I built 16 free tools for creators in a weekend — 2 days live, here's the honest traffic (and where I'm stuck)

Two days ago I launched Toolworks (toolworks.studio) — free, no-signup browser tools for YouTubers and Etsy sellers. Thumbnail downloader, title analyzer, POD profit calculator, tag generator — 16 tools + a handful of guides. Built fast by pairing with an AI coding agent, scratching my own itches (I run a small YouTube channel and an Etsy/print-on-demand shop).

Going to be radically honest because that's what I'd want to read:

The numbers (2 days in):

- Search Console: ~1 impression, 0 clicks (brand-new domain — expected)

- ~30 "visitors" in 7 days, but realistically ~10–15 actual humans — the rest is bots/crawlers and me

- ~65% bounce, most only hit the homepage

- $0 revenue (monetized by clearly-disclosed affiliate links, once there's traffic)

So the product side is basically done and I'm genuinely proud of it. The hard part is exactly the part everyone warns you about: nobody's here yet.

Distribution so far:

- Submitted to SaaSHub, Uneed, PeerPush, Microlaunch, Fazier, TinyLaunch, Awesome Indie

- Linked it from my own YouTube channel

- IndexNow, sitemaps, GSC verified — all the SEO hygiene

Where I'm stuck:

- SEO is a 1–3 month wait on a new domain. I know. But an affiliate model basically needs organic search to work at scale.

- Reddit (r/NewTubers, r/EtsySellers) auto-filters my low-karma account, so that's blocked for now.

- I think the real unlock is getting in front of creators directly — without being spammy about it.

My question for you all: for a free-tools site that lives or dies on organic discovery, what actually moved the needle early, before SEO kicked in? Communities, embeds/backlinks, something I'm not seeing?

(Happy to share build details too — the AI-agent setup ships a new tool basically every morning on autopilot, which has been wild to watch.)