What Nobody Told Me About Finding Users for a Product Nobody Asked For

I didn't start ManyTools because someone asked me to build it. I started it because I was frustrated. Every time I needed to pick a tool for something, the top Google results were affiliate blog posts ranking products by commission, not quality.

So I thought, "I'll just make a comparison site that's actually honest." Classic builder logic. Solve your own problem, ship it, users will come.

Users did not come.

The First Three Months Were Brutal

I launched with about 40 listings across 5 categories. Shared it in a few places. Got maybe 8 visitors a day. Most of them were me checking analytics.

The hardest part wasn't the low traffic. It was the silence. No feedback. No complaints. No "this sucks." Just nothing. When people hate your product, at least you know they noticed it. When nobody says anything, you start wondering if you built something invisible.

I Was Building For Myself, Not for Anyone Else

Here's the mistake. I organized the site the way I thought about software. Neat categories, logical structure, everything in its place. Made perfect sense to me.

Then I looked at search console. The few people who were finding the site weren't browsing categories. They were searching for very specific things. "Trello alternatives under $10." "Best rank tracker for small sites." "Free CRM for freelancers."

They didn't care about my category system. They cares about their problem. I was building a library when people wanted answers.

That realization changed everything. I stopped organizing by what made sense to me and started building around what people were actually searching for.

Finding My Target Market by Accident

I assumed my audience was "everyone who uses software." That's not a target market. That's a wish.

The actual users who kept coming back were a much smaller group: marketers and founders evaluating tools before buying. People who were about to spend money and wanted to compare options without reading five sponsored blog posts first.

Once I understood that, every decision got easier. Which categories to build out first? The ones marketers search for. What information to show on each listing? Pricing and alternatives, because that's what someone in buying mode needs. What to skip? Deep technical specs that only matter after you've already decided to try something.

If you're struggling to find users, you might not have a product problem. You might have an audience problem. Narrow down who specifically gets value from what you built. Then go where they already hang out and speak their language.

The Challenge I Didn't See Coming

Building the site was the fun part. Maintaining 2,500+ listings is the part that almost broke me.

Pricing changes. Products shut down. Features get renamed. Free tiers vanish overnight. One outdated price on your site and a user writes you off forever. They don't send you a correction. They just leave and never come back.

I had to accept something uncomfortable: perfect accuracy at this scale is impossible. The goal became "more accurate than the alternatives" and "fast to fix when something's wrong." That bar is lower than I wanted, but it's honest.

What I'd Tell You Before You Start

If you're thinking about building a directory, comparison site, or any content-heavy platform:

• Your first users will find you through search, not through launches. Optimize for that from day one.
• "Everyone" is not a target market. Figure out who specifically needs this, then build for them.
• Maintenance is 80% of the work. Building is the easy part. Keeping it useful is the job.
• Silence is normal at the start. It doesn't mean your idea is bad. It means nobody knows you exist yet. Those are different problems.
• Let users tell you what matters. Your roadmap is a guess until real people start using the product.

The project is still growing. I'm still learning. But the hardest lessons came in those first few months when I was building for myself instead of for the people who actually needed it.