Hey, how do you distribute your products?

Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?

Interesting take. Would you still recommend this approach to someone starting today?

Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?

Curious how long it took before you saw the first real results?

try to post naturally on related subreddit of your niche. Don't rush else your account get banned faster. Reddit is still bigger goldmine for marketing your services.

Curious how long it took before you saw the first real results?

For me, distribution has become part of the product itself.

I’m experimenting with a SaaS where one of the main goals is to get discovered through AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI, etc.), so I’ve been thinking about distribution from the other direction:

Instead of only asking “how do I get people to see my product?”, ask “when someone is already looking for a solution like mine, does my product show up?”

So far, the channels I’m paying the most attention to are:

• Search / AI search
• Communities where the target users already discuss their problems
• Product-led content around specific use cases
• Integrations that put the product inside an existing workflow

I’ve tried paid acquisition and broad promotion before, and honestly, getting traffic is much easier than getting the right traffic.

Curious what channels have actually converted into paying users for you guys.

For early-stage SaaS, I’ve found that distribution works better when you go where the problem is already being discussed rather than trying to reach everyone. Reddit, niche communities, founder groups, and targeted cold outreach have been more useful for me than broad promotion.

The key is usually finding the right audience first, then testing a few channels consistently instead of spreading yourself across too many.

Still figuring this out with Padro. We help experts monetize what they know through an AI twin their audience can pay to use. Right now I’m reaching out to people who already sell courses or coaching. I’m posting here too, though that’s been more about getting feedback than finding customers.

Your lead idea would be useful to me if it could tell me why someone might care right now. Maybe they just launched a course or mentioned wanting another way to earn from their audience. I can find a list of coaches pretty easily. The timing is the hard bit.

I’m starting to think building the product was the easy part 😄
I launched recently and suddenly discovered my new full-time job: figuring out where the people who might actually want it are hiding.
I’m testing a few very different channels right now, and my biggest lesson so far is that traffic and actual users are two completely different species.
I’m becoming much more interested in small, concentrated communities than in “reach everyone” distribution. Fewer people, but the right people.
If your AI figures out where those people are hiding before I do, please send it my way. 😄

Regarding the AI lead generation: from working with agencies, the issue usually isn't defining a lead, it's identifying which prospects actually have intent to buy anything at all. A company can look like a perfect fit on paper, and you'd expect them to reply to outreach, but often they don't. What signal would your AI use to tell intent apart from fit?

What has worked for me on distribution: test one channel at a time, with a number you have decided -> before you start, and tag every link with a UTM per channel. When I ran several at once I couldn't tell which one did anything.

Solo builder here, shipping tiny one-time-purchase web tools, and my distribution stack looks pretty different from the SaaS playbook in this thread. Three things that actually moved the needle for me:

1. Launch directories as a system, not a one-off. Product Hunt, BetaList, and the smaller launch calendars — I treat them as a repeatable pipeline and schedule every launch on PH a few weeks out so I can line up the assets (demo video, screenshots, the first comment). One launch won't do much; the fifth one compounds because you stop making rookie mistakes.

2. Marketplaces with built-in search intent. Gumroad and itch.io both have people actively browsing and searching — the tool sits next to a free demo, and the paid tier ($19 lifetime Pro) is one click away. That "try it now, pay once" loop works far better for me than any landing page could, because the demo IS the marketing.

3. Keep it tiny and self-serve so distribution is the product's job, not yours. No onboarding emails, no sales calls — if it needs an explanation video longer than 90 seconds, it doesn't ship.

The common thread: I don't do outreach at all. Everything is 'show, don't tell' — free interactive demo first, paywall second. It works because the tools are small enough that the demo is the whole pitch.

distribution is the hardest part of building

Nice progress. What is the next thing you are focusing on?

Holy cow, I opened my email today and it was nothing but comments—this post has gone viral.
Let me go through them one by one and see what everyone’s saying.

AI-driven distribution sounds promising. The key is using AI to identify genuine buying signals, not just generate more leads. Combining that with personalized outreach could make it much more effective than traditional mass marketing.

Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?

Nice work shipping it. What has been the biggest challenge since launch?

Nothing has worked for me except talking to people one at a time. I message people on LinkedIn myself, no script, no mass send, and have a proper conversation before I ever mention DOER. Slow but the ones who join stick. Every tool I tried to skip that step with got me nothing.

