Solo dev here. nobody using my app. how do you actually do marketing?

I'm in the same boat — solo dev, part-time, launched my first product a few weeks ago. Got a handful of signups from Product Hunt and Reddit, then nothing.

The thing I've been wrestling with: I thought "build it and they'll come" was just a cliché people made fun of. Turns out it's actually the default assumption unless you actively fight it. I spent three months on the product and zero on figuring out where my users hang out.

What's helped me reframe things: stop thinking of marketing as a separate activity you bolt on after the product is done. It's part of the validation loop. Every time you talk to someone about your idea, that's marketing. Every Reddit thread you answer genuinely, that's marketing. The goal isn't traffic — it's finding the first five people who care enough to give you honest feedback.

One thing that actually worked for me: I stopped posting "check out my app" and started posting about the problem I'm solving. Like, "I wasted months building something nobody wanted — here's what I learned about idea validation." Got way more engagement than any product pitch.

If you're at zero users, I'd try: pick ONE niche community (not HN, not Reddit general — something specific where your target users actually hang out), contribute there for 2-3 weeks without mentioning your product, then when someone asks a question your tool could help with, mention it casually. Not as a pitch, just as a "I built this because I had the same problem."

The hardest part is accepting that you're now doing two jobs: builder and storyteller. Neither one works without the other.

Hang in there. The fact that you're asking this question means you're past the "build it and pray" phase. That's step one.

Your first 100 is a complete graft, there's no clean channel for it. It's you digging through niche Reddit forums and Discords where supplement and gym people already hang out, getting into real conversations, not dropping your app link.

Slow and manual, and everyone who claims they had a magic channel at zero users is misremembering.

Are you your own first user (do you take supplements) - if so, where do you hang out online? thats where you should be posting.

Further down the line, when you've got a bit of a base and want them pulling in mates, happy to talk through referral mechanics. That's actually my world, I run an affiliate tracking for subscription apps, but this works best when you've worked out where your users hang out which seems to be the place you're stuck!

at zero users the honest answer to which channel is none of them yet. channels amplify a message that already converts, and you dont have that message yet, so a post on hn or reddit has nothing to amplify. the first 100 users come from doing the unscalable thing. go where people already track supplements, the subreddits and gym discords, and dm individuals. dont pitch the app, just ask how they track now and what annoys them. get 10 using it by hand and watch where they quit. that tells you the one sentence that makes someone want this, and only then does a channel do anything. five channels with one post each is exactly how you got karma and zero downloads.

You don't have a marketing problem. You have a positioning and friction problem.

Look at the name and the premise: "Supplement Crash." Taking supplements is fundamentally associated with health, optimization, and routine. Calling it a "Crash" subconsciously triggers a negative bias. More importantly, a general supplement tracker is a vitamin, not a painkiller. Tracking a daily multivitamin is an chore, not a burning problem which is why people aren't rushing to download it.

To get your first 100 users with zero budget in 2026, stop trying to blast generic links across the internet. You need to narrow your vector immediately.

Simple... Read the following: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/tech/from-zero-to-10k-mo-app-portfolio-in-a-year-71h2PPGYn1VnPOkj9qi6

Solo dev, 8 small apps here, and the ones that died all died the same way: shipped first, then went hunting for the channel that would save them. For a tracker the part nobody warns you about is retention. People download a supplement tracker on a motivated Sunday and quit logging by Wednesday, because the logging itself is the friction. So before pouring weeks into new channels, check day-3 retention on the handful of users you already have. If they don't come back, more downloads just fill a leaky bucket faster, and no Reddit post fixes that. Then run the cheapest demand test there is: a one-screen page describing the app with an email field, dropped into r/Nootropics or a gym Discord. If people in the right room won't even leave an email for the promise, the issue isn't discoverability, it's that "tracking supplements" isn't a job they're hiring an app for. A flat zero on a landing page is more useful than a flat zero in the App Store, because it tells you which of the two you're actually dealing with.

Your marketing question is downstream of structural problems.

Supplement tracker is one of the most saturated iOS categories. SuppCo (160K database, AI scanning), Supplify, Vitamin Tracker, SuppTrack (189K products), Prove It, CareClinic, plus 20+ smaller ones — all free, all with product databases bigger than a solo dev can build. Marketing doesn't fix category saturation.

Name is fighting you. "Supplement Crash" reads as a bug-tracking app. Someone searching "supplement tracker" passes 50 apps before getting to yours.

Channels were wrong shape. HN/PH/IH/Reddit are founder communities. iOS consumer apps grow through ASO, reviews, influencer/creator promotion (TikTok health, YouTube biohacker), Apple Search Ads, niche subreddits.

Solo devs that survive iOS consumer space niche down brutally ("for bodybuilders," "for nootropic stacks") or find a wedge feature nobody has.

You don't have a marketing problem. You have a "generic supplement tracker named Crash competing with 30 funded apps" problem.

Answer narrowly where the pain already lives, don't broadcast. So the move isn't "do marketing," it's pick one subreddit or one search term where people describe your exact problem, and spend a week replying with real help and no link.

The app comes up naturally when someone asks. What's the exact phrase your user would type when they're frustrated?

From my experience you can not find the answer you want enywhere its just like that. You have some real option.

1. Cold email every day on repeat
2. Wait for SEO and hope
3. Be lucky and somehow go viral at some point

First 10 paid you must contact directly thats it. Also importnat part, when someone open your app in first 5 sec do they know what that app do and what is use of it, not from your perspective?

A common mistake is treating marketing as something that starts after the product is built.

When nobody is using an app yet, the fastest path is often talking directly to potential users, understanding their problems, and sharing the journey publicly. Marketing becomes much easier when people feel involved in what you're building.

Don't focus on reaching thousands of people right now. Focus on finding the first few users who genuinely have the problem you're solving and learn from them.

The trap with 'how do I do marketing' is that it's too broad to act on. Pick ONE place where people with your specific problem already complain about it — a subreddit, a Discord, a niche Slack — and spend two weeks just being useful there, no link-dropping. Early distribution isn't broadcasting, it's showing up inside the problem while someone has it. What does your app do, and who's the one person it's perfect for? Happy to help you pin that down — figuring out where early users actually hang out is exactly what I'm deep in right now.

you posted in maker spaces (HN, PH, IH) but the people who track supplements arent there. they're in r/Supplements, biohacker discords, that kind of place. makers dont download supplement apps, supplement nerds do lol. what worked for me was going where the obsessives already hang out and being useful before mentioning the app. where do your actual users spend time?

I don't think your channels were wrong so much as the targeting was. HN, PH and IH are full of builders, not people tracking supplements. You got upvotes because builders reward effort, not because your actual users were in the room.

For a supplement tracker, I'd go where people already complain about the exact problem: specific subreddits, Discords, Facebook groups around supplements, biohacking, or particular health conditions. Not to drop a link, but to read how they describe the mess they live with now.

One narrow channel beats five broad ones at this stage. Find the place where people already track this badly with notes or a spreadsheet, and just be useful there. The first 100 users usually come from one community, not from being everywhere.

For an app like supplement tracking, broad posts probably won’t do much because most people are not actively looking for another app. I’d go narrower. Search for people already talking about problems like forgetting doses, stacking too many supplements, side effects, tracking what works, or managing routines. Then reply with something useful first, not here’s my app.

First 100 users can take longer than you expect, but the goal is not just downloads. It is finding 10 people who care enough to give feedback.

the answer kinda depends on whether anyone's even using it who isn't you. like before marketing, do you have even 3 people who open it daily? if not, thats what id fix before worrying about any channel. supplement people definitely arent on PH or HN btw, those are all makers looking at other makers. r/Supplements, the biohacker discords, people who care about dosage timing. id just lurk there for a while. marketing blogs are gonna keep contradicting each other forever so i wouldnt put much weight on them

One tactic that works disproportionately well for iOS supplement-tracking specifically: go answer 20 questions on r/Nootropics and r/Supplements with your honest take on whatever they're asking, and have Supplement Crash in your profile, not in the comments. The conversion rate from "this person actually knew the answer" to "I'll try their app" is wildly higher than from any post that mentions the app directly. Three to four answers a day for two weeks before you call it.

It is like it is for a solo dev , especially in 2026 unless your promo video becomes viral overnight. You could try UGC marketing - an AI talking head promoting your supplement, then post the video on Tik Tok

Solo dev marketing is brutal, especially when you’ve already shipped and still feel invisible.

One angle worth testing early is localization as a growth experiment, not a “later” step. Even lightweight translation of your store page or onboarding flow can open up unexpected pockets of users outside English.

You could try Tomedes Free AI tools for quick localization tests, just enough to spin up a few language versions and see if any region responds before investing more time or money. It’s a low-risk way to validate demand beyond your current audience.

Not a silver bullet, but it’s one of those small leverage moves that’s easy to overlook when you’re stuck in “get first 100 users” mode.

What actually worked for me in 2026:

1. ONE channel first — don't spread thin. Pick the
   place where your exact user hangs out and go deep there.

2. For a supplement tracking app — Reddit is gold.
   Specifically r/Supplements, r/nutrition, r/biohacking.
   Don't post ads — answer questions genuinely for 2-3
   weeks first, then mention your app naturally.

3. Cold outreach isn't weird if it's personal. Find
   10 fitness influencers on Instagram with 5k-50k
   followers (micro), send a personal DM offering free
   access. Small influencers actually respond.

4. The first 100 users don't come from marketing —
   they come from direct conversations. Post in communities,
   talk to people, ask them to try it.

Timeline: expect 2-3 months before seeing real traction.
Most devs quit at week 3.

Good luck — the fact that you shipped 3 times already
puts you ahead of 90% of people here.

Channels amplify a promise. If the promise is "track your supplements," every channel hits the same wall, because that promise already exists 30 times in the App Store. The wall is not Reddit vs ASO. It is that the message has no one to refuse.

A test that costs nothing: write the single sentence on your screenshot that would make a specific person, say someone stacking five nootropics, feel called out. If you cannot, the marketing question is premature. If you can, post that exact sentence in three places this week and watch which one a stranger quotes back at you. That sentence becomes your ASO subtitle, your Reddit reply hook, your hero line. One sentence first, then channels.

A lot of businesses struggle with this. We've seen something similar in the dental industry as well. Most clinics focus heavily on services but not enough on where their patients actually spend time online. Consistent engagement in niche communities and answering real questions usually works better than posting promotional links everywhere.

Solo fintech dev here, went through the same wall.

