But what has changed dramatically isn't the cost of building software. It's the cost of getting attention.

In 2026, I believe that distribution matters more than development. In this article, I'm going to share with you what I've learned throughout my journey building products. I'll also try to persuade you to steady the itch to jump straight to code before you start your next project.

By the end of reading this guide, you should have a grasp of the actionable ideas that will help you get your coffee-fueled passion projects out to the world.

To be clear, this is aimed at those of you who are building digital products, specifically software products, but these concepts can be applied to ebooks, newsletters, courses, any product that has multiple steps and potential friction points.

I want to start by showing you the path of how people will see your app, and more importantly, the path to how they become a paying user.

What We'll Cover:

• How People Actually Become Users

  • Touch Points

  • The User Funnel

  • User Retention

• Setting Up & Understanding Tooling

  • What to measure on your product?

• How do I know that my site's metrics are good?

  • How To Measure And Improve Bounce Rate?

  • How To Measure and Improve Conversion Rate?

  • Improve Both Onboarding Conversion and In app conversion Plus Funnel Setup

• Product Distribution

  • Borrow Someone Else's Audience

  • Create or Share in a Newsletter

  • Influencers and YouTubers

  • Communities & Forums

  • SEO & Blog Content

• Main Distribution Channels In 2026

  • Tiktok

  • Youtube

  • Pintrest

• What Distribution Channel Should I Choose?

• Consistency Beats Virality

• What Type Of Content Should I Post?

• Conclusion

How People Actually Become Users

Think of the internet for what it literately is: the world wide web. That web sees millions of people moving around its various strands as they go about their daily business. It's your job to add enough strands to that web so that people can find you. I call this creating touch points.

Touch Points

A touch point is simply a point where a possible user discovers you for the first time. This could be in the form of an article, a post on a forum, a TikTok, or essentially anywhere where they see your product for the first time externally to your actual website or app. The main goal of a touch point is to pull users into your funnel (a funnel is explained below).

My project was called Heydividends, and my first touch point was on a Facebook group I found for dividend investing.

When you first start out, you'll likely create touch points in the following locations:

• Reddit: Subreddits related to your product are best. People love to say that you should post in r/saas or one of the other communities. This can be great for getting functional testers but it's terrible for getting your first few users as your likely target customer isn't there.

• Friends: If you've built a consumer app, getting friends to use it to get reviews and feedback is priceless.

• Niche forums: Forums on your niche. For example, a self storage forum if you've built a self storage SAAS app.

• Social Platforms: Facebook groups, discord channels, or any small community on a social network site.

• Email: Sending emails to people in your network.

As you start to gain users, though, you can scale your touch points out. We call this distribution and will cover this later. For now, you just need to understand that a touch point is simply where a user finds your product for the first time.

The idea is that over time, you'll create your own web that weaves itself amongst others to create multiple ways to consistently catch users. Once you've caught users, they go into your funnel.

The User Funnel

A funnel is simply the process a user goes through from being someone who's interested in your product to someone who's a paying user.

Funnels are important to understand because they're the foundations of figuring out what you need to improve upon in your app.

The goal is to make the funnel as efficient as possible so that a user flows from being someone who's interested to paying and getting value of out your product as fast as possible.

If users are signing up and then leaving your app, there's most likely something that needs to be fixed. If you can fix the issues in your funnel, over time your project will flourish.

Typical SAAS Funnel

The typical SAAS usually starts with a user landing on your website's marketing site/page. This could be your main landing page or blog. Then they navigate around the site, eventually clicking sign up.

Next they enter your onboarding flow, and then move through to your actual product's first page. The user will then typically navigate around a bit, and then they'll either leave or convert into a paying user.

Your job is, of course, to convert as many users into paying users as you can. But this can take time.

User Retention

Once you've gained a user, you need to keep them. This is where you analyse how much value your features and functionality provide. This comes from both talking to your users as well as watching session replays and heat maps to learn what users are doing and how they interact.

Creating touch points, user funnels, and retention are fundamental when turning your project into something that people will actually use.

