My analytics said 0 visits. My server logs found 8.

Two weeks ago I posted my baseline: 164 Google impressions a month, 6 clicks, $0 revenue.

I spent the next two weeks submitting Monty to 15 startup directories. PostHog showed zero referral visits across 90 days. I was ready to call the whole exercise useless.

Then I checked the raw server log. It caught eight visits in its recent window: three from StackShare, three from Product Hunt, and two from Indie Hackers. Cookie consent had hidden every one of them from PostHog.

Eight visits from 15 listings is not a growth channel. But zero and eight teach different lessons. My analytics dashboard was not the source of truth.

While I was watching the referral column, Google impressions moved from 164 to 384, and 37 people joined the waitlist in 28 days, 24 of them confirmed. Revenue is still $0. I cannot honestly attribute any of that movement to directories.

The best question under my last post was: are users getting value in their first session?

Honest answer: I do not know yet. I have a working video pipeline and a waitlist. I do not have activation data.

So the next experiment is smaller and less comfortable: personally onboard 10 target users. One phone clip goes in. A publishable vertical video comes out. I watch every step.

Success means they get a usable result in their first session without a founder explaining the product. My next update will report how many of the 10 reach that point, and where the rest get stuck.

Directories are done for now. Conversations next.