What shifted things for me: stop posting where builders hang out (IH, HN, PH) and go where your user's problem is actually being discussed. For a supplement app that's probably r/Supplements, bodybuilding forums, r/nutrition. Not to drop a link - just to be genuinely useful in threads where people are already trying to solve the problem your app solves. If someone asks "how do I track what supplements I'm taking" and your app answers that, mention it in one sentence at the end of a real answer.

The first 10-20 users almost always come from conversations, not broadcasts. You're looking for threads, not audiences.

One channel to start, not five. The signal is cleaner and you'll actually learn something. HN/PH work but they reward novelty - "supplement tracker" reads as a solved category. You'd need a specific angle that makes it feel new.

Timeline honest answer: 6-12 weeks to get to 10 users who actually open the app more than once. First 100 took closer to 6 months, and roughly half came from one community thread that landed at the right moment.

Channels amplify a promise. If the promise is "track your supplements," every channel hits the same wall, because that promise already exists 30 times in the App Store. The wall is not Reddit vs ASO. It is that the message has no one to refuse.

A test that costs nothing: write the single sentence on your screenshot that would make a specific person, say someone stacking five nootropics, feel called out. If you cannot, the marketing question is premature. If you can, post that exact sentence in three places this week and watch which one a stranger quotes back at you. That sentence becomes your ASO subtitle, your Reddit reply hook, your hero line. One sentence first, then channels.

the forum stuff didnt work bc those arent your users. HN/PH/IH are mostly other makers, and r/Supplements people arent looking to download an app, theyre there to argue about creatine. you got upvotes bc the post was relatable not bc anyone wanted a tracker

your people are on tiktok/reels. the supplement + biohacking + fitness crowd is massive over there. id just go all in on one of those instead of doing 5 things half-assed
main thing tho — you have no budget but you have yourself, and thats actually your best asset rn. dont post app demos. post you talking about the problem. like "i take 9 supplements a day and kept losing track of what id taken" or "tracked every supplement for 30 days, heres what actually did anything." the app just shows up as the thing you use. nobody shares a feature demo, people share a person they relate to
and its a numbers game, most of your videos will flop. you just keep posting and eventually one pops and does more than all your forum posts combined. first 100 users can literally come from one video
costs nothing but reps

I'm still figuring this out myself, but one thing I've noticed is that people often spend months building before spending a week talking to potential users.

For my own SaaS, I've started focusing more on joining conversations where my target users already hang out instead of trying to broadcast everywhere at once.

Curious to hear from others: has anyone here gotten their first 100 users primarily through community engagement rather than SEO or paid ads?

I think most solo devs hit this wall honestly. Building feels predictable, marketing feels random.

What finally helped me was stopping the “launch everywhere” strategy. HN, PH, Reddit, IH etc are good for feedback, but rarely enough for consistent users by themselves.

The apps I’ve seen grow usually did one thing really well for months:
they kept showing up where their users already hang out.

For your app, I’d probably focus more on content than promotion. Short videos, small Reddit comments, real supplement scenarios, things people already search for naturally.

Also don’t underestimate time. A lot of indie products look completely invisible for the first few months. Then one post, one SEO page or one video suddenly starts compounding.

And honestly, getting even 10 real users early is already a good sign. Most people quit before that part.

You’re not failing at marketing
you’re just doing the “loud but low-conversion” channels first. Most indie apps in 2026 grow from repeatable niche distribution, not random launch posts.

What’s working now:

• short-form content showing the app solving 1 specific problem
• Reddit/TikTok/X build-in-public with consistency
• partnerships with small creators/newsletters
• ASO + referrals + waitlists
• communities where users already complain about the problem

Don’t do 10 channels at once. Pick 1 main channel + 1 backup and stay consistent for 30–60 days.

Also, 100 real users usually takes longer than people admit. For most bootstrapped indie devs it’s weeks or months, not days.

Your advantage is you already shipped. Most people never get past that stage.

I've been there. The 'build it and they will come' phase is brutal. I’ve found that instead of general marketing, identifying who feels the pain most acutely (e.g., in my case, Shopify Plus merchants struggling with theme speed) changes the conversation. If you can define the exact 'pain profile' of your user, the marketing copy almost writes itself. What’s the biggest 'job to be done' your app solves?

Not a solo dev myself but I've helped a few indie builders with this exact problem — hope this is useful.

The HN/PH/IH loop tends to give you developer attention, not user attention. The people who actually want a supplement tracker aren't on those platforms — they're on r/Supplements, r/nootropics, r/stackadvice, and fitness-adjacent communities. The trick with Reddit is to spend a few weeks genuinely helping people first, then mention the app only when it's directly relevant. Trust has to come before the pitch.

For the 'one channel vs many' question — one channel deep is almost always better early on. Pick the community closest to your actual user and go all in.

And the problem framing matters a lot. People search 'how do I know if my supplements are working' not 'supplement tracking app' — so any content or App Store copy written around the problem rather than the product will travel further.

What does retention look like for the users you do have? That often unlocks the clearest next step.

Maybe Twitter and TikTok are worth trying too? It feels like both are still some of the strongest channels for getting attention early, especially if you can post consistently and show the problem your app solves instead of just dropping a link.

I feel this hard. Been there with side projects where I spent months building and barely any time thinking about who actually needs it. For consumer apps like yours, I'd say focus on one channel and go deep rather than spreading thin. Maybe try finding fitness or supplement communities on Discord or Facebook where people actually talk about tracking their stuff. The key is being genuinely helpful first before pitching.

Congrats on surviving the Apple review gauntlet. It’s a brutal marathon, but you shipped.
Here is the truth: dropping links on HN or Product Hunt rarely works for consumer utilities. Those are platforms for tech enthusiasts, not your everyday supplement users.
Here is what works for zero-budget solo iOS devs right now:

Stop blindly posting. Use free tools like f5bot or Google Alerts to track keywords like "supplement tracker," "track my stack," or "app for vitamins" across Reddit (r/supplements, r/biohacking, r/fitness).

When someone complains about forgetting their pills or hating spreadsheets, jump in.
Don’t sell. Give advice, then add: "I actually built a lightweight iOS app called Supplement Crash to solve this for myself. Happy to send a promo code if you want to try it."

Focus on Reddit. It's where people with your exact problem hang out. Pick 3–4 subreddits, spend a few weeks being genuinely helpful in the comments, and build relationships. Don't scatter your energy across five different platforms.

been doing this 10 years. built blogs, saas, a crypto thing, multiple mobile apps. the pattern that took me way too long to see: i get traction when someone who's already inside a community does the sharing, not when i broadcast from outside.

concrete numbers from my own apps: 6 months of automated tiktok, pinterest, youtube shorts on a baby tracker = about 6 installs a day. my wife made ONE post in 3 french facebook mom groups she was already a member of = 163 installs that day, then ~100 dau sustained for two weeks. same app, same store listing, nothing else changed.

the lever wasn't the channel, it was who was talking. she had standing in those groups. i don't. an outsider posting "check out my app" reads as noise no matter how good the app is.

so for you i'd ask: where are supplement people already hanging out, and who in there could vouch for it instead of you? the supplements subreddit posted by you = karma, no installs (you found that already). same sub, mentioned by a regular answering someone's question = different result entirely.

not saying ignore seo and content — that stuff compounds, just slowly. but the fastest signal i've ever gotten came from borrowing someone else's trust, not building my own audience from zero.

Biggest unlock for me has been picking one community where my buyer already lives and showing up there for 90 days, not 9. For Supplement Crash that probably means living in r/Biohackers, r/Supplements, and a handful of TikTok routine accounts. The first 100 real users rarely come from broad blasts. They come from being the most useful person in one room. Also, before you spend another week on channels, write down the exact 1 sentence reason someone would download this app over the 50 other supplement trackers. If you cannot say it cleanly, no channel will fix it.

If nobody is using it yet, I would assume this is a positioning and distribution problem before a feature problem. Pick one narrow ICP, talk to 10 people who already feel that pain, and write down the exact words they use to describe it. Then test one manual channel that gets you direct feedback quickly, like founder outreach, niche communities, or short user interviews, instead of trying to 'do marketing' in the abstract. If you cannot get even a few conversations, that is usually the signal to tighten the problem statement before shipping more.

Honestly I’m starting to think marketing is less about “promoting” and more about finding conversations where people already feel the problem

I’ve been experimenting with Reddit/communities recently and noticed people engage way more when I talk about the actual frustration instead of the product itself

Reddit comments in niche subreddits + being active on PH before launch. Both take weeks to warm up. The mistake is treating launch day as the start — it's actually the deadline.

Thanks for sharing your experience

Thanks for sharing

Same boat here - building a personal finance app called Money Me (money-me.com). The web version is live and the Android version is stuck behind Google's closed testing gate right now.

What's actually moved the needle for me so far: going deep in specific communities rather than broadcasting broadly. A thread on XDA Forums got me more genuine interest than anything else, because the people there actually care about Android apps and will try things. A dev.to post about the technical journey (I built it as a TWA, which turned out to be more interesting than the app itself) got read by people who then tried the web version.

What hasn't worked: posting on general subreddits or big forums where "personal finance app" is lost in noise. Finance is a trust category - people don't click on random finance apps. They need context first, and that context has to come from a community where they already trust the source.

The thing I'd push back on slightly: I don't think the first step is picking a channel. It's figuring out which 200-500 people in the world are most likely to actually use your thing, finding where they already talk to each other, and being genuinely useful there first. Once you've got that, you have something real to say when you post anywhere else.

The biggest shift for me: stop thinking about "marketing channels" and start thinking about "where do my specific users already hang out right now."

Reddit worked for me, but not r/general subreddits — tiny, niche subreddits where your exact target user is already complaining about the exact problem you solve. A 2000-member subreddit of people who actively hate the problem you solve beats a 2M subreddit of tangentially interested people.

The approach that actually got traction:

1. Find 3-5 small subreddits where your target user lives
2. Spend 2 weeks just being helpful there — answer questions, no product mentions
3. Then post a "I built something to solve this" with genuine context

On one channel vs many: one channel until it's working. Spreading across 5 channels with 20% effort each = 0 results on all 5. Full effort on one until you understand why it works, then expand.

Time to first 100 real users: for a niche product, 3-6 months of consistent community work is realistic if you're targeting the right niche. The mistake is going too broad too early.

the r/Supplements post is actually the right instinct but one post isn't enough to know if the channel works. reddit requires you to be a genuine participant in the community first. spend two weeks just answering questions about supplements, no links, no product mentions. then when you post about the app people already recognize you as someone who knows the space. one cold post from a new account gets ignored regardless of how good the product is

Same position right now — just launched Helios (CRM/invoicing tool for freelancers) and figuring out the same thing.

