I posted to 15 communities and can't tell you which one worked

I built TransferIQ (transferiq.org) — a comparison tool for cross-border transfers that shows remittance, FX, and crypto routes against the same mid-market benchmark. Web + Android app, 6 languages.

I shipped it, then spent the last few weeks doing distribution. Posted to ~15 maker and dev communities, wrote blog posts across 6 languages, launched on Product Hunt and Disquiet.

Here's the honest data from the last 28 days:

• 142 active users, 143 new, 8 returning

• 0 conversions (my key event is a referral click-through)

• Direct: 110 · Referral: 17 · Organic search: 6

• Avg engagement: 39s

• Search Console: 22 impressions, 3 clicks, avg position 2.5

  What's working:

  Referral traffic is small but real. solo.xin (a Chinese indie dev community) drove 21 sessions — the highest of any single source. SideProjectors, IndieHackers, and TabNews each brought a handful. These are the only channels I can actually attribute.

  Organic search users behave completely differently. 6 people, but they stay 1m05s versus 20s for everyone else, and their engagement rate is 0.67 versus 0.42. Tiny volume, but they're the only ones acting like they have a real problem to solve.

  CTA clicks are healthier than I expected. Out of 94 new users last week: 13 clicked to download the app, 11 clicked through to a provider quote. Roughly 12% outbound click rate. For a calculator tool where people get their answer in 20 seconds and leave, that's not terrible.

  What's not working:

  That 110 Direct number is my own fault. I dropped bare links in blog posts and community comments without UTM tags, so everything collapses into one bucket. I have no idea which of those ~15 channels actually did anything. Fixing that this week.

  Retention is 8 out of 143. Nobody comes back. Probably correct for a tool you use once when you need to send money — but I don't know that yet, and I can't distinguish "correct" from "broken."

  What I'm doing next:

  1. UTM everything. I can't optimize channels I can't see.

  2. Lean into search intent instead of promotion. The people who found me by searching are worth 3x the people I sent. Writing corridor-specific comparisons with real numbers instead of "here's my product" posts.

  3. Figure out whether app installs signal higher intent. Installing an app is high friction — my guess is those users are the ones actually sending money, not just browsing. Waiting on Play Console data to confirm.

  It's a month in. The numbers are small. But something is moving, and I'd rather understand 142 users properly than chase 10,000 I can't explain.

  Happy to share more of the raw data if useful.