Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Short-term (< 3 months)
Here's the thing about indie developers: you build amazing products that nobody knows exist. You're the talented musician playing incredible songs in an empty venue, wondering why the audience isn't showing up.
I've watched this pattern countless times while working with no-code MVPs and early-stage SaaS products. Developers obsess over features, architecture, and code quality—all important stuff. But then they expect users to magically discover their creation through some mystical internet force.
The harsh reality? Your competition isn't other indie developers. It's Netflix, Instagram, and every other app fighting for users' attention. You need traction strategies that work when you have zero budget, zero audience, and zero connections.
After helping multiple indie projects gain their first users through unconventional tactics, here's what you'll learn:
Why traditional marketing advice fails indie developers (and what actually works)
Five creative traction channels I've tested with zero-budget projects
The "do things that don't scale" playbook adapted for solo builders
How to find your first 100 users before you have any social proof
Real tactics that worked for getting featured without industry connections
This isn't about growth hacking or viral loops. It's about systematic approaches to building distribution when you're starting from absolute zero.
Industry Reality
What every indie developer already knows
Walk into any indie developer community, and you'll hear the same advice repeated endlessly. Build a great product, and users will come. Share on social media. Write blog posts. Join communities. "Just be authentic and provide value."
The typical traction playbook looks like this:
Product Hunt launch - Because every indie product needs that orange badge
Social media presence - Tweet daily, share your journey, build in public
Content marketing - Start a blog, write tutorials, share your expertise
Community engagement - Be helpful in forums, Discord servers, Reddit threads
Email list building - Create a landing page with a "notify me" form
This advice exists because it's true—these channels can work. The problem isn't that the strategies are wrong. The problem is that everyone else is doing exactly the same thing, creating massive competition for attention in already saturated channels.
When every indie developer is tweeting their daily progress and sharing the same "lessons learned" content, your voice gets lost in the noise. When thousands of products launch on Product Hunt every month, most get buried without a trace.
The conventional wisdom assumes you have time to build an audience over months or years. But as an indie developer, you probably have limited runway and need to validate your product quickly. You can't afford to spend six months building a Twitter following while your motivation and savings account both dwindle.
This is why most indie projects fail at the traction stage, not the product stage.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
I learned this the hard way while working with several early-stage projects. One particular case stands out: a no-code automation tool built by a solo developer who had spent eight months perfecting the product.
The tool was genuinely useful—it could automate complex workflows between different apps without requiring any coding knowledge. The interface was clean, the functionality was solid, and early beta users loved it. But after launching with the standard indie playbook, he had attracted only 47 users in two months.
His approach was textbook perfect according to conventional wisdom. He had built in public on Twitter, sharing progress updates and screenshots. He wrote detailed blog posts about the technical challenges he solved. He launched on Product Hunt and got featured in a few indie newsletters. He was active in no-code communities, helping others with their automation questions.
Yet the growth was painfully slow. The problem became clear when we analyzed where his users were actually coming from. Despite months of content creation and community engagement, most signups were from direct referrals—friends and colleagues who he'd personally shown the product to.
This pattern revealed something important: his best traction came from one-on-one interactions where he could demonstrate the product's value directly. But he was spending 80% of his time on scalable marketing activities that weren't working, and only 20% on the manual, unscalable activities that were actually bringing in users.
That's when we decided to flip the strategy completely. Instead of trying to build an audience and hoping they'd convert, we focused entirely on tactics that could bring immediate users, even if they didn't scale long-term.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
We restructured the entire approach around five core principles that work specifically for indie developers with zero audience and zero budget.
1. The Direct Outreach System
Instead of hoping potential users would find the content, we went directly to where they already were. For the automation tool, this meant identifying specific pain points and reaching out to people experiencing them right now.
The process was systematic: scan communities for posts where people were asking questions that the product could solve. Instead of posting a generic "our tool can help" response, send personalized direct messages with specific solutions to their exact problem, including a custom demo video.
We created 3-minute Loom videos for each outreach, showing exactly how the tool would solve their specific use case. The response rate was dramatically higher than any content marketing effort had achieved.
2. The Expert Positioning Strategy
Rather than competing for attention as "another indie developer," we positioned him as a workflow automation expert. This meant shifting from sharing what he was building to sharing how to solve specific automation problems.
