). That one architectural decision became my biggest talking point, zero extra marketing needed.
Sometimes the "how you built it" is the distribution.
This is really solid 👌
If you had to pick just 1–2 of these for early traction, what would you go with?
1) Warm intros
2) Cold outreach on LinkedIn (with intent signals)
The list is very useful, but while focusing on SEO, there's a type of GEO that prople ignore which is the AI SEO or AEO... I think that is also very important.
This is gold. The '4-8 weeks before you can tell' note is the most important part — most people give up after 2 weeks and think the channel is broken.*
Quick question — for a solo founder with limited time, which 3 channels would you pick FIRST for a B2C product (helping aspiring founders find business ideas)?
Also, the 'physical mail to 50 dream customers' — has anyone actually done this successfully for software? Curious about response rates.
I'm building Bexra — mindset a quiz that helps founders find the right business for their. Distribution is my biggest bottleneck right now. This list is going in my bookmarks. Thanks for sharing.
My new project Emusic Tools, search it on Google if you want
This is probably the hardest part of building right now — not the product itself, but distribution.
One thing I’ve started realizing is that a lot of traffic advice sounds good in theory but only works once some initial momentum already exists. For completely new products, even getting the first few real users can feel disproportionately difficult.
Curious — out of the 70 methods, which ones actually worked for products starting from near-zero audience and no existing network?
Still SEO dominates when it comes to getting tons of traffic to websites.... requires aligning with Google guidelines.... patience and best quality content...
Interesting idea — especially the positioning angle. I’m testing a founder feedback tool called DealDoctor that analyzes startup blind spots and messaging. Would be interesting to run IbexAI through it.
That's a very helpful list! I'm gonna test that on my Website 🙌
Thank you!
great
This is a great reminder that distribution is not just “post everywhere.”
The hard part is matching the channel to the stage of the product.
I’m in early beta right now, and it’s tempting to try every directory, launchpad, subreddit, X thread, and LinkedIn post at once. But that creates motion without much signal.
The channels that seem most useful early are the ones where intent is already visible:
• people complaining about the exact problem
• niche communities with practitioners
• replies under relevant conversations
• directories after the positioning is clear enough to convert
The “when it makes sense / when it doesn’t” framing is probably the most valuable part of this list.
Traffic is easy to chase. Qualified attention is the hard part.
After months and months of working in different projects, I finally manage to come through on this last one. Only to discover that actually, the hardest part is the outreach not the development haha. What a blessing to come across this post! Thanks for the list
great
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