Listed on directories. Still quiet. What next?
I keep listing my product on directories and getting a bit of traffic, but almost nobody sticks around or replies.
If you have been through this — what did you change first?
The listing page copy?
Where you list?
Or stopping directories for a while and talking to people one by one?
Would love the messy version of what actually worked for you.
If you are launching something and want indie makers to find it, you can list it here: https://www.indieneed.com/submit
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
Messy version with the actual numbers, because this exact thing ate two months here.
The first thing that changed was not the copy and not the venue. It was noticing that "a directory listing" is three different products sold under one word:
A followed link. Compounds, and is worth having even at zero clicks.
A launch day spike. Real, and gone in 48 hours.
A catalogue page that itself ranks. The only one still sending anything in month six.
Most people write the listing copy for number 2, then wonder why month six is silent.
So we went and read which of our listings actually pass a followed link. I expected the famous directories to be the good ones. It was the exact opposite.
Nofollow: SourceForge, AlternativeTo, Indie Hackers, Startup Fame, Crunchbase, Peerlist.
Followed: SaaSHub (one followed Visit website link per listing), twelve.tools (every anchor), dang.ai (every anchor), Launch Llama (followed, page set to index, follow).
Twelve of our listings pass followed links and every one of them is on a directory nobody has heard of.
The nastiest case looked perfect and passed nothing. A 200 page, correct title, our domain printed on it four times, and zero anchor tags pointing at us. The domain only existed inside the JSON-LD block. Structured data is not a link. A sister listing on the same site had four real anchors, so it was that listing, not the platform.
The ten minute check, free:
Open your listing page and view source.
Search for your domain.
If it only appears inside a script tag, you have no link at all.
If it is inside an anchor tag, read the rel attribute. nofollow or ugc means it passes nothing.
Repeat for every directory you are on. Keep the ones that pass, stop feeding the ones that do not.
On the "nobody sticks around" half: one of our listings showed 1,534 impressions, 2 opens, 0 clicks. That is not a directory problem. When the click does arrive and bounces, the listing did its job and the landing page did not, and those need completely different fixes.
Honest limit: one small portfolio, one census, and rel values change without notice. Re-read your own rather than trusting my table.
If the landing side is where yours leaks, nexusbro.com/audit runs about 125 checks across SEO, performance, accessibility and security on any URL in roughly thirty seconds, no signup and no card. The full rel census is written up here if the numbers are useful: indiehackers.com/post/i-checked-the-rel-attribute-on-every-directory-listing-we-own-nine-listings-zero-followed-links-y6gWOIoUBK1qoC5vs2nq
Directories are a waiting game. We spent €150 on Google Ads and got 0 installs. Pivot to organic: reply to growing conversations on Threads, build in public, cold DMs. Personal > paid every time. The first 10 users come from showing up where people already talk, not from listing pages.
This is great work — what's the biggest thing you'd do differently if you started over?