I'm trying multiple things. Most are built into a Claude plugin I made to find conversations on socials, leads and posting opportunities. I also built tools for video gen and meme making just to help produce more content, and next step is to repurpose that content by finding multiple places to post. I plan to post an update on IH if any of my efforts are effective.

one thing i have realised sometimes its all about how cool your product is like days back i shipped mybox: message yourself ios app built it in 2 days like very stupid app and i just did one post on reddit and its well unique and cool yet simple idea people liked it got around 100 upvotes 1200 users & $1.2k+ added in my bank account and reddit account got banned lol all within the same day and before it i never got even 100 downloads or $10 on my first launch. I realised sometimes its about idea and how cool product is if its user facing and if not if its b2b then you gotta grind hard the manul door to door knocking and the other case is simply look for people already using your competitive business reach out to them with better offer

A useful contrast from this week: a small batch of personalized cold emails produced no replies, while one public community thread produced a detailed critique that changed the product. The difference was that the thread asked people to challenge a concrete output, not to evaluate a pitch.

I’m now separating distribution into two loops: direct outreach for buyer conversations, and public problem posts for product learning. I track replies and completed actions per source rather than views. For your AI lead idea, I would test whether it can attach one checkable, recent reason to contact each lead. Fit alone still leaves the recipient asking, ‘why are you writing to me today?’

Interested

Distribution is the part most technical founders underinvest in until it's too late. In my experience, the honest breakdown is: channel one almost always comes from direct relationships (someone you know, or someone who knows someone, who has the problem and says yes). Channel two usually comes from content you wrote that's specific enough to rank or be shared. Channel three tends to be community — IH posts like this one, actually.

The AI lead distribution angle is interesting but I'd be cautious about leading with it as a channel before you have product-channel fit. The way I've seen it go wrong: AI identifies the right company but the wrong person, outreach goes to someone with no budget authority, and you burn the introduction. Especially in B2B, the relationship layer still matters. AI gets you to the door faster; you still have to knock.

What's your actual conversion rate looking like from the strategies you've tried so far? That'll tell you which one to double down on before layering in AI targeting.

for B2B we stopped chasing "channels" and ran one outbound motion hard for 4 weeks: tiny ICP, one real signal in line one, then email + LinkedIn on the same account.

distribution only compounds after you know why people say no. until then more channels just multiply confusion.

I have seen a lot of products listed recently who promise some form of this idea. Like with everything else, they are just lots of nice promises until you actually prove them. Ask around and see if anyone you know has actually used one of them as a real customer. Did it work for them? What were the drawbacks?

Timely thread — I'm mid-way through exactly this problem. Packaged a real client project (membership/booking web app) into a generic template and put it on Gumroad. First move was posting into dev-heavy spaces (r/webdev, X, here on IH) — got some likes/engagement, but zero real traffic to the actual listing.

Lesson so far: dev communities will engage with the "how it's built" story, but they're not the buyer — the actual buyer for a productized template like this is a non-technical small-business owner (gym/league/studio manager), who isn't reading r/webdev or IH.

Now trying to find where that audience actually is — FB groups for studio/club owners, Product Hunt, etc. Curious if anyone here who's sold B2B-small-business tools (not to other devs) found a discovery channel that actually worked for reaching a non-technical buyer.

Demo + listing if useful context: https://claude.ai/artifact/1NzvyGFAKa1tC14pVUYeNd · https://arielshimmer6.gumroad.com/l/jtiei

I'm just starting with my first small app: it helps people document the condition of a rented flat or car with photos and signatures. I don't know anyone who rents, so I'm trying to reach tenants through tenant unions and forums where people already ask about deposit or fuel disputes, and I answer their questions first before mentioning anything. Too early to say if it works, but replying to real problems is the only thing that hasn't felt like spam. Curious: what got you your first 10 users when you had no audience?

What we've leaned on is posting the specific problem in communities where people already talk about it, then replying to what comes back. It gets you in front of people who already care, which a broad list can't do.

Small bets have worked better for me than one big channel: launch directories for search intent, 1-2 helpful founder communities, then a simple challenge or interactive hook people can share. I’m testing that with a free builder benchmark game for SaaS founders, where the top five get their SaaS link on the leaderboard: https://www.buildersbenchmark.com/

One pattern I've seen hold up across products: write about the problem, not the product. Problem-focused content ranks and gets shared; product announcements get ignored everywhere except launch communities. The channel honestly matters less than whether a stranger would find the content useful with the product stripped out.

For small products, I’d use a tight loop: (1) pick one buyer/job, (2) choose one channel where that buyer already asks questions, (3) publish 3–5 useful answers before linking anything, (4) track qualified conversations and conversions—not impressions, and (5) repeat the message that earns replies. A tiny checklist and a clear next step usually outperform a broad “AI-powered” pitch.

I’m testing this with a small, value-first sprint: $7 for a Close Kit, $12 for a discovery scorecard or keep kit, and $27 for all three. Happy to share if useful; no pressure.

Honestly still figuring this out myself. Tried Facebook groups first —
most posts got auto-removed before anyone saw them. Reddit needs
account karma before it'll even let you post. Direct outreach (DMs,
emails to people who'd actually use the thing) has been the only
channel that doesn't have some kind of gatekeeping built in, so that's
where I've been putting most of my time lately. Curious if others
found something that worked faster.