What's actually working for me so far: being specific about the problem rather than the product. Instead of "try my app" I talk about paying £90/month across 5 tools that don't talk to each other. That framing gets way more engagement than feature descriptions.

Facebook groups have been more responsive than Reddit for direct outreach. And LinkedIn comments on relevant posts drive more profile visits than posts themselves.

Still at 0 users but learning fast. Following this thread closely.

Just went through this exact thing with my app LazyEats AI on Android. Building is the fun part, marketing is humbling lol.
What's actually working for me right now is Quora. Not spammy answers but genuinely answering questions about meal planning and food and mentioning the app naturally at the end. The trick is targeting questions about the problem your app solves, not questions about apps directly. Those questions have way more traffic.
On the one channel vs many question, I'd say start with one and get comfortable before adding more. Spreading too thin early means you do everything badly. Pick the channel where your target users already hang out and go deep there first.
For the 100 users timeline, still working on it honestly but the organic community approach feels more sustainable than any single launch spike. Product Hunt is next on my list.
Good luck with Supplement Crash, the Apple review process alone deserves a medal.

I completely relate to this—marketing as a solo dev feels like an entirely different skill set compared to building. I ran into the same wall with my own product, a Chrome extension for SEO data, where the challenge wasn’t the tool itself but figuring out how to get it in front of the right people.

What helped me early on was shifting focus from trying to drive downloads to having real conversations with potential users. Instead of posting about the product, I started replying to niche community questions where the problem my tool solved naturally came up. That felt less like promotion and more like problem-solving, and the engagement was way better.

Another thing that surprised me was how much clarity came from talking to just a handful of users who were deep in the niche. Their feedback helped me refine my messaging and even tweak features to better match their workflows. That made marketing feel less random.

Out of curiosity, have you been able to get feedback from people who are actively tracking supplements? If not, maybe start there—it might reshape your approach entirely.

I’m still in the development stage myself, so I can’t really share success stories yet. But one thing I’m already starting to understand is that the money usually comes from the “boring” parts - marketing, SEO, distribution, positioning, consistency. Not just building the app itself.
As a developer it’s easy to focus only on shipping features because that part is actually fun. But getting people to discover and trust your product seems to be a completely different skill set. And honestly, I think many indie devs underestimate that at first.
So right now I’m mentally preparing myself for that phase too. Building feels hard until you realize distribution might be even harder.
Also, I think your experience is more normal than people admit publicly. A lot of posts online make it sound like “launched on Product Hunt - got users instantly”, but in reality most products probably get almost no traction in the beginning.

The Reddit attempt stood out to me — one post in r/Supplements is usually not enough, and the format matters more than the frequency. The posts that actually convert in niche health subs aren't promotional at all; they're detailed personal logs or experiments where the app gets mentioned organically. Something like "I tracked my magnesium vs. sleep quality for 30 days, here's what the data showed" with a screenshot from Supplement Crash would perform way better than a direct promotion post. For one channel vs. many: definitely one channel first. The supplement/biohacking audience lives on Reddit across r/Nootropics, r/biohacking, and r/nutrition — spending 60 days genuinely contributing to those communities before mentioning your app builds trust that actually converts. Curious — does your app track correlations between supplements and outcomes, or is it more of a dosing/stack logger?

I am also facing the same challenge while launching Zenith Calendar. I think the answer really lies in doing things that don't scale and selecting users than making them come to us. If you do not have any potential users that you already know and you also do not have money for ads, cold outreach is the best option but you have to put consistent efforts to get users.
Although, i have 0 users and trying to get my first. These are my thoughts.

Same boat. Launched my app a few days ago and figuring this out in real time.

What's been most honest for me so far:

1. Reddit communities work IF the post survives the spam filter. r/SideProject is the safest. Other subs auto removed my post even though I followed the rules. Be ready to message mods to release it.

2. LinkedIn company page posts are basically dead on day one. Zero followers means zero algorithmic reach. Long term presence play, not a launch channel.

3. The /links page I added to my own site is becoming the most useful thing. Single URL to share in every bio, every comment, every DM.

4. Personal warm outreach (friends, family, ex coworkers in your target user category) drives real downloads. Cold outreach feels weird but reaching out to specific people in your target role with a personalized message converts way better than cold DMs.

5. Honestly though? I've only had a few days of real data so take this with salt.

I've been working under the assumption that consistent multi channel presence over weeks matters more than one big launch moment. Posting on Reddit, IH, LinkedIn, eventually TikTok and Instagram. Each one drives a small trickle, and over time they compound?

First 100 users is still ahead of me. Will tell you when I get there.

What's Supplement Crash's core differentiator vs. other tracking apps? Curious if you've nailed the positioning piece yet.

I'm dealing with the same challenge while launching SwiftSend. One thing I'm learning is that building features is often easier than finding distribution. I'm starting to spend more time getting feedback from founders and less time adding features. Curious to hear what channels have worked best for others here.

The gap between "builders upvoting on IH/HN" and "actual users downloading" is the most disorienting part of solo dev. You're not imagining it.

For supplement tracking specifically, r/nootropics and r/Supplements are the right rooms - but the move is replying to existing threads about tracking pain, not posting about your app. Find the thread where someone says "I can't remember what I took this morning" and actually help them, mentioning you built something for exactly that if it comes up naturally. One real conversation in the right room beats twenty upvotes on IH.

I'm going through a version of this with Money Me, a personal finance planner. The places that moved for me were niche community boards where the exact user already hangs out - not general dev spaces. XDA forums for Android apps, specific finance communities. None of the general launch platforms did much.

One channel you know cold before spreading to three you're guessing on.

I would separate channel validation from message validation.

HN, PH, and IH can tell you whether builders understand the product, but they may not tell you whether supplement users will actually download it. For first 100 users, I would pick one narrow behavior first: people who are already tracking stacks in notes, spreadsheets, or reminders and feel pain from that workflow.

Then search for exact phrases around that pain: stack tracking, what did I take today, supplement side effects, energy crash, reminders, routine consistency. Reply with useful context, not an app pitch. If the person engages, ask for a 10-minute look at their current workflow.

I would not judge a channel from one post. I would judge it after 20 useful replies and 5 real conversations. If no one will talk after that, the positioning is probably too broad or the room is wrong.

Same man, so tough out here. I think starting to spend money to make money leads to more conversions. Reaching out to UGC creators could be huge in starting to get some more exposure and your first users.

Same brother, dealing with the same thing for my Chrome Extension and no idea who to target. Its called TOSTask and is used for TOS Analysis.

J'ai le même problème ,
J'ai constater que en cryptomonnaie beaucoup de "faucet" distribue de ma crypto mais j'aime bien le POLYGON mais je ne trouvais pas de site , j'ai donc créer en me disant que sa allait forcément attirer du monde , 1 mois plus tard mon site Polfaucet . fr est au stade de départ sans membre actif je tourne en rond

Restaurant owner here — same problem. What actually worked for me: stop targeting 'everyone' and pick one painful niche. For me it was independent restaurant owners doing competitor research manually (3+ hrs/week). The moment I got specific, outreach started converting. Still early days but momentum is real.

Solo dev here with a personal finance app (Money Me - money-me.com). Same experience - the "just post everywhere" approach generated almost zero downloads.

What shifted things for me was getting really specific about where my actual users live, not just "developers". For a finance app that meant Reddit's personal finance communities, XDA forums for the Android angle, and niche budgeting spaces. Generic dev spaces like HN brought sympathy but not users.

The other thing that helped was being honest about what I actually needed rather than vague promotion. When I needed Android testers for closed beta, I said exactly that - posted on XDA explaining the situation and offering 6 months Premium in return. The directness of the ask converted much better than "check out my app" posts.

What niche is your supplement app targeting specifically? That probably determines the right first channel more than anything else.

I am asking the same question myself. Marketing is so very different here than my last business as a local small business and home user IT person.

I am in the same boat, but already I can see gold in these responses! It's refreshing to see others bumping up against the same challenges and getting actually helpful replies!

IH seems akin to the same thing I found so valuable about going to the Chamber of Commerce meetings and becoming a member of some. True and helpful B2B networking and exchange of ideas and experiences!

The hardest marketing lesson I learned: nobody cares about your product. They care about their problem.

I spent years in sales and BD before building my current product. That background changed how I think about distribution.

Three things that actually moved the needle:

1. Talk to 20 people before you write a single piece of content. Know their exact language, their exact frustration. Use their words, not yours.

2. Go where the problem is, not where the builders are. Reddit threads, niche forums, Facebook groups. Not Hacker News.

3. Your first 100 users should come from conversations, not campaigns. DMs, comments, emails. Manual and slow, but those users will tell you everything.

Most solo devs market their app. You need to market the outcome. "Your app" means nothing. "Save 3 hours a week on X" does.

What's the app? Happy to look at the positioning with you.

Reddit comments on niche subreddits + Product Hunt day-1 upvotes from builders you've engaged with before launch. Both take weeks to warm up. The mistake is treating launch day as the start — it's actually the deadline.

Same boat a few months back - solo dev, personal finance app (Money Me), no audience, no marketing budget.

What I found: IH posts and dev forums get views but rarely convert to users. The thing that actually moved the needle was finding places where target users already hang out and having real conversations there, not developer communities where everyone's pitching something.

On one channel vs many - tried spraying everything at once early on. It's exhausting and you can't tell what's working. Picking one or two and going deep worked better. For a supplement app I'd be in r/fitness, supplement-specific communities, anywhere people are already talking about the problem you solve.

First 100 users I can't speak to yet - still climbing. But every user I've got has come from a genuine back-and-forth, not from a cold post. Someone's already talking about the problem, you answer properly, and the app comes up naturally at the end. That's consistently beaten broadcasting.

Distribution is harder than building, I learned this the long way. The two things that worked for me, both unsexy: (1) cold email with the recipient's actual data in the subject line, not generic outreach, 60 percent+ opens, and (2) writing on Medium and LinkedIn as an analyst, not as a founder, because content that reads as research gets shared and content that reads as marketing does not. What does your app do?

Solo dev here too. The best signal I have seen is not “try every channel,” it is one channel with a tight pain search and 20 genuinely helpful replies before judging it. For an iOS supplement app, I would pick one wedge first: people already tracking stacks in notes/spreadsheets, then DM/comment with a tiny fix to their workflow instead of pitching the whole app.

Same situation 2 months ago. Solo dev, Windows utility, zero marketing plan.

