Day 3 of marketing with zero audience. Here's what's actually working (and what isn't).
I launched Fenly - a Chrome extension for AI-powered translation that works inline on any website - and now I'm in the part nobody prepares you for: getting anyone to notice.
No email list. No Twitter following. No budget for ads.
Here's what I'm doing and what I'm seeing after 3 days:
What's working:
- Reddit comments in r/languagelearning and r/digitalnomad genuine answers to real questions, no pitching. Profile clicks are real.
- LinkedIn "build in public" posts - small engagement but consistent.
- Indie Hackers comments - best conversations, slowest growth.
What's not working:
- Any comment where I pitch the product directly. Instant ignore or downvote.
- Posting in broad subreddits without established karma. Got blocked.
- Expecting results in days. This is clearly a weeks/months game.
Honest numbers:
- CWS installs: still single digits
- Daily time spent on marketing: ~2 hours
- Comments written per day: 10-15 across platforms
The uncomfortable truth: building the product took mass effort, but distribution is harder. At least with code, you get error messages. With marketing, you just get silence.
Anyone else grinding through this phase? What moved the needle for you?
Trending on Indie Hackers
This is encouraging because it shows that starting with no audience doesn’t mean starting with no options.
I’m learning that early marketing is really about finding where people are already talking about the problem you solve and joining those conversations in a useful way.
I'm almost at the same stage as you
Landing page online, zero visits, social media accounts created, contributing to the community, slowly gaining reputation without directly selling my product
At least taking time to read posts on IndieHackers before trying anything is giving me valuable knowledge, thanks for sharing your experience!
You're actually doing the right things.
The part that’s hard to see early on is that distribution isn’t just about getting attention, it’s about what happens right after.
A lot of products get a few clicks, maybe even installs, but the real drop happens silently after the first use.
Everything feels like it “worked” from the outside, but the user doesn’t come back.
That’s usually not a traffic problem, it’s a feedback problem.
If you don’t know what someone experiences in the first few minutes, it’s really hard to improve retention.
From what you’re describing, you’re already past the “visibility” phase and into the “what actually happens after” phase.
That’s where most of the real work is.