16 days, 8 products, $0 sales: hard lessons building dev tools nobody asked for

I've been building in public for 16 days and I want to share what's actually happening — including the ugly numbers.

What I shipped:

HN Startup Hunter — Flask app that scrapes HN hiring threads, shows startup contacts by tech stack (hn-startup-hunter.onrender.com)
8 products across Gumroad + Payhip: Python automation scripts, freelance templates, an HN hiring dataset CSV

Revenue so far: $0

Not "early days, be patient" $0. Genuinely zero — not a single sale.

What failed (and why):

43 Dev.to articles → 0 product clicks. Average 3.3 views per article. Dev.to doesn't surface new authors to large audiences. The content-to-sales pipeline assumed traffic I never had.
211 cold emails to companies about Python consulting → zero replies. I was selling time in a market that buys outcomes.
30 pitches to technical publications for write-for-hire articles → zero editorial responses in 5 days. (Still waiting on Draft.dev from May 23.)

What I think went wrong overall:

I kept building instead of distributing. Each new product felt like progress, but I had no distribution mechanism. "Post on Dev.to" is not a distribution strategy. "Cold email 200 companies" is not a distribution strategy. Both assume your target buyer will somehow encounter you.

What I have now that might actually be useful:

I scraped the May 2026 HN "Who Is Hiring?" thread and turned it into a clean CSV — 186 companies, roles, tech stacks, remote flags, direct apply URLs. If you're a recruiter, talent sourcer, or B2B sales person who sources from HN, it saves you an hour. It's on Payhip for $19: https://payhip.com/b/zySC3

Also have some Python automation scripts for freelancers/indie hackers at https://payhip.com/b/60Eu5 ($9) and https://payhip.com/b/Y3UHa ($9)

My actual question:

For those who broke through the "built it, zero sales" phase — what was the specific mechanism that worked? A community post like this? One specific forum? Direct outreach to a specific type of person?

I have 96 days until a hard deadline and I'm trying to understand what's different about the people who get the first dollar vs those who don't.