What clicked for me: niche communities > broad channels. For a supplement tracker, I'd skip r/Supplements (too general) and go deep into specific stacks — r/nootropics, r/longevity, body-building Discord servers. People there track everything obsessively and will actually try a new tool.

SEO is slow but the intent is right — someone Googling "supplement tracking app" is already sold on the idea. HN Show HN gave me the best signal:noise ratio for technical feedback, not users.

One thing that genuinely surprised me: AlternativeTo. Listing there in the right category brings passive traffic for months. Worth the 10 minutes.

imo the mistake is treating “marketing” like a channel problem before its a conversation problem.

if nobody is using the app yet, i wouldnt start with ads, seo, or a big content plan. i’d try to get 20 real conversations with the exact person who should care. not “would you use this?” because people lie politely. more like “what are you using now, what annoys you, when did you last try to fix it, what did that cost you?”

then write down the phrases they use. that becomes your landing page, posts, cold emails, all of it.

for solo devs the fastest loop is usually:

1. pick one painfully specific user type
2. find where they already complain
3. reply with useful context, not a pitch
4. dm only if they ask or clearly invite it
5. turn every repeated objection into product or copy

marketing feels impossible when the audience is “everyone who might need this.” it gets a lot easier when its 50 named people with the same annoying problem

Same boat, launched a stock analysis tool a few weeks ago and the silence after pressing deploy is loud. One thing that surprised me: marketing as a solo dev isn't one channel, it's the same story told 10 different ways. I wrote the why I built this once, then rephrased it for Reddit (long-form), Twitter (one line + screenshot), and a directory listing (benefit bullets). Each platform rewards a different shape of the same idea.

But it's nice to do and I'm enjoying the ride on twitter especially with 1800+ followers in a niche that's very fun

The thing I keep getting wrong is treating marketing as a separate task after the build. The builders I see actually getting traction are writing about the build the whole way through. What's your product, and what's the one sentence you'd use to explain why it should exist?

I am a first time founder and just soft launched my own so i am in a similar position, selling is hard and scary, taking in the feedback the fear of failure, it can be a lot, so wishing you the best on your journey!

I had way better luck once I treated the App Store page like the product, not the trailer. Before spending on another channel, I'd tighten the first screenshot, the one-line promise, and the trust basics people check before installing, reviews, site, and boring privacy page stuff. For that last piece people usually reach for TermsFeed, Termly, or PrivacyForge, but the real win is making the whole install path feel safe and obvious, ngl.

Honestly feels like distribution is harder than building now.

After 17 days of trying to validate a Python dev tool business ($0 revenue), here's the honest breakdown on what I tested:

What didn't work:

• 43 Dev.to articles → 0 product clicks (content SEO is a 6+ month play, not a launch strategy)
• 211 cold emails → $0 (no buyer intent = no conversion regardless of personalization)
• Show HN → account shadowbanned after first submission
• Most freelance platforms: datacenter IP blocks you before the browser loads the login page

What actually moves the needle:
The gap between "people who like what you're doing" (upvotes, follows) and "people who open their wallet" is larger than anyone tells you. The only traffic that converts is people actively searching for a solution to a problem they have right now.

For iOS specifically: check App Store reviews for competitor apps. People who write negative reviews saying "I wish this did X" are warm leads — they're searching for exactly what you might be building. That's high buyer intent vs. cold outreach which is near-zero intent.

Wrote up the full autopsy with exact numbers at gumroad.com/l/cjbjb ($5) — 8 specific lessons including the one where I had 57 views and 0 purchases because the payment processor wasn't connected. Took 10 days to discover.

The channel isn't the problem yet and here's why

If the first two seconds of your App Store listing don't immediately communicate what the app does and who it's for, no channel will fix the conversion. Traffic without clarity just means more people bouncing faster.

On your actual question, one channel done well beats five done badly. Reddit's r/Supplements is the right instinct but the post needs to lead with the problem your user already has, not the product you built. Find where people are already complaining about wasting money on supplements that don't work or forgetting their stack. Show up there as someone who gets that frustration. The downloads will follow.

The building part being easy and the marketing part being hard is actually the most common solo dev problem in 2026. You're not doing anything wrong you just haven't found the right entry point yet.

I did a reddit post. Then some paid ads on reddit. The post was more effective.

(different niche but same zero-budget struggle). What actually moved the needle for me wasn't a marketing channel ,it was building something that was the marketing.
I made a free comparison site for my space picktheplatform. Two things are happeing at once: it pulls organic search traffic on comparison keywords, and building it forced me to map every competitor properly. Suddenly I knew exactly where I was weak, where I was differentiated, and which audiences I should be targeting. The SEO and the competitive research were the same project.
For a supplement tracker specifically, a comparison or ingredient database angle could work similarly. People search "best supplement tracking app" and "Cronometer vs Myfitnesspal" way more than they search your app name.

Happy to share more on the comparison site approach if useful.

hi! i also solo dev. same problem with me.
i try reddit too. not work first time. but i keep go back and help people. not post my app, just help. slow but work little bit.
i think: find one place where your user is. stay there. be helpful. then maybe they ask about your app.
good luck! we can do it :)

The hardest pivot for indie devs is going from "I posted everywhere once" to "I show up in one place every day." Pick one community where your buyer already hangs out (for a supplement tracker, that is probably r/Biohackers, r/Nootropics, Huberman subreddits, fitness Discords) and just be useful there for 60 days without pitching. Answer questions, share what you learn tracking your own stack. Your app will come up naturally.

I bootstrapped SocialPost.ai and the first 100 paying users came from one channel I committed to, not five I dabbled in. SEO and ads can come later. Right now you need conversations, not impressions.

Most indie devs get traction only after sticking to ONE channel and posting consistently, not jumping around. First 100 users usually comes from repetition and small improvements not a perfect strategy.

Reddit on r/macapps worked really well for me for https://sxitch.app

Find an equally active forum online (reddit, facebook, insta, etc.) and offer discounts.

Remember.. 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing...

I've been in this exact spot before with a side project. The thing that finally moved the needle for me was actually talking to potential users before they became users. I joined supplement-related Discord servers and Facebook groups, not to spam my app but to genuinely understand what people were struggling with. Turns out my initial feature set was solving problems I assumed existed, not the ones people actually had. Once I pivoted based on real feedback, getting those first 100 users took about 2 months instead of spinning my wheels for 6.

Hey, another solo founder here @Seouful

I feel your pain, and even though is my first SaaS and everybody says that chances on succeed on your first attempt are literally 0, it still hurts to see how not even one person tries your product out.

I started same way as you and now I am pivoting to cold DMs on reddit/twitter. I basically look for posts related to the topic of my tool and either leave an organic message and slide my free tool or reach via DM with a genuine interest on the topic. Still 0 results but hey, I have just started today with that tactic!

went through the exact same thing 29 days ago.

built KundliAI — AI astrology for India.
same story: shipped it, crickets.

what actually moved the needle for me:

SEO blogs — not generic ones, hyper-specific
to what people actually search. "kundli gpt ai
in hindi" type stuff. one blog hit 1,300
impressions in 28 days.

Quora — but only questions with 50k+ views.
answering small questions is wasted effort.

the hard truth nobody says: first 30 days
is just planting seeds. nothing feels like
it's working. then day 45-60 things compound.

HN, PH, Reddit gave me almost zero.
organic search gave me everything.

your supplement app — are there specific
symptoms or health goals people search for?
that's your SEO angle. "best supplements
for X" type content.

I know the visibility struggle is real, especially when you're heads-down on calls and product work. I've been helping a few founders by handling consistent, high-quality replies that actually sound like them. Happy to do a few free sample replies on your recent posts if you want to test it. DM me on X @Nova_Pluse

Reading this post hit close to home. I'm in the same boat with my trading bot. I spent too much time building the 'perfect' infrastructure and almost zero time finding my first 10 'die-hard' users.

Solo dev, built a wallet intelligence app (credit cards, not supplements... but same distribution problem).

What actually worked for me with zero budget: programmatic SEO. I built 87 pages targeting specific questions people already Google. Each page answers one question with verified data. Went from 8 clicks/day to 30+ in about 30 days, and those clicks are now driving real signups.

The insight that changed my approach: the content that drives traffic is different from the content that drives subscribers. Research-intent pages (someone checking a specific card benefit) build authority and impressions. Management-intent pages (someone frustrated by tracking all their card perks) attract the actual paying user. I was only writing the first kind for months before I realized the gap.

For your supplement app, the equivalent might be: don't just write 'best supplement tracker' pages. Write about the specific problems stackers face: 'how to avoid doubling vitamin D across 3 different supplements' or 'supplement timing conflicts most people miss.' Those are the queries where someone searching actually has the pain your app solves.

Two articles I wrote that break this down: one on tracking card benefits without a spreadsheet, another on whether premium card fees are actually worth it. Both reference real industry data (WSJ, Fortune, CFPB) which helps with Google trust signals. Happy to share if useful.

I’m going through the same thing right now.

Built a devtool recently and realized “build is easy, distribution is the real problem.”

Curious — are you struggling more with getting users or figuring out what actually converts them?

one channel, deep. that's what actually worked for us building aisa.to — we tried spreading across 5 platforms early on and got zero traction on all of them. picked one (quora for us), spent 3 weeks just answering questions genuinely without linking anything, built some credibility, then started mentioning the product occasionally. first 100 users came almost entirely from that single channel. the "be everywhere" advice is for companies with marketing teams, not solo devs.

Going through the same early-stage struggle with a personal finance tool I built. What actually moved the needle for me:

1. Reddit — but only when you answer real questions first, not drop links. r/personalfinance and r/povertyfinance have people actively asking for budget/debt calculators. Be genuinely helpful in 5-10 threads before mentioning your product once.

2. Directory submissions — ProductHunt, Fazier, BetaList. Not huge traffic but they build backlinks and some early users do come through.

3. SEO long-tail keywords — "debt snowball calculator" or "net worth tracker" are low competition and bring intent-driven users.

For your supplement app: r/Supplements users complain about tracking apps constantly. Answering questions there authentically is probably your best 0-budget channel right now. One genuine helpful reply beats 10 link drops every time.

Before the channel question, there's an earlier one worth asking: are people already spending money to solve this problem?

Supplement tracking is a real behavior — but "I want to track my supplements" might not be a painful enough problem to pull someone through a download. The people who convert are usually the ones who've already tried to solve it with something else (Notes app, spreadsheet, another app) and found it lacking.