The tactical execution: answer detailed questions in communities with actionable solutions, regardless of whether they involved his product. When someone asked about Zapier alternatives, he'd provide a comprehensive breakdown of different options—including his tool as one option among many.
This approach built genuine trust and positioned the product as a natural solution rather than a sales pitch.
3. The Partnership Multiplication Method
Since competing for individual attention was difficult, we focused on partnerships with people who already had the audience we needed. But instead of asking for favors, we created genuine value for potential partners.
For example, he built custom automation templates specifically for different no-code tools and reached out to the creators of those tools. Instead of asking them to promote his product, he offered to share the templates as resources for their users—with attribution back to his tool.
Several tool creators featured these resources in their newsletters and documentation, bringing qualified users who were already interested in automation.
4. The Problem-First Content Approach
Instead of writing about his product or journey, we focused entirely on solving specific problems that potential users were actively searching for. Each piece of content was designed to rank for long-tail keywords related to automation challenges.
The content structure was always: identify specific problem → explain why existing solutions fall short → provide step-by-step solution → mention his tool as one implementation option. This approach drove more qualified traffic than months of "building in public" content.
5. The Manual Success System
The biggest breakthrough came from embracing completely manual, unscalable activities. For every new user, he offered a 15-minute personal onboarding call to set up their first automation. This was incredibly time-intensive but created an extraordinary user experience.
These users became natural advocates because they'd experienced white-glove service from a solo developer. Many referred colleagues and wrote detailed reviews about both the product and the exceptional support experience.
Manual Outreach
Direct one-on-one conversations with potential users in their existing communities rather than broadcasting to everyone
Expert Positioning
Sharing solutions to problems rather than promoting products—becoming known for expertise first
Partnership Value
Creating resources for other tools' audiences rather than asking for promotion favors
Unscalable Service
Offering personal onboarding calls to create exceptional experiences that generate word-of-mouth
The results were significantly better than the traditional approach, though they required much more manual effort upfront.
Within 60 days of implementing this strategy, the tool had grown from 47 to over 400 active users. More importantly, the quality of users was dramatically higher—they were actually using the tool regularly rather than just signing up and abandoning it.
The direct outreach approach had a 23% response rate, with about 40% of respondents becoming users after seeing the custom demo videos. This was far more effective than any content marketing or social media effort had been.
The expert positioning strategy resulted in several organic mentions in popular newsletters and communities. People started asking for his input on automation questions, which created a natural funnel of potential users.
Perhaps most importantly, the manual onboarding calls created a foundation of highly engaged users who became the product's best advocates. These early users provided detailed feedback that improved the product and referred an average of 2.3 new users each.
The time investment was significant—about 15 hours per week on outreach and user conversations. But this manual effort created sustainable momentum that continued even when he scaled back the direct involvement.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The most important lesson from this experience: indie developers should optimize for speed to market validation, not scalable marketing systems. Traditional marketing advice assumes you have time to build an audience over months or years, but indie projects need faster feedback loops.
Here are the key insights that changed how I think about indie traction:
Distribution beats product quality - A mediocre product with great distribution will outperform a great product with poor distribution every time
Manual tactics work better early on - Spend your time on unscalable activities that create immediate value rather than building scalable systems prematurely
Positioning matters more than features - How you frame the problem is more important than how you build the solution
Quality over quantity always wins - 100 engaged users who love your product are infinitely more valuable than 1,000 users who barely use it
Cross-industry learning accelerates growth - The best traction strategies often come from completely different industries
Personal attention scales through advocacy - Exceptional service to early users creates a multiplier effect through referrals and testimonials
Timing beats perfect execution - Being present in the right conversations at the right time matters more than having the perfect pitch
The biggest mistake I see indie developers make is treating traction like a side project. They spend 90% of their time building and 10% on user acquisition, then wonder why nobody uses their product. The most successful indie projects flip this ratio during the early stages.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, focus on direct user research through outreach rather than building features in isolation. Start with personal demos before building scalable onboarding. Use manual customer success to understand what makes users stick around. Create partnership opportunities with complementary tools early in development.
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce, apply these principles by building relationships with micro-influencers in your niche rather than paying for ads. Offer exceptional customer service that generates word-of-mouth. Create valuable content that solves real problems your customers face. Partner with related businesses for cross-promotion.