To measure all of this, I recommend using one of these Google Analytics alternatives. Any of them will do. It's important that you set yourself up for traffic so that you can measure, understand, and know what to improve as users arrive on your website. Setting it up correctly is important so we will cover that next.

Setting Up & Understanding Tooling

Having the correct tooling setup is important. And as mentioned above I'd recommend an alternative to Google Analytics because GA it doesn't provide a great UX out of the box and misses a lot of the functionality you'll need.

Some alternatives provide everything you need, but they're not open source. Still, you can leverage the open source world with a combination of two products: Plausible (you can also use Unami if preferred) and OpenReplay.

Combined they're a great option to start with for looking at what users are doing on your website, web app, or content pages.

You can find a guide to follow on how to setup Unami and OpenReplay here as well as the OpenReplay docs here.

If you're someone who prefers a visual guide, then I recommend these Youtube Videos:

And for OpenReplay...

What to Measure on Your Product

Now that you're setup, it's time to understand what you need to look for. I want to start by outlining some numbers you need to understand:

• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page without taking any meaningful action. A high bounce rate often suggests your landing page isn't matching visitor expectations or encouraging them to continue.

• Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as signing up, requesting a demo, or making a purchase. This is one of the most important metrics for measuring how effectively your website turns traffic into users.

• Onboarding completion rate: The percentage of users who successfully finish your onboarding process. A low completion rate usually indicates friction, confusion, or that you're asking users to do too much before they experience the value of your product.

• In-app conversion rate: The percentage of users who sign up, complete onboarding, and upgrade to a paid plan within a given timeframe. This measures how effectively your product convinces users that it's worth paying for.

• Churn rate: The percentage of paying customers who cancel their subscription or stop using your product during a given period. Reducing churn is often just as valuable as acquiring new customers, as retaining existing users is typically far cheaper and easier than replacing them.

How Do I Know That My Site's Metrics Are Good?

You should aim for your software product to achieve the following results. If it doesn't, you need to aim for them. This can take time, and as your traffic increases, you should expect the numbers to increase at first. This is typical as you discover the types of users that work best for your product.

How to Measure and Improve Bounce Rate

You can find your bounce rate on your web analytics tool of choice. It will always be on the home page. In Plausible I've highlighted it in the below screenshot:

For software products, the main way to improve your bounce rate is a mix of improving your traffic sources and your landing page. You can find the traffic sources on the main dashboard in Plausible. I've highlighted where to find it below.

Imagine you have traffic coming to your website, but you have a poor bounce rate of 80%. The first thing you need to do is check the source of traffic and ask if it's relevant to your product. If your SAAS is a garden management system but your traffic is coming from mechanic forums and news sites, then that's likely your issue. Poor traffic quality.

If you take my example of Devremote from earlier (a job board for remote developers), good sources would look something like this:

As you can see, dev.to, freecodecamp.org, LinkedIn, and Github are all in the top sources (as well as Google). This showcases very good sources that are relevant to the website. You should aim for the same.

If traffic is coming from good sources, then the next issue may be your landing page. You'll need to analyse it and ask yourself if it's conveying your message and value proposition correctly. If you've got the correct traffic sources, then your landing page may need a couple of iterations and a month of testing to see if you can improve it.

Focus on the following areas:

• Nail your value proposition in 5 seconds

• Use one CTA (and make it count)

• Layer social proof strategically

• Design mobile-first

• Minimize form fields

• Show your product (don't just talk about it)

• Address objections before they kill conversions

• Match your message to your traffic source

For a more detailed overview, I'd recommend this article on how to improve your landing page. There's also a great article by Casmir on how to build a High ranking SEO landing page that's worth a read as well. He offers some great, well-written advice on this topic.

Implementing the above effectively will help bring down your bounce rate to a consistent level that aligns with the standard for your industry.

How to Measure and Improve Conversion Rate

A good bounce rate will tend to lead to a good conversion rate. In tools like Plausible and Unami, this is slightly fiddly as you'll need to set up custom events or use goals and filters. You'll also need to have had traffic to your site that has triggered the events or that has gone to the required page. (You can simply set up Plausible, though, and go through a typical user process of signing up and this should solve this issue).