A quick test: go into r/Supplements or r/biohackers and search for "track supplements" or "supplement stack." If you see people asking for solutions or complaining about existing ones, that's signal. If the conversation is mostly product recommendations with no mention of tracking friction — the problem might be too quiet to market into.

Going through the same struggle with an iOS app — the supplement/health niche especially is tough because Reddit communities there are very tight-knit and smell promotion from miles away. What ended up working better for me was genuinely participating in niche communities (health optimization Discords, bodybuilding forums) for weeks before ever mentioning my app, so people actually knew me. To your channel question: one channel at a time, absolutely — trying to be everywhere solo just means being mediocre everywhere. For the first 100 real users, it took me longer than I'd like to admit, and almost all of them came from personal conversations, not broadcast posts. The shift that helped most was treating every potential user like a human whose problem I actually cared about, not a download metric.

The pattern in what you listed is one post per channel, then move on. That gets you karma and almost no installs, because nobody downloads from a stranger's first post. The channels that pay off are the ones where you show up enough times that people start recognizing the name.

For a supplement tracker I would go narrow: pick the one place where that audience already complains about the problem you solve. r/Supplements was the right instinct, one post was not. Spend a few weeks answering other people's questions there with no link, just be the person who clearly knows the topic. The app comes up on its own once you have that credibility, and it does not feel like a pitch by then.

One channel deep beats five channels shallow when you are solo, because depth is the only thing one person can actually sustain. First 100 real users from organic usually takes a couple of months of that grind, not a launch spike. Treat distribution as a daily habit, same as you treated building.

One thing worth checking before pouring more energy into channels: do you actually know what happens when a complete stranger opens the app cold?

Not a friend, not a TestFlight tester who already knows what it does — a real user on a device you haven't tested on. For iOS specifically, API calls that work fine on dev wifi often fail silently on cellular. Onboarding screens that make sense to you can be confusing to someone with zero context. A crash on an iOS version you don't own shows up in App Store reviews if you're lucky, or just as silent uninstalls if you're not.

"Almost no downloads from HN/PH/Reddit" usually means discoverability is the problem, not retention. But if you did get some downloads and they evaporated immediately, it's worth watching a few cold sessions — ask someone who has never seen the app to try it while you observe, say nothing, just watch where they hesitate or stop. You'll learn more in 20 minutes than from 10 more forum posts.

For us reddit marketing made difference. We used reddit monitor to reply to our targeted leads

Same Here , My business is a B2B , i also cant figure it out

I’ve been exactly where you are.

I’m also a solo developer, and I already launched three products that initially got almost no traction. Great product, clean UX, solid code… but barely any users. At first, I thought building was the hardest part. It’s not. Marketing is.

After a lot of study, testing, failures, and partnerships, I realized something important: in 2026, distribution matters more than development. A good product without marketing is basically invisible.

Today, I launch products targeting 10 different countries at the same time, and that completely changed the game for me.

What actually started working:

• Content marketing (short-form videos, Reddit storytelling, Twitter/X threads)
• SEO landing pages focused on long-tail keywords
• Community positioning instead of direct promotion
• Influencer/creator partnerships
• Localized launches for multiple countries
• Email list building before launch
• Affiliate/referral systems
• ASO (App Store Optimization) way more seriously than before
• Organic TikTok and YouTube Shorts
• Building in public consistently

One mistake I made early on was trying everything randomly at once. What worked better was:

1. Pick one main acquisition channel
2. Master it
3. Then expand into secondary channels

For most indie developers with zero budget, I’d honestly say:

• Reddit + short-form content + SEO is one of the strongest combinations right now.
• But the key is consistency. Most channels take longer than people expect.

About the first 100 real users:
For me, it took months on my first product. On later launches, much faster, because I already understood positioning and audience targeting.

The biggest shift happened when I stopped thinking like “a developer trying to market” and started thinking like “a business owner building distribution.”

Your app idea is actually in a niche with potential. Supplements, health tracking, routines, optimization — these communities are active and passionate. The problem usually isn’t the product. It’s getting repeated visibility in front of the right people.

I’d genuinely be willing to help you with strategy, launch positioning, or growth ideas. Just leave a contact channel and I’ll reach out.

one thing that worked better than expected: find one community where your users actually hang out (not where devs hang out) and just be a regular there for a month before mentioning your app. for a supplement tracker that might be fitness subreddits or bodybuilding forums. the "show up consistently, help people, then mention your thing when relevant" approach is slow but it compounds. I got my first 50 users this way and they stuck around because they already trusted me from the forum.

Solo dev here too, also coming out the other side of an Apple/Chrome reviewer cycle. Three honest answers since you asked specifically:

What's working: cold outreach, but only the version that doesn't feel weird. Generic templates do feel weird. What doesn't: you find 8 real users whose product overlaps with yours, you read their actual GitHub/website for 5 minutes, you cite one specific thing from their product in the first sentence, and the email is "I noticed X, ran it through my tool, here's the report, no signup needed." Reply rate on 8 sent so far: 5 replies, 1 deep design conversation that drove an entire product redesign. Not scalable past a few dozen per week, but those few dozen are real users not vanity downloads.

One channel or many: one until it works, then add the next. I spent my first week doing what you described — HN, Reddit, IH replies, scattergun. Nothing landed. The week I picked email outreach as the only channel and got disciplined about it was the week I got my first deep user. Trying to be on every channel as a solo dev guarantees being mediocre on all of them.

100 real users: I'm not there yet (5 deep engagements, ~30 total touchpoints in 6 days), so take this with salt. But the pattern is starting to look like: the first 10 come from outreach you personally did one-by-one, not from a viral hit. People wait for the viral hit because it scales; the first 10 don't scale, they're just work.

One thing I'd push back on: "cold outreach feels weird" is the right instinct for the generic version. The version where you've actually read someone's repo before writing them isn't really cold — it's just one-to-one with extra steps.

Supplement Crash sounds like a clear vertical, which actually helps you here. r/Supplements karma is the wrong signal — find 20 quantified-self / biohacker bloggers who could use it for their own tracking, email them the report from running their stack through it. They write about you, that does the marketing for you.

Reading this felt uncomfortably familiar — shipped, survived App Store review, then… silence. I’m attempting the next 4–6 weeks as distribution learning, not just promotion — one niche community, one clear wedge (10+ supplement stacks), and a lot of conversations before I earn the right to mention the app.

I am fairly new to building and am in the same boat. No idea where to start marketing. I built my first app getcobra dot ai as something my wife and i would use and have fun with. now that we know we enjoy using it, it makes it easier to talk to people about how it helps us. I think that eventually will lead to conversion.

It seems like consistency and not giving up is the key. Everyone wants an easy button that doesn't exist. Some luck plays a role, but stay consistent and the good luck will follow.

HN/PH/IH comments won't move the needle for health apps wrong audience entirely.

What actually works for supplement tracking: (1) Biohacker communities on Reddit (r/Supplements, r/QuantifiedSelf, r/ouraring, r/Whoop) where people are already logging everything, (2) Partnerships with supplement brands (they have email lists), (3) Micro-influencers in functional medicine / longevity spaces, (4) Apple Search Ads if you have $500-1K budget (people actively searching "supplement tracker").

One channel focus. Pick the one where your ICP is already hanging out. Don't spread across all four.

the thing that actually moved the needle for us wasn't any single channel — it was showing up consistently in communities where our users already hang out. not posting links, just being genuinely helpful in discussions.

we build aisa.to (AI skills assessment) and the biggest unlock was realising that forum comments and quora answers where we actually helped people solve problems drove more signups than any launch post. the compound effect of being useful in 50 threads beats one big splash every time.

for a supplement tracking app specifically — i'd find the 3 subreddits and discord servers where your target users already talk about supplements and just... answer questions. no pitch. be the person who knows things. takes a few weeks before it starts working but it does work.

I really really feel you bro, happeend with me too, with Resyl, and i still have just 100 users, i have doing the same thing as you did, in redidt, ph, etc etc.

But we are learning i guess, i genuinely feel, there is no direct sure short way of getting leads, all you can do is just narrow down your ICP to get the users.

And one thing you did wrong was one post on r/supplement, bro this ain't gonna work, you have to keep posting in similar directories, look at me, i kept posting so well, that reddit banned for a week ( haha), well the reason was something else, but I mean, i got users from reddit, my app resyl too is just a week old i guess, and out of these 100 users more than 60 are from reddit alone, reddit gives you instant visibility, google.

So, keep posting, understand the painpoint, read comments of others, how they react, what words they use an use the same words in your aso seo.

I really feel for you—the 'build vs. market' phase is honestly the loneliest part of being a dev. I spent so much time spinning my wheels trying to parse through conflicting marketing advice, and it just kept me away from the actual shipping I wanted to do.

What finally helped me wasn't learning 'marketing' in the traditional sense, but just getting better at translating what I needed into AI workflows. I stopped treating AI like a chatbot and started treating it like a team member—building out a set of structured prompts (my 'V.I.B.E.' framework) that could handle the ad copy, the outreach, and the GTM strategy while I focused on the code.

It saved me so many hours of 'blank page' syndrome that I eventually just compiled them into a matrix to make it easier for me to reuse. If you're currently stuck in that 'marketing blog hell' and just want to get your launch assets finished so you can get back to building, I just published that matrix online. It’s meant to take that heavy lifting off your plate so you can stop worrying about 'how' to market and just get it done.

I know how tight things are when you’re bootstrapping, so I’ve set up a 20% discount code (PH2026) for anyone here who needs it. Hope it helps you get to that 100-user milestone sooner, i can share link if you want

Congress tracking - automated 45 min/day of manual monitoring with a 30-min goffer.ai setup. Most people don't think to automate government data, but in compliance, policy, or regulated industries it compounds fast.

I think a lot of solo devs hit this point early on — it’s not really about building, it’s distribution that’s hard

I’ve been trying to get feedback on something I built recently and realized people engage more with the problem than the solution itself

Same position six months ago. What actually moved the needle
for me wasn't a channel — it was having one piece of content
that answered a question people were already searching for.

SEO does take months but the competition on new categories is
near zero. I'm building in the AI search monitoring space and
wrote one article targeting a specific question my customers
ask. Published it this week. Won't rank for a while but it's
the first thing I've done that will compound.

The thing that helped most mentally: stop trying to do
marketing and start trying to find the people who have the
exact problem you solve. For a supplement tracker that's
probably Reddit communities, fitness forums, people
complaining about managing their stack. Be useful there
first, product second.

No first 100 users yet myself — but first paying customers
came from being specific about the problem, not broad about
the solution.

