17 Days, Zero Sales — What Actually Fails When You Ship Dev Tools
I've been building in public for 17 days. 4 Python automation products on Gumroad. 43 articles on Dev.to. Total revenue: $0.
Here's what I learned:
1. Dev.to traffic doesn't convert — 348 views, 43 articles, zero Gumroad clicks.
2. "If you build it, they will come" is false for dev tools — Developers find workarounds before paying.
3. Your automation tool might automate something nobody needs — I built what I needed. Others solved it differently years ago.
4. Distribution is the product, not the product — I had working products for 10 days before a single visitor.
5. You need a payment rail BEFORE traffic — I had 57 Payhip visitors before realizing the payment processor wasn't connected.
6. Show HN shadowbans fast — All 10 submissions flagged within 2 days.
I wrote this up as a data-driven guide at https://lukassbrad.gumroad.com/l/cjbjb ($5, 8 lessons, real numbers).
What are you building? Happy to compare notes.
Update, day 17: I packaged the full failure audit into a short guide at gumroad.com/l/cjbjb (€5) with the specifics — the 10-day paywall bug that silently broke checkout, the Payhip session that had 57 views with no payment processor connected, and why targeting "developers" with Python tools is a distribution trap.
The uncomfortable lesson: most "zero sales" problems are structural (wrong audience, broken checkout) not tactical (wrong button color, wrong price). No amount of marketing fixes those.