For simplicity here, we'll use goals and filters as for most situations this is all you'll need.

On the main home page in Plausible, scroll down to the bottom of the page where you'll find the goals section. Click the "set up goals" button.

Then you'll be presented with the following screen. You'll need to click the "Add Goal" button then select "Pageview" from the dropdown list.

Plausible will then show you a list of pages in a dropdown. You need to search for and select the page a user lands on after clicking the sign up/register button on your site. In the example above it's the register page at the /register route.

Once it's complete, you'll see the newly created goal in the list that's displayed after the modal closes. Then, navigate back to the home page of the site.

Once you navigate back to the main page, you can scroll down and you'll see in the goals section the conversion rate. It's highlighted in the screenshot below.

In this case, we have a 2.2% conversion rate, the average conversion rate for most websites.

The most common issue for poor conversion rates is acutely poor bounce rate or poor calls to action. If you have a poor bounce rate, it likely means your traffic quality is poor or the user understanding of your product is poor. If the issue is the bounce rate, you need to revert back to what we discussed above and fix the bounce rate first.

If your bounce rate is good, then it's likely a call to action issue or communication issue on your landing page. A call to action is simply you giving the user a light push to try your product or service. For example, a button that says "Get Started for Free" or even just "Register Here" is a call to action.

If you have a conversion rate of below 2%, a good option is to test you call to action to see if you can improve it. Some examples are:

• Start Your Free Trial

• Book a Demo

• Get Started for Free

• See It in Action

• Create My Account

Improve Both Onboarding Conversion and In App Conversion Plus Funnel Setup

This is where things start to get interesting. It'll require a bit of setup, especially when you use open source UX tools.

Firstly, on both your website and web app (or app), install OpenReplay's tracker. Below we'll walk through how to set OpenReplay up in a Nextjs app, but if you are using a different tech stack, you can view how to install OpenReplay here.

It's an npm package, so you can use your package manager of choice for this. I'm going to use yarn.

@openreplay/tracker

After you've done this, you need to create a local .env file in the root of your next app.

NEXT_PUBLIC_OPENREPLAY_PROJECT_KEY=your_key NEXT_PUBLIC_OPENREPLAY_INGEST=https://openreplay.yourdomain.com/ingest

Next, create a new file called lib/openreplay.ts then import Tracker from '@openreplay/tracker';:

const tracker = new Tracker({ projectKey: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_OPENREPLAY_PROJECT_KEY!, ingestPoint: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_OPENREPLAY_INGEST!, });

export default tracker;

We can now import this tracker anywhere in our application where we want to record sessions or send custom events.

Start tracking sessions

For a Next.js application, you'll want to initialise the tracker on the client side.

For example, if you're using the App Router, you can create a small client component:

'use client';

import { useEffect } from 'react'; import tracker from '@/lib/openreplay';

export default function OpenReplay() { 
useEffect(() => { tracker.start(); }, []);

return null; }

Then add it to your root layout:

import OpenReplay from '@/components/OpenReplay';

export default function RootLayout({ children, }: { children: React.ReactNode; }) { return ( {children} ); }

Once this is running, OpenReplay will start recording user sessions.

Adding Custom Events

Session replay is useful on its own, but the real power comes from being able to tell OpenReplay what the user is actually doing. This is crucial for viewing the funnel later.

For your SAAS, and in our case as well, you'll want to track events that are linked to the user going through a funnel. For example, clicking the sign up button, submitting details button, or complete onboarding button – you get the gist. Later, we'll be able to use this data to build a detailed picture of how the user is flowing through the onboarding process.

You can track that action with a custom event:

import tracker from '@/lib/openreplay';

function CreateExperimentButton() { 
const handleClick = () => {
     tracker.event('experiment_created');
     // other button logic
 };

  return <button onClick={handleClick}></button>  

}

Now whenever someone clicks the button, OpenReplay will receive an experiment_created event.