The writing load in marketing is the part nobody warns you about. I’m a decent coder, but having to write cold emails, Reddit replies, blog posts and LinkedIn posts every day, that’s what wore me down, not the building. I actually built DictaFlow (dictaflow.io) partly for this. Hold a hotkey, speak your marketing copy, let go, and it types wherever the cursor is. It cuts out the typing friction from the parts of founder life that need words, not code. The coding is the easy half, and this thread shows it.

Have you tried to go in person to a gym and speak to some personal trainers to get their opinion?

Most indie apps don’t fail because of product — they fail because nobody sees them consistently. Distribution is the real product now. What channels have you tried till now?

The 10x user search is the highest leverage thing on your list. 5 DMs to people stacking 10+ supplements will teach you more than 5 weeks of SEO pages. I'd move that to week 2, before the Reddit answer-only push. Once you've had those 5 conversations, your ASO subtitle and screenshots will basically write themselves. Most solo devs delay the actual conversations because they feel awkward, then ship the wrong copy.

Hey Seoful — the "nobody using my app" stage is brutal, and the honest answer
I've found is that there's no marketing channel that works for a 0-traction
solo project; what works is finding 3-5 real users who'll actually talk to
you and turning each conversation into a public artifact (blog post,
case study, changelog entry, GitHub thread).

The reason: a stranger reading your landing page has zero context for whether
your thing is real. A stranger reading "here's what happened when [named
person] used it, with the actual numbers" has a lot of context fast. The
artifact also gives that user a reason to come back and reshare.

What I'd ask first: do you have even one user, paid or free, who's
actively using it? If yes, the marketing question isn't "how do I find
more" — it's "what can I publish based on that one user that would make
the second user trust me."

I think a lot of indie devs accidentally treat “marketing” as announcing the product instead of repeatedly entering existing conversations around the problem.

Posting launch links in random places rarely works anymore because nobody has context or trust yet.

What I’ve seen work for small solo products is:

• pick ONE distribution surface,
• stay there consistently for months,
• and become useful before promotional.

For your app specifically, I’d probably lean into short-form educational content around supplements instead of “download my app” posts.

Things like:

• supplement timing mistakes,
• interactions people overlook,
• sleep/caffeine recovery,
• gym stack tracking,
• “what I learned building a supplement tracker,”
• visual breakdowns from anonymized user data later on.

Because the app itself is probably not the viral object. The niche knowledge/community around it is.

Also, most indie products don’t fail because the product is bad. They fail because distribution consistency dies after 2–3 weeks when growth isn’t immediate.

And honestly? Getting the first 100 real users usually takes much longer than Twitter makes it look.

Built a cross-platform price tracker for European
second-hand markets.

What worked for me: posting data findings on Twitter
got more traction than any cold outreach.

A single tweet about a 93% price gap between Vinted
Italy and eBay France for the same iPhone got picked
up organically. Data > marketing copy.

Still early but that's my experience so far.

Stepping outside the supplement app niche, the pattern is the same for most solo founders I have watched: distribution gets fixed when you treat it as a system, not a vibe.

Direct answers to your three questions:

1. What is working for indie devs in 2026
   The thing that consistently works is short form video tied to a real pain point your app solves, not your app. For Supplement Crash, that is something like "how I figured out which 4 of my 11 supplements were actually doing anything." The app shows up as the closing line, not the headline. Daily for 60 days. TikTok and Instagram Reels first, YouTube Shorts second.

2. One channel or many
   One. Until you have 100 paying users, one. The reason every blog says different things is because the author won with the channel that fit their specific product. Yours has not been found yet. Picking one and going deep beats spreading thin every time.

3. How long until first 100 real users
   Realistically 6 to 12 weeks of daily action on one channel for a consumer iOS app at zero brand. Anyone who tells you 2 weeks is selling something. The founders who quit at 3 weeks lose. The ones who quietly post 60 days in a row almost always cross 100 users.

One more piece most people skip: build a feedback loop. Every install should get one piece of friendly outreach 72 hours later asking what nearly made them quit using it. Even 5 of those a week will reshape the product faster than any marketing tactic, and your retention curve is what actually fuels word of mouth once the channel kicks in.

Something I've noticed across a few of these threads — picking the right room matters way more than the volume of effort. Instead of committing to a single community upfront, try running a lightweight scan first: spend 3-4 days reading 3-4 candidate communities (Discords, subreddits, Telegram groups) without posting anything. Track how often the exact pain point your app solves comes up organically.

A 50k-member subreddit might have zero people asking "how do I track overlapping supplements," while a 500-person Discord dedicated to nootropics has it come up daily. The smaller room is worth 10x more of your time even though the vanity metrics look worse.

This is basically "validate before you build" applied to distribution. Finding where the conversation already lives saves you from spending weeks being helpful in a room where nobody actually has the problem.

Curious if anyone else has tried this kind of pre-commitment scan — or just jumped straight into a community based on guesswork?

I mean you could recruit a couple unpaid interns still in college and promise them a certificate for some work.

Marketing as a solo dev is tough. The SaaS advice I'd give: pick ONE channel (content, SEO, communities, or cold outreach) and go deep before diversifying. Most people spread too thin too early. What's your current approach?

I've been looking for an answer for the same question.
Building the app is hard, but reaching the right people and convincing them to try it is harder.

Six months is when the compounding kicks in — or doesn't.

Most AI coding improvements are one-time wins: a better prompt, a new plugin, a different model. They work once, then you're back to baseline.

The thing that actually compounded for us: a CLAUDEmd file per repo. Architecture decisions, patterns, what's banned and why. Every new session starts by reading it. Every new team member onboards via it.

Month 1, it saves 30 minutes of re-explaining context. Month 6, it's the living documentation of every architectural decision you've made since you started. It's the thing that makes the codebase feel like it has a memory.

What's on your list of 'actually stuck after 6 months' — things that compound rather than one-time wins?

Commented in 3 niche subreddits without mentioning the product — just adding value to existing conversations. Then LinkedIn with personalized messages to people who'd engaged with similar posts. Got first real visitors in ~2 weeks. Key insight: go where the conversation already is, don't try to bring it to you.

Enduring... interesting... if you are looking for high quality leads for your business and want help with scaling, you can send me a message on telegram, let's help you make money

hello , we are about to launch a product ext month to tackle this exact issue where solo founders find it hard to get clients . If you are intrested we could give you early access to test it out for free

Great thread — the advice from boussettah about doing the unscalable thing first is spot on. Channels amplify, they don't create demand. The devs I've seen break through are the ones who spent two weeks in one niche community being genuinely helpful before ever mentioning their product. Distribution is a founder's job, not a marketer's.

Why don't you help me share my product? We scored 55, haha, I don't have a community account

First of all, congratulations from my side on turning your idea into an Application. That was the major blocker that you passed. I am facing the same issue with my app, and I know it takes time and consistency. Social media and word-of-mouth marketing are my go-tos for now. Can push to paid ads in 2-3 weeks if engagement is not coming. You can also try the same.

Reading this and exhaling same boat exactly. Solo, shipped, marketing is the wall.

I don't have the answer either. What I've started questioning: the advice that says "do X channel" is usually from someone who won on that channel survivorship bias.

The honest answer is probably "any single channel done seriously for 2-3 months beats trying 5 channels for 2 weeks each." None of the marketing blogs say this because it's not sellable.

For me what feels less hopeless lately: niche communities + real engagement (comments not posts) + DMing 1 person who already described my product's pain. None of it magic.

Apple Review 3 times though. That's a war story use it.

Saved this. Want to see what others say.

I’m currently studying customer development, and this makes me wonder:

For very early founders, is the traditional “find users and ask for interviews” process sometimes too direct?

It sounds like you’re saying the real first step is entering the right community, building trust, and understanding the room before asking for anything.

Would you say community trust comes before customer discovery?

I've been in the exact same spot with a few side projects. The trap I fell into was treating marketing as this separate phase that happens after building. What actually helped me was picking one platform where my target users already hang out and just being genuinely helpful there without pushing my product constantly. For a supplement tracking app, maybe there are specific fitness or health optimization subreddits or Discord servers where people are already talking about tracking? The key is adding value first before ever mentioning what you built.

reading day 2 update.

too many comments to reply to all individually. so leaving this top-level comment with what i actually changed in my head after reading everything.

5 things that flipped:

1. r/Supplements was wrong room. the real user is in r/Nootropics, r/Peptides, r/Crossfit, gym discords. supplement TAKERS != supplement TRACKERS. multiple people in this thread pointed at this and i feel dumb for missing it.

2. "supplement tracker" too broad. the real wedge from this thread: "10+ supplements stacking with overdose risk". jarvis38 wrote the exact sentence i want to test: "I help people tracking 10+ supplements spot overlap and overdose risk before it happens". stealing that, with credit.

3. App Store funnel has more leverage than channels right now. my screenshots are default-ish, no ASO research, 0 reviews. multiple people said fix this before adding more channels. quantor and baslefeber specifically.

4. published != distributed (4TOct7 phrase). launch is beginning not end. people follow builder first not app (Indie306hacker). 1 main + 1 secondary channel, sequential weekly focus instead of 5 parallel.

5. helpful person first, founder later. iv4122 framing. spend a week answering questions in r/nootropics with no agenda, then mention the app only when someone asks.

next 4-6 weeks rough plan:

• week 1: App Store screenshots + subtitle rewrite + ASO keyword research
• week 2: r/Nootropics, answer-only mode 7 days
• week 3: r/Peptides same
• week 4: 10x user search - DM 5 people who mentioned stacking 10+ supplements. ask how they track now, not pitch
• week 5-6: write the 2 long-tail SEO pages napac suggested

sorry to people i havent replied to individually yet. there are too many. will come back this week.

this thread was more useful than every marketing blog i read in the past month. thank you.

First, congrats on shipping!
Since your app is live, focus heavily on these two things right now:

1. Put a huge effort on your App Store Page (ASO & Design). Organic store traffic is gold, but people will leave instantly if your page looks basic. Don't just show random screenshots. Add bold, benefit-driven captions on top of them. Make it look professional.

2. Talk to your users. Find ultra-niche communities (specific subreddits, Discord servers, X threads) where people complain or talk about your subject and then DM them directly. That doesnt scale but it is gold mine for you

Good luck bud!

Hey Seouful, congrats on shipping! Here is what actually works for 0-budget indie devs right now:

ASO > SEO: Change your App Store subtitle/keywords to what people actually search (e.g., "Supplement Tracker & Vitamin Reminder"). "Crash" might hurt conversion.

Short-form Video: Text posts get buried. Post 7-second TikToks/Reels showing your app UI or telling your solo dev story. Organic reach there is unmatched.

