got my first revenue but no distribution

The pain of doing a launch early is that you get false hope.

I did a Product Hunt launch as soon as my MVP was ready and got a bit more than 1,000 unique visitors quickly and a few paying users (7 to be exact, 5 were lifetime deals).

Why an early launch is good and bad...

First, the good: you confront your idea, your product, with real people that you don't know (not your friends, family, or colleagues), so you get a clear signal from the market. Better than staying in your garage for 6 months building something no one wants.

In my case, I would say it was good enough since some people paid. I don't know them, I didn't force them, so it must mean that my product provides some value! It’s a great feeling and a good confirmation that it’s worth investing more time and effort.

Another good point is motivation. It can feel very hard to stay motivated as a solopreneur if you build something for 100s of hours and say to yourself:
“Is it worth my time?”
“What am I doing? Should I get a job?”

Exposing yourself out there in the internet market gives real feedback and helps you build confidence that you are at least on the right track.

Ok, now let’s talk about the ugly, the really bad!

An early launch usually means it won’t go super viral since you didn’t prepare so well—like gathering 200 people to upvote your launch in the previous weeks. Your product isn’t great yet, so it’s hard to compete. So choose your day wisely to avoid big competition—maybe on a weekend?

But my main realization and failure is the following:

Having a launch is just one day, one point in time. It does not bring users on a daily basis; it is basically a short-term approach. So you can have a short-term win, but don’t expect to suddenly keep getting traffic. It does not work that way.

YOU NEED a marketing strategy and distribution.

Most people start with cold DMs or cold emails. In my case, I hesitated but decided not to do it since:

• I have no experience in it

• I didn’t see an obvious and fairly easy way to get email/DM contacts from YouTubers at a big enough scale

• I didn’t really feel like I would enjoy it

My product, AIThumbnail.so, is an AI design tool, so it’s very visual. Doing short-form content on YouTube, TikTok, and Reels seemed like a good idea.

So I just started it. Let’s see how it goes, but I need to bring in organic traffic and also play the long-term SEO game.

Startup is only a numbers game!