You'll want to add events to your app that make sense. In our example, we're using the following: signup_started, signup_complete, email_verified and workspace_created. We can then use these events to view a funnel and see where users are dropping off.

Now that you have the events setup, it's time to generate a funnel so that we can assess what to improve.

In OpenRelay, head over to cards on the left side panel menu. There, you'll find the option on the left hand side. Then click the create card button and select funnel. All options are highlighted in the screenshot below.

Next, you'll want to give the funnel a name. In our case we'll call it Onboarding.

After naming it, click the "Add" button next to events and start selecting the events that you've created. If you don't see the events yet, you'll need to walk through your onboarding flow to create them.

Once you've selected all the events in your flow, you'll see your first funnel. Ours is highlighted below in green.

Notice how our largest drop-off occurs between email verification and workspace creation, where only 26% of users continue to the next step.

This suggests the main opportunity is improving the onboarding experience rather than the initial signup flow. We could look at session replays and additional events around workspace creation to identify whether users are confused, encountering errors, or simply not seeing enough value to continue.

Pay attention to confusing navigation, repeated or dead clicks, form errors, hesitation, unexpected behaviour, and technical issues. Also look at the user's final actions before leaving and compare successful sessions with abandoned ones. These patterns can help you identify where users are experiencing friction and what parts of the product could be improved.

The same process applies for in app conversion too. You can monitor session replays to see if users are finding value in your product. Key indicators here are:

• Your users come back regularly: Depending on the product, 2-3 times a week is good. But of course if you're building a set-and-forget product like a reporting automation tool then this will likely be less.

• Users complete key actions: Look for users repeatedly completing the actions that represent the core value of your product, rather than simply logging in.

• Users explore beyond the initial setup: Users who continue discovering features and using different parts of the product are generally showing stronger engagement.

• Users reach their “aha moment”: Identify the point where users first experience the core value of your product and see how many users reach it.

• Users return after experiencing value: One of the strongest signals is whether users come back after their first successful experience and repeat the behaviour.

Once you've implemented the above, you'll be well setup to take advantage of users coming to your SAAS and signing up. Let's focus now on how to make that happen.

Product Distribution

Now if you remember at the start of this handbook, we talked about touch points. Well, it's now time to bring it all full circle as Distribution is simply creating many touch points at scale.

Distribution is the process of reliably getting your product in front of potential users consistently. It's the deciding factor in what will make your product successful, so pay close attention to this section.

The current misconception online is that distribution is now the most important thing since AI can build almost anything. What people fail to understand, though, is that this has always been the case.

The only difference now is that you can just ship more unused ideas than you could before. Without distribution, your project will always be that: just a personal project!

One of the most important lessons I want you to take away from this article is that distribution is far more important than the product when it comes to getting users in the door. Once they're there, product quality becomes very important – but that's a problem for later. If you can't get people through the door, then what's the point of having a lovely sofa, lights, and decoration?

Just to make it clear, I'm not saying product quality isn't important. Of course it is. But if you're building a software product and it's just you, then you can only tackle so much at once. Just like with engineering software, breaking problems down into smaller pieces makes life a lot easier.

I'd also say that participating in challenges on social platforms such as posting about your project each day to the indie hacking community is actually often a waste of your valuable time. This is because unless your product is aimed at the people who follow you or will see those posts, those viewers are very unlikely to get into your funnel and purchase your product.

With that being said, building an audience can take years. And when you're trying to build something, as well as validate it and pour your heart and soul into it, you may not have a ready audience.

But fortunately for you, you don't necessarily have to. You can borrow someone else's.

Borrow Someone Else's Audience

Instead of trying to build an audience from zero, you can leverage others who have already done it. There are some great options out there:

Write Guest Posts

You can start by writing guest post on blogs. For example, if you're building a Shopify app, find other Shopify apps in slightly different markets that your app could compliment. Then reach out to see if you can do a guest post on their blog.