Recruit 1-by-1: Don't blast links. Search Reddit for people complaining about tracking vitamins, and reply helpfully. DM micro-creators (1k followers) in the biohacking/fitness niche and offer free premium for feedback.

Focus: Pick ONE channel (e.g., Reddit or TikTok) and stick to it for 30 days.

Getting the first 100 users usually takes 2–6 weeks of manual, one-by-one grinding. Don't expect a viral spike; focus on building a slow flywheel.

Keep going, the first 100 are always the hardest!

Here are some free places worth submitting to if you haven't already:
Post directly (no karma needed):

Product Hunt — biggest one, time your launch right

r/SideProject — made for this
r/alphaandbetausers — specifically for early user feedback
r/IMadeThis — no restrictions

Hacker News Show HN — hit or miss but high upside

Free listings (permanent SEO backlinks):
BetaList, BetaPage, Launching Next, Startup Stash, Killer Startups, F6S, PeerList

For credibility later:
G2, Capterra, GetApp — better once you have reviews

Hi, greetings. I'm in the same boat. I've advertised on Facebook and Instagram, but people don't seem interested in my product. How can I reach them?

I only had success with SEO so launching a lot of times and hosting a lot of content

Good question about 0 social proof. You don't need testimonials to have a solid landing page. Here's what works instead:

1. Show the product itself — screenshots, GIFs, or a short demo video of the app in action. No one can argue with "here's what it does."
2. Lead with the problem — "Supplements shouldn't make you crash" hits harder than "Crash is a supplement tracker." If you nail the pain point, visitors fill in the proof themselves because they recognize their own problem.
3. Quantify what you can — number of supplements tracked, combinations flagged, whatever metric you actually have. Even "1 solo dev, X hours of research" shows commitment.
4. Use yourself as proof — "I built this because I was tired of supplements making me feel worse." Solo founder stories are actually an advantage here — people trust individuals more than faceless companies.
5. App Store ratings count — if you have ANY reviews on the App Store, quote them. Embed them. That's social proof you already have.

You can build something decent with WordPress. But if you get stuck or it takes more than a weekend, my offer stands — I'll build you a proper landing page at no charge. I'm building my portfolio and supplement tracking is a good use case to showcase.

Good luck either way.

It's tough! I'm also struggling :(

Same situation here — launched a dev tool last week with zero audience.

What actually moved the needle for me: going where the pain already lives. Not posting about the product, but finding threads where people are actively complaining about the exact problem it solves. Hacker News, niche subreddits, Discord servers. Not to pitch — just to be genuinely useful in the conversation.

The other thing that helped: being specific about the mechanism, not the outcome. 'Saves you time' gets ignored. 'Here's the exact line of code that cuts your API bill in half' gets clicked.

Still figuring it out, but those two shifts made a real difference in week 1.

I've seen this exact pattern many times! In 2026, the 'Roast' strategy is actually working incredibly well for early traction. People love a bit of brutal honesty and humor. For your supplement app, maybe try 'Roast my Stack'? It turns a boring tracking app into an interactive experience. We're actually launching something similar today for LinkedIn profiles (EQIQs) and the 'Roast' angle is driving way more engagement than traditional 'value' posts. Definitely focus on one channel where you can be the most helpful/entertaining first!

Solo dev here too, going through almost exactly the same thing with Money Me (personal finance app). What I've found is that broad channels get you nothing but platform-specific communities can actually move the needle.

The thing that worked was finding places where people are already talking about the exact problem your app solves. For me that was personal finance subreddits and XDA forums for Android users. Not posting "hey check out my app" but actually joining conversations and mentioning it when relevant.

The other thing that helped was test-for-test communities. Google Play requires 12 testers for 14 days before production, so there are communities built around swapping beta tests. You get real users who actually install and use the app, and you install theirs. Slower than ads but real engagement.

On the one channel vs many question - I'd say pick one, get it working, then add another. Spreading thin across everything at once means nothing gets traction. For me Reddit drove the most actual installs even though my HN post got more upvotes.

Shipping twice and surviving App Store review is already more than most people ever do - seriously, that's real progress, even if it doesn't feel like it yet.

Two ideas that might move the needle without budget:

1. Become the helpful person first, not the founder. Instead of posting about your app in r/Supplements, spend a week just answering questions about supplement timing, stacking, interactions - genuinely helpful replies with no agenda. Once people see you as knowledgeable, mentioning "I actually built a tracker for exactly this" lands completely differently than a cold promo post.

2. Find the 10x users, not the average ones. Your app probably has a perfect user somewhere: someone taking 8+ supplements daily who's drowning in reminders and spreadsheets. Search Reddit, Facebook groups, and Discord for people describing that exact pain. DM them directly, ask if they'd try the app and give honest feedback. Five passionate users who love it will tell others - a hundred indifferent ones won't.

The channel doesn't matter as much as the specificity of who you're talking to. Keep going.

Honestly this feels very relatable.

I’m also early in the journey and one thing I’m realizing is that building the product and getting attention for the product almost feel like two completely different skill sets.

What stood out to me is that you’re already trying multiple channels instead of waiting for “perfect marketing.” That probably matters more than most people think early on.

Curious — from the small amount of traffic/downloads you did get, did any specific channel feel more promising than the others?

I’d narrow the problem before choosing the channel. “People who take supplements” is too broad; “people stacking 8–12 things and worried about overlap” is much easier to find and talk to.

For zero budget, I’d do this for two weeks: pick one niche community, ask people how they track today, write down the exact words they use, and only pitch after they describe the pain themselves. The goal is not downloads first. It is finding the sentence that makes the right person say “yes, that is my problem.”

If you get that sentence, ASO, Reddit, TikTok, etc. all get easier. Without it, every channel feels random.

Getting through the App Store review 3 times is an achievement in itself, but product loops don't matter if nobody knows they exist.

With a $0 budget, SEO and paid ads are definitely the wrong plays for day one. For my current SaaS launch, the focus is entirely on unscalable organic outreach (Paul Graham).

Don't just post about your app—go where your specific audience hangs out and solve a mini-problem for them directly in the comments. It takes longer to reach the first 100 users, but the feedback loop from those initial manual sign-ups is worth more than empty upvotes.

Honestly I think a lot of solo founders hit the same wall:

building feels logical, distribution feels random.

One thing I noticed recently is that broad “check out my app” posts almost never convert. The replies/DMs that worked better for me were problem-first and super niche-specific.

Like instead of:
“here’s my app”

more:
“I noticed people stacking 10+ supplements often track everything in spreadsheets because they’re worried about overlap and side effects.”

That framing instantly sounds more specific and believable.

Still figuring this out too honestly.

I’m in a very similar place right now.

Building felt hard, but at least it was a kind of hard I could understand: bugs, UI, store approval, performance, edge cases. Marketing feels completely different because you can do “the right things” and still hear nothing back.

The biggest thing I’m learning is that “published” doesn’t mean “distributed.” Having the app live, a website, and a decent product page doesn’t automatically create a path to users.

Right now I’m trying to stop thinking in terms of “which platform will give me users?” and focus more on finding a few real people who already feel the problem. For a niche app, I’m starting to believe 5 honest conversations with the right users are worth more than 500 random impressions.

So I don’t have the answer yet, but my current guess is: one channel for learning, not many channels for shouting. Pick the place where your actual users are, talk to them directly, and use that to improve the message before scaling anything.

Curious to see what others say, because this is the part nobody prepares you for.

Solo dev marketing problem is almost never a marketing problem, it is a positioning problem. From bootstrapping SocialPost.ai, the move that worked was picking one channel and one specific user, not chasing five channels at once. Spend two weeks living in one community where your exact user already complains about the exact problem your app solves. Stop trying to sound like a marketer in those threads, just answer questions for free for a few weeks until people ask what you build. Distribution is the founder's job, not the marketer's job. The app does not need more features. It needs you to be the person in one room who knows that problem cold.

Hey @Seouful, founder of Zaal Studio here.
Felt this post, building is the easy part, getting eyes on it is brutal.
A 15-20s teaser usually gets 3x more clicks than a text post on Twitter/Reddit.
If budget’s tight I can do it for $60 for solo devs.
Let me know if you want to solve your problem.

I feel you. This is what every technical solo founder is asking right now. I don't know the answer either but there's no magic bullet.. discipline and execution wins any day.

I'm with others in that you should focus on one or two channels and go deep - become a regular. Marketing (with or without a budget) takes a lot of elements to be successful, but at a minimum you need time and repetition. You have to keep asking and telling the same story over and over for it to sink in - perhaps in different ways or applying it differently depending on the channel, but it needs to be consistent. My business took 1 year to really catch on (different type of industry) and really wasn't solid until year 5.

The last thing I'd say is to ask people to test your app, or just provide feedback. Don't just blanket post that, but dm individuals that you can see are knowledgeable in the area. Be honest with them about where you are in the process, and ask them to help you. You will be surprised how often perfect strangers will want to help.

Reddit is a good place. Don't just post on one subreddit. Target multiple subreddits, 1-2 per day and make sure to check their rules.

Most subscriptions I got are for ASO optimisation. I used appfollow trial to get the best keywords for my niche and use them in my app title and description etc.
That's where I got almost all my users from. Also tried posting on tiktok but that wasn't successful yet.

This is the same question I’ve been asking myself.
Building the app is hard, but reaching the right people and convincing them to try it feels even harder.
Going through the comments here gave me a few new perspectives though — definitely going to try some of them now.

@Seouful, I'm in roughly the same week — solo, closed beta opens
in 6 days, ~0 organic users yet. Different niche (crypto algo
trading, not supplements), but the marketing problem feels
identical.

Direct answers to your three:

1. What's working for indie devs in 2026?
   Cold DMs to people whose profile (LinkedIn / X / TG) shows
   they're in my exact niche. Reply rate ~20%, but these are
   high-intent — they self-selected by being IN the niche. Generic
   "I built X" posts on HN / PH / IH get scrolled past.

2. One channel or many?
   One channel focused per WEEK. Spreading thin across 5 in
   parallel made each one mediocre. This week LinkedIn DMs, next
   week probably Telegram communities, week after IH posts.
   Sequential focus, not parallel spray.

3. How long to first 100?
   Not there yet — 0 real users with 6 days to launch. So my honest
   answer is "I'll know in 2 weeks". If you've already shipped
   twice + Apple-reviewed, you're ahead of me on actual product
   validation.

