ProfitPilot

I put six months into building and almost none into distribution. The result: 250+ calculators live in 5 languages, ~1,800 indexable pages, and zero paying users.

The Search Console numbers were the wake-up call: 114 pages indexed out of 2,400, 0 clicks in 3 months, average position 59. I assumed it was a technical problem and spent weeks hunting for bugs. It wasn't: 69% of my non-indexed pages fall under "discovered/crawled – currently not indexed", which is Google's way of saying the domain has no authority. Indexation follows backlinks, it doesn't come first.

Two things I got wrong, in case it saves someone else the detour:

1. I gated everything behind a signup. No one creates an account to find out whether your numbers are any good. Two calculators now run with no account at all — that should have been day one.

2. I kept adding calculators because building is comfortable and distribution isn't. New pages on a domain with no authority just don't get indexed.

So I've frozen the feature work entirely and I'm doing directories, community answers and editorial backlinks instead. No paid ads, no social presence — just assets that stay online.

If you've climbed out of the zero-authority hole on a niche SaaS, what actually moved the needle for you: directories, guest posts, or answering questions where your audience already is?