You'd be surprised at how common this practice is. And in a lot of cases, its expected. I did this a lot when I was working on my second project, Devremote, and it worked perfectly

To find places to share guest posts, I mainly use Medium. But you can also just search for blogs in your industry/niche. Anything related can help here, and it's also great for your SEO in the long run.

PR platforms such as Qwoted are incredibly useful as well. I use it regularly to reach out to journalists who are reporting on a topic related to my company. Quite often they'll quote you (hence the name) and include a link back to your site in their article.

If you've ever seen someone on LinkedIn state "as mentioned in Forbes insert some random name" its often because they've gone onto PR platforms like Qwoted and convinced a Forbes writer to document something about them (and it's typically not because they're as great and powerful as they what you to believe).

Go on Podcasts

Small podcasts are also a great way to get yourself in front of a crowd. Aim for podcasts that have between 500 - 5000 active monthly listeners at first, as they may be more open to having less well-known guests.

You can also focus on niche areas, as the crowd will likely be more open to and curious about your particular product.

Here are some great platforms you can use to find podcasts:

Create or Share in a Newsletter

A good newsletter is a perfect place to distribute your product because most newsletters have decent open rates of around 35.9% (and the average unique click rate is 2.3%). This means that large volume newsletters have a good chance at sending high quality traffic to your website.

One solid example is the Indie Hackers newsletter. It's great for a startup, solo developer, or business audience.

The main issue with being featured in a newsletter, though, is that they're often not cheap and can have mixed results. You may not have $750 to spend, for example, so it's often better to save newsletters until you have more revenue generated from your project.

If you can find a reasonably priced newsletter in the niche that you've carved out, then its worth a go.

You can often find instructions for getting into a newsletter on the community or tool's main website. For example, with Indie Hackers, there's a link at the top right of their website.

Finding newsletters to get into can be a challenge, but there's a long list of platforms you can use to find one:

Typical fees for the large newsletters can be high, anything from $2,000 on up. I would recommend using multiple smaller newsletters at first, paying around $100-$200 each, in order to find out what niche works best for you. Then you can scale up to larger newsletters with more confidence that they'll help bring you more traffic.

Influencers and YouTubers

Partnering with an influencer or someone on YouTube is honestly one of the best angles to get your product in front of users. It can take more time than other approaches, but honestly, it's worth it.

This is my favourite approach. I mainly use YouTube influencers, but there are many good options.

You'll want to search for influencers who get decent views on their content but have between 1,000 - 10,000 followers/subscribers. Email them (you can often find their contact details in bios/about sections), propose a partnership, and roughly outline a deal structure.

You likely won't get many replies from most of the influencers you email (especially at first). But the ones that do reply will often give you feedback as well as expose your product to their audience.

The person from the email above ending up being a gem. Not only did he agree to the deal and invite me to his large discord community, but he also gave me great feedback and insights into how he conducted research. It was exactly what I needed.

You can find influencers by using a tool or by simply going to the platforms where your users are and searching for influencers. If you do use tools, here are some good options:

Just be aware that some of the options above are expensive. I'd recommend using the search functionality when its free and then performing the outreach yourself.

Communities & Forums

Communities offer a great option as they tend to be low cost, low barrier to entry, and full of people willing to help. You need to be prepared to add value though. Don't just spam post in these places, or it will do more harm than good (and you may be rejected from the community).

Offer insights into connects that you are knowledgeable about, reply and comment on peoples' posts, and so on. In short, you need to genuinely participate before trying to sell anything.

Remember that, unlike social media, people often join communities because they're trying to solve a problem. Use this to your advantage but don't abuse it. Be respectful.

A simple rule I follow is that I spend 90% of posts helping and 10% mentioning my product. Try and create educational content as much as possible and really add value. Over time, people will remember and be grateful. Plus, by helping them you've already gained some trust.

Peerlist is a great example of a community that you could join. If you're building products that target those audiences, they're a perfect fit.

SEO & Blog Content

Finally, we have the OG of internet marketing: SEO Content. This is the process of creating content that gets ranked in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, and other tools.