For Supplement Crash specifically: have you tried niche fitness
Reddit / Discord / FB groups where supplement-stacking is the
daily topic? r/Supplements is too broad. r/Nootropics,
r/Peptides, r/Crossfit — narrower communities where supplement
tracking is a REAL problem. App Store reviews + ASO often
matter more than off-platform marketing for iOS apps.

What's your funnel look like on the App Store side — any
reviews / ratings yet?

To your questions: one channel, go deep. I wasted weeks spreading thin across HN, Reddit, Twitter, and PH all at once. What actually moved the needle for me was picking one long-tail SEO keyword my tool could rank for and writing a genuinely useful page around it. Zero budget, just time. Took about 6 weeks to see traffic, but that traffic converted way better than any launch spike because people were actively searching for the solution. For a supplement tracking app, I'd look at what people are already Googling, stuff like "how to track supplement interactions" or "supplement timing schedule." Build content around those queries and let the app be the answer.

I’d advise not limiting yourself to a single channel until you know which one actually converts. When I started marketing TruthScore, I experimented across multiple platforms—X posts, Reddit threads, Dev.to articles, YouTube comments, and more. Over time, I discovered that YouTube comments drove real conversions compared to the rest. Once you identify the channel that works best, that’s when you double down and focus your efforts there.

I completely understand the struggle of getting users for your app. As a solo dev, marketing can be a daunting task, but don't worry, you're not alone. I've found that creating a system that automates outreach efforts can be a game-changer - for example, I've solved my marketing outreach issues by setting up a local system of 26 bots on autopilot, which handles campaigns across multiple platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and email without any monthly SaaS fees. You can find more information on how to achieve this by searching for "botsyst" on Google, which should be the first result.

Building is the easy part. Nobody tells you that selling your own product is harder than making it. All those "how to make money with your app" gurus conveniently skip that part. One thing that actually helped me: stop trying everything at once. Pick one channel, go deep. For a supplement app I'd bet on Reddit — r/Supplements, r/biohacking. Just answer questions, don't pitch.
How specific is your target user?

Honestly, for most indie devs the first mistake is thinking “launch = users.”

Usually it’s:
build → launch → silence → iterate → distribution → tiny traction → consistency → growth.

What started working for me was:

• posting consistently instead of “launch posting”
• showing the journey, not just the product
• talking directly to a painful problem
• asking people to test, not “download my app”
• replying everywhere daily for months

One underrated thing:
people rarely care about the app at first.
They follow the builder first.

Also, don’t spread yourself too thin early.
1 main channel + 1 secondary is usually enough.

For example:

• LinkedIn/X = build in public
• Reddit = targeted problem discussions
• Product Hunt = launch moment, not growth engine

And tiny traction is normal.
A lot of apps get their first real 100 users painfully slowly.

What compounds is:

• consistency
• improving onboarding
• talking to users
• making people feel understood

Especially for niche apps, distribution often comes from becoming visible in that niche repeatedly, not from one viral post.

I would say get some people on Fiverr to help with marketing.

Completely agree with this.

Feels like “how do I market my product?” is becoming an entire profession on its own for indie founders 😅

Building the actual product is hard, but distribution feels like a totally different skill set:
content, communities, short videos, positioning, SEO, launch platforms…

Sometimes it honestly feels like there’s room for an AI service just for helping founders figure out early-stage distribution.

Facebook groups for specific niches work better than Reddit for local business tools. I posted in barber/restaurant/mechanic groups with "how many calls do you miss while working?" — 16 posts, zero rejections, real conversations.

Concept creator looking for a technical co-founder! 🚀 I have a solid app concept and can drive marketing and business growth. All I need now is a developer to handle the programming. Send me a message if you’re an experienced app developer and would like to work with me.

Hey there, I feel you on the solo dev struggle. Marketing is tough, especially when you're doing everything on your own. I actually solved the problem for my own app by building a local sy

The "10+ supplement stacking with overdose risk" angle you mentioned almost in passing — that's actually your real wedge. That's a specific fear with a specific information gap: someone three months into a nootropic stack doesn't know they've doubled their vitamin D from three different sources. r/Supplements is the wrong room for that person because most people there are asking "what should I add." The person who needs your app is in r/nootropics, reviewing their own spreadsheet at 2am, anxious about stacking interactions. Completely different person, completely different room.

The channel question becomes obvious once you can say one sentence: "I help people tracking 10+ supplements spot overlap and overdose risk before it happens." That sentence finds its own community — you stop guessing which channel and start going where that fear already lives.

In the same boat, one week into launching an AI financial coaching app called Yesterday. Here’s what I’ve actually found so far:

What’s working: LinkedIn personal posts with honest numbers. My “built this on paternity leave” story got 43 reactions and drove real traffic. Authenticity outperforms every tactical move I’ve tried.

What didn’t work: Reddit — got permanently banned from r/personalfinance on day one for mentioning my product. Instagram is building slowly but not converting yet.

One channel focus vs many: I’ve been spreading thin and I think it’s a mistake. LinkedIn is my highest ROI channel and I should probably just go all in there for now.

First 100 real users: still working on it. Haven’t cracked stranger conversion yet. Following this thread for the same answers you are.

Honestly as another early founder, I’m starting to realize marketing in 2026 feels less like “promotion” and more like slowly becoming part of communities where your users already spend time.

I’ve been trying some of the same things you mentioned and had the exact same experience 😭
A few upvotes, some replies, but almost no actual users at first.

One thing that’s becoming clearer to me though:
random distribution rarely works early because people don’t have a reason to trust a new product yet. But consistent presence around a very specific pain point slowly compounds.

Like your supplement app probably has way more leverage in:

• people posting bloodwork/improvement journeys
• nootropic communities
• gym/self-optimization creators
• “what supplements actually helped?” conversations

…than broad “check out my app” launches.

Also I don’t think most indie products fail because founders aren’t trying enough channels. I think they fail because the message is still too broad for one group to instantly feel:
“oh this was made for me.”

I’m still figuring this out too honestly, but the founders I keep seeing grow seem obsessive about one niche/community before expanding anywhere else.

Respect for shipping twice though. Most people never even get through App Store review once 😭

"Totally relate to this — I’m also a solo dev and the building part feels natural, but marketing is where I get stuck. Tried posting in a few communities, got some engagement but downloads are slow. Curious to hear from others: did you focus on one channel first or spread across many? And how long did it take before you saw steady growth? Would love to learn from real experiences."

Same situation here - validating a fitness app idea with zero budget. What clicked for me is what boussettah said: channels amplify a message that already converts, and you don't have that message yet. The first step isn't picking a channel, it's finding 10 real people who have the problem and asking them directly. Reddit, Discord, WhatsApp - it doesn't matter where, what matters is the conversation, not the post. One honest DM beats ten public posts.

For zero-budget marketing, I’d probably avoid trying many channels at once. One useful pattern is to pick a very specific audience and look for places where they already ask painful questions. Not “where can I post my app?”, but “where are people already struggling with this problem?” The first users usually come from conversations, not channels.

One thing that helped me think about this is separating building from getting
evidence.

Before investing more in the product, I would try to get 5-10 very small external
signals: a post asking for criticism, a few comments in relevant communities, and a
simple page that asks one clear question. The point is not to promote the app, but to
learn whether the problem statement makes sense to people who might actually care.

I am testing a similar validation workflow right now: tiny search-driven utility
ideas, a small prototype, then public feedback before building more. The hard part is
not generating ideas, it is getting honest signals without turning it into spam.

You're getting solid advice on channels and ASO. But there's a piece missing that nobody's mentioned yet.

You have an iOS app. You're trying to drive downloads from Reddit, HN, PH, IH. But every link you share goes to the App Store page — a page you can barely customize, with Apple's UI chrome around it, asking people to commit to a download before they even understand what your app does.

You need a web landing page for Supplement Crash.

A landing page can do what the App Store page can't:

• Show exactly how the app looks and works (screenshots + GIF walkthrough)
• Explain WHY someone should track supplements (the outcome, not the feature)
• Capture emails from people who are interested but not ready to download yet
• Give you something to link to that isn't Apple's template

The r/Supplements commenters you reached? Most of them read your post on desktop. They can't download an iOS app from their laptop. But they CAN visit a landing page, see what it does, and send themselves the App Store link.

Also: the name "Supplement Crash" might work better reframed. Instead of crash = failure, lean into crash = crash course. "Supplement Crash Course" — you're teaching people how to track what they take.

I run an AI-powered landing page studio. If you want, I'll generate a free landing page for Supplement Crash showing the app in action. 48h turnaround, no strings. You'd have a real web presence to link to from all those Reddit comments.

Either way, get a web page up before you spend another hour on outreach.

Same boat, solo iOS dev about to launch, zero budget. So take this as someone mid-fight, not someone who figured it out.

What moved anything for me wasn't posting, it was replying. One useful comment in a thread where my users already are beats ten posts about my app. Your single r/Supplements post is the trap, I did that too and got karma, not downloads.

Pick one channel and show up every day. For me it's Reddit plus one founder community, not five. Comments, not links.

And be real about where your users actually are. r/Supplements is people taking supplements, not people who'd track them. The room matters as much as the effort.

Q: whats actually working for indie devs in 2026?
A: App store search is really underrated. Do best for your ASO and mock-ups. Do not rely on reddit or PH. 90% of people there - solo devs as you, they are not interested in using your app, they are interesting in working ideas. If your app doesnt help founders - there are not much traf in those channels.

Q: one channel focus or many at same time?
A: If you have only one product - it is easy to maintain many channels at one time

Q: how long until you saw first 100 real users?
A: Have 2 products for now, 100 real users is like 2-3 weeks. 1 promo ad (50$), gave me like 20-30 users. All others - from app store. But tbh - if u want growing, u need money on ads. Now, when AI generates so many apps - u need money to promote, or super unique and high demand idea.

Marketing might not be the only issue here. For a supplement tracking app, trust and first impression matter before the channel even has a chance to work.

The problem is clear: people taking supplements need consistency, reminders, effects tracking, and maybe a way to understand what is actually helping over time. That is a real wellness habit problem.

But I’d be careful with the name Supplement Crash. “Crash” creates a slightly negative health association, and in wellness that can quietly hurt conversion. Even if the app is useful, the name may make it feel less safe or polished than the problem deserves.

Before trying ten more marketing channels, I’d tighten the product angle and brand first. Auryxa .com would fit this kind of wellness-tracking app much better because it feels cleaner, more premium, and more trustworthy for a health-adjacent product.

The product does not need to become bigger overnight. But if users are deciding in two seconds whether to download a wellness app, the name should reduce hesitation, not create it.