For a B2B WordPress plugin (I build TurnKey Directories - it lets someone launch a business directory site), what's working at the pre-revenue stage is boringly manual. I picked the handful of communities where my exact buyers already talk - WordPress, local SEO, people trying to launch directories - and show up daily with actual help, not promos: public replies first, never cold DMs. The second leg is qualification over volume. I hand-pick maybe five real prospects a day and offer founder-assisted onboarding instead of a checkout link. A hundred targeted touches beat a thousand impressions at this stage because you learn why each no happens. On the AI-lead-distribution idea: identification is the easy half, the message that lands is the hard half - same trap as flyers. What's your plan for the outreach part once the AI hands you the list?

Distribution that scaled for me was never a channel I built, it was one I borrowed. Henson Group grew for almost two decades on Microsoft's field sellers, because they already had the meetings and we only had to be the partner they trusted to hand the work to. Before you build AI lead gen, ask who is already selling to your exact buyer, then figure out what you can do for them that makes introducing you worth their time.

A scoreboard from the other side of this question: solo founder, a few weeks in, small EU-accessibility scanner. X suspended my account three times and Reddit auto-removed comments from a new account, so both were dead ends before I had a single conversation. About 150 cold emails so far have produced one human reply and no payment. Search is the slow bet: five articles built from data I collected while scanning, too early to say anything.

The trust-borrowing framing in this thread matches what I saw. The one thing that got a reply was giving the recipient something checkable without asking them to trust me first. That's what I'd want an AI lead tool to prove: not "here is your list," but "here is a checkable reason this person should care." Has anyone here seen that work at scale?

What worked for me over twenty years was not finding customers, it was finding whoever already had them. At Henson Group we grew on the back of Microsoft's field sellers, because one partner who already owned the relationship beat any volume of cold outreach we could run ourselves. Before you build AI lead distribution, work out who already sells to your buyer every week and what you can hand them so they bring you along.

Your flyer metaphor is the sharpest part of your post, and I'd take it one step further. A flyer works on a busy street because the street already has the traffic, and the human vendor picked the street — the targeting was done before the flyer was printed. Most distribution failures I see are the reverse: founders build the flyer (product, landing page, outreach list) and then pick a random street.

A framework that helps me rank candidate channels: score them by how much trust they come with pre-loaded. Cold outreach borrows zero trust — you pay for every reply with effort. Communities borrow a little, via your comment history. Search borrows Google's. Referrals borrow someone else's reputation. The "AI finds the customer" idea only solves discovery; it doesn't add any trust to the channel, which is why scaled outreach still converts at ~1%. The lever isn't a better list, it's a channel where the trust is already there.

Concretely, once you pass praneetbrar's "one ugly sentence" test — who it's for, in one line — ask where those exact people already admit the problem out loud: search queries, subreddits, Slack or Discord communities, comparison threads. Pick exactly one street, and commit to 90 days of showing up there before touching another channel. Almost every indie distribution story that works is "I became a regular somewhere for three months," not "I tested twelve channels." The AI can help you find the street. It can't hand out the flyers in a way people trust.

Seen this problem now with many founders. Distribution is honestly where a lot of them seem to get stuck after building the product.

I think the first question is less “what channel should I use?” and more of 'where are the people who already have this problem looking for answers?' That could be search, Reddit, communities, comparison sites, reviews, etc. Once you know that, you can work backwards and figure out what would actually get the product in front of them. AI can help with the research, but I don't think it replaces the actual understanding of the customer.

I’ve had better luck treating distribution as a set of small experiments rather than one AI-powered list. For each channel I log who I contacted, the problem they mentioned, and whether a real conversation happened. One reply with a specific pain is more useful than a large batch of prospects. I’d keep the first outreach manual and narrow enough that a recipient can tell why they were selected. How are you thinking about consent and relevance when using public data?

The gap in the AI distribution idea is that public information tells you fit and almost never tells you timing, and outreach is mostly a timing problem. A company can be a perfect match for two years and only be buying in one particular week. What does carry timing is change rather than state: somebody just posted a complaint about the tool you would replace, a job ad appeared for the role that owns this, a pricing page moved. If the AI watched for what changed this week instead of scoring companies on how well they fit, you would get a much shorter list with a reason to write today attached to each name.

Honestly the flyer picture is the useful bit. The AI part is just a faster way to pick the wrong street. What actually worked for me was one place I could sit in the same week and answer, not a pile of potential clients. If I cannot say who it is for in one ugly sentence, more targeting just burns the morning faster. Are you stuck distributing the old SaaS, or is this lead thing already the product?

Distribution is the moat. We spent €150 on Google Ads and got 0 installs. Pivot to organic: reply to growing conversations on Threads, build in public, cold DMs. Personal > paid every time.