If you get this right, it's the most consistent path to getting thousands of people to visit your site every month for free. The catch is that it takes time. It can take anywhere from 3-9 months (or more) to start seeing results, and it requires consistency and patience.

Focus on creating 4-6 high quality blog posts per month that you can link back to from elsewhere. A good tactic is to combine a good blog post with a community, linking back to a blog post for further reading. This boosts your SEO and also provides the reader with more context if they need it.

To get started with understanding SEO, this video guide is helpful:

So, now that we've discussed the main distribution options on offer, it's time for us to figure out which option is best for you.

Main Distribution Channels In 2026

Should you decide to build your own channels, which you should, there are a few options that you should concentrate on.

To be clear, though, my advice here is to build one of your own channels and then leverage someone else's audience, especially if you're building a product solo.

The reason you should build your own path to distribution is because you own it and it will help you partner with other influencers. They'll see that you're putting in the effort yourself, which will likely make them way more comfortable with partnering with you.

These are the channels I'd focus on:

Tiktok

TikTok is a primarily short form content platform that lets users post 30-60 second clips.

It's an excellent platform for testing out content quickly. I'd recommend giving it a go because the content quality doesn't have to be super high, it just needs to be engaging. If it is, your chance of going viral is good.

It's not common to see new accounts achieve a post with 30k plus views in the first month, but it can happen.

If you're building a consumer app, its the best place to start building your audience. Apps also do well here because most people are on TikTok on their phone so it's easy to get them from there to the app. They don't have that initial friction of having to go from their laptop to their phone.

If you're building an app, TikTok is your go-to.

YouTube

YouTube is the Generalist. It's not as good for apps unless you use shorts, but a larger portion of users are on desktop so this means that there are more opportunities for SaaS businesses.

YouTube is also a place full of informational and educational content, so it's a great place to educate viewers about many SaaS-related tools. We'll discuss this more in a bit.

Just like TikTok, YouTube is a great channel with good content hitting reasonable subscriber rates quite quickly. If you're building a SaaS, YouTube is your friend most of the time.

The reason I say most of the time is because it can be niche-dependant. So for any short-from clips you make, post them on TikTok and then on YouTube.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a wildcard that a lot of people don't think about. It's is a strange platform in that it seems to not get a lot of engagement on posts but it does get a lot of views and clicks.

Here are some examples of purely AI content that was posted on Pintrest that I found recently while researching for my own SAAS product.

Nearly 400,000 monthly views...with 87 Followers. And here's another:

Pintrest is a pretty overlooked option in 2026 and it's great for awareness and testing, with low competition across most niches.

Considering that 96% of searches on Pintrest are unbranded, this is great for your project. It shows that users of the platform are open to new ideas and that there's a lot of them: 630 million monthly active users to be exact.

Use it as a testing ground and low barrier option. You can generate content using AI in your niche and it will likely do well on the platform, especially over time with consistent posting.

What Distribution Channel Should I Choose?

Cast your mind back to the start of this guide. I said that you need to create as many touch points as possible. And this is true, but you need to start somewhere. And the best place to start is simply where your users hang out.

If you're selling B2B SaaS, then the best place is likely going to be LinkedIn. If you're selling a consumer app, TikTok is your friend. And so on.

Ultimately, though, it'll involve a bit of trial and error to see what works for you. After all, what works for me might not work for you, and vice versa.

A solid rule of thumb is to choose one quick testing ground such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or Linkedin. Then combine it with a blog post on your main website.

The blog creates long term traffic potential and the social media platform creates traffic for now.

The advantage to social platforms is that you get a very quick turn around time on whether or not your content is working. If you post something today, you'll know in 24 hours if it worked, which is great because it means you can test quickly.

I've put this table together to help you decide what platform to start with based on what software you're building:

Now that you know how to chose your platform, success comes down to one last factor: consistency.

Consistency Beats Virality

The key to growing an audience when posting content is to not give up and create a consistent schedule that you can stick too. I'd recommend 4 blog posts per month, spread out to one each week. Each one should cover a topic in detail, targeting specific search terms related to your product.

