Envato did my marketing for 12 years. Now I’m lost. Where do I start?

For 12 years I sold a QR code generator script on CodeCanyon.

1,800 sales, 5-star rating — almost entirely on autopilot. Envato did the distribution, I just shipped updates.

This year I decided to own my audience. I launched a hosted SaaS and a WordPress plugin for agencies who want to resell QR codes under their own brand.

Result: 3 paying customers, all from my existing newsletter. Zero from cold traffic.

The uncomfortable truth: I’ve never actually done customer acquisition. Envato did it for me for a decade, and I didn’t notice until now.

Has anyone made this jump — from marketplace dependency to owning your own traffic?

What actually moved the needle?