Building my first digital products and realizing distribution is harder than building
I recently started building my first small digital products while learning how to actually distribute them.
So far I’ve realized something simple but important:
Building is the easy part.
Getting people to actually see, trust, and use what you built is a completely different challenge.
Right now I’m experimenting with different ways of distribution (Reddit, Indie Hackers, organic posting, etc.) and trying to understand what actually brings attention vs what just feels productive.
Still early in the journey, but the biggest lesson so far is that ideas don’t matter much without distribution.
Curious how other indie founders handled their first attempts at getting users — what actually worked for you in the beginning?
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The honest answer that nobody likes: in the beginning, what worked was talking to ~20 specific people one-on-one, not posting to channels.
Reddit and IH and organic posting feel productive because you can measure them (upvotes, views, comments). But early on, the goal isn't reach — it's learning whether anyone cares enough to pay. Ten DMs to people who match your ICP will teach you more in a week than three months of posting.
The shift in mindset that helped me: stop thinking "how do I get users" and start thinking "who are the 10 people whose problem this solves, and how do I get in front of those specific humans." Channels come later, once you know what message actually lands.
What are you building? Easier to give specific advice with context.
That makes a lot of sense, especially the part about channels feeling productive because they’re measurable.
I think I’ve been stuck a bit in that “public building” mindset because it feels like progress, but I can see how direct conversations would give much clearer signals early on.
I haven’t fully committed to a specific product yet — I’m still in the phase of experimenting with small digital products and trying to understand what direction actually has demand.
Based on your experience, how did you decide which people to reach out to first? Was it based on a niche you already believed in, or did you discover it through earlier experiments?
That perspective really changes how I think about early-stage products.
I’ve noticed it’s easy to hide behind “building in public” because metrics like views or upvotes feel validating, even when they don’t translate into real demand or conversations.
What you said about identifying 10 real people with a painful problem feels much more actionable — especially before trying to scale distribution.
I think one thing I’m still learning is how to separate “interesting ideas” from problems people are actively searching solutions for right now.
When you were talking to those first 20 people, were you mostly asking open-ended questions about their workflow/problems, or were you already showing early versions of the product to gauge reactions?
Trying to understand the balance between researching pain points vs validating actual solutions early.
That’s a really good question — I’m trying to figure out that balance too.
My intuition right now is that it probably starts with understanding the problem deeply first, because showing a solution too early might bias the conversation. People tend to be polite about products, but much more honest about their frustrations.
I like the idea of starting with open-ended conversations about their workflow and pain points, and only later showing a rough solution once patterns start repeating.
Did you ever run into situations where people said they had a problem, but then didn’t actually care enough to try a solution?