With social media, the key is to have fun and experiment. I understand that for most developers, me included, social media is the last place we want to be. But unfortunately for us, it's still a great place to find users.

Buffer analysed more than 100,000 creators and found that those who posted consistently for at least 20 weeks achieved 450% more engagement per post than creators who posted only occasionally.

So, if you can force yourself to post consistently once or twice a day for 20 weeks, then there's a good chance you'll do well. You don't need to go viral, you just need to get a trickle of traffic to your website every day for 20 weeks and you'll increase the chances of gaining users significantly.

What Type Of Content Should I Post?

Now that we've looked at how to leverage others' audiences, where to post, and how to build your own distribution channel, we can finally focus on the last factor you need to consider: what to post.

If you're leveraging other audiences (especially if you are using influencers), then they'll likely handle that for you, as that's part of the deal. But for your own channel, here are some ideas of what you can post:

• Case studies: Show how a customer increased conversions, revenue, or solved a problem.

• Behind the scenes: Product development, team workflows, office setup, or your tech stack.

• Tips and tutorials: Teach people how to solve a specific problem in your niche.

• Mistakes you've made: The biggest lessons often come from failures.

• Industry news: Share your opinion on new trends, tools, or announcements.

• Product updates: Highlight new features and explain the problem they solve.

• Customer success stories: Celebrate users and the results they've achieved.

• Before and after transformations: Demonstrate measurable improvements.

• Data and statistics: Interesting charts, benchmarks, or market insights.

• Hot takes: Challenge common industry advice with evidence.

• Myths vs reality: Debunk misconceptions in your industry.

• Tool recommendations: Your favourite software, extensions, or AI tools.

• Templates and checklists: Give away resources people can use immediately.

• Free resources: E-books, prompts, spreadsheets, or starter kits.

• Frequently asked questions: Answer common customer questions publicly.

• Product comparisons: Compare your solution with competitors fairly.

• Lessons from successful companies: Analyse how others grew.

• Personal stories: Share your entrepreneurial journey and what you've learned.

• Day in the life: Show what running a SaaS business actually looks like.

• Memes and relatable humour: Particularly effective on X and LinkedIn.

• Predictions: Share where you think your industry is heading.

• Polls and questions: Encourage discussion and learn from your audience.

• Opinion pieces: Thought leadership on topics you know well.

• Quick wins: Bite-sized tips that take less than a minute to consume.

• Curated resources: "10 best..." lists, newsletters or articles worth reading.

• Product teardowns: Analyse why a landing page, onboarding flow, or feature works.

• Screenshots and mini demos: Short clips showing your product solving a real problem.

• Milestone updates: Revenue, users, launches, or major achievements (when appropriate).

• Community highlights: Feature your users, partners, or interesting discussions.

• Repurposed long-form content: Turn blogs, podcasts, or videos into dozens of social posts.

• Motivational founder content: Honest insights into entrepreneurship, persistence, and growth.

Just don't only go on Twitter and start documenting your build-in-public journey. The reality is that nobody cares about it until you've made it and your potential customers aren't looking at that type of content anyway.

Remember, it's all about adding value. Constantly trying to sell and showcase your product is just annoying and will likely drive people away. Viewers of your content are probably looking to solve a problem, find value, or be entertained. Great content does all these things.

Conclusion

In summary, you need to stop building, start marketing, and only build when your users need you to. As developers we love building. But the reality is that we need to be marketing as well. These days, where experienced devs can build an MVP in a relatively short period of time (with the help of AI tools), marketing, distribution, and content should be more of a priority.

If you don't start shouting about your product, then your product will be a project and it will remain that way for eternity.

All this goes hand in hand with understanding how traffic converts to users. Focus on fixing any friction in your funnel and combine that with the distribution strategies we covered here. That'll make your chances of success much greater.

Here's the formula:

Traffic + Optimised Landing Page + Frictionless onboarding + Quick time to value = Revenue and actual users on your app or website.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you're interested in finding your next product idea, then check out my website, Productjunkie. I send out weekly analysis of markets, niches, and product ideas that people actually want.