I just posted on Hacker News and got 2 upvotes. Here's what I'm building anyway.
Posted my Show HN this morning. 2 upvotes. One of them was mine.
That's fine. Here's what Affilr is and why I'm still going.
The problem I solved for myself
Last year I was building a niche site and needed to join 30 affiliate programs. Every single one required me to Google "[product] affiliate program", dig through footers, follow redirects, and half the time I'd end up on a dead link or a program that closed months ago. Two days wasted on research that should take minutes.
So I built Affilr. You give it any product name and it finds the exact current affiliate signup URL automatically. It also flags programs that are closed or paused before you waste time applying.
Where things stand after 4 weeks
Launched on Product Hunt — peaked at 35 visitors in a day
Published 10 SEO blog posts targeting "how to join [product] affiliate program"
Submitted to 5 directories today
Fixed a silent reCAPTCHA bug that was blocking most signups
Real daily visitors: about 5–10 humans (Cloudflare shows 200 but that's bots)
Paying customers: 0
What's working
The blog posts are indexed and starting to get impressions in Search Console. The product actually works — when people use it, it finds the right pages. The landing page converts reasonably well when traffic is warm.
What's not working
Cold traffic doesn't convert. HN apparently doesn't care. Getting real humans to the site is harder than building the product.
What I'm doing next
Staying consistent. One blog post per week. One new directory per day. Building the affiliate program so users can refer others. Reaching out personally to bloggers who write about affiliate marketing.
If you're a blogger or niche site builder who manually hunts for affiliate programs, I'd genuinely love to give you free access in exchange for honest feedback.
→ affilr.com — 10 free searches, no credit card
Happy to answer questions about the build or the marketing grind.
