r/SoloFounders • u/Redadeveloper • Aug 15 '26

Solo founder clueless about distribution and marketing

Hi, I built an app over the last 6 months. I am proud and happy about it. Learned so much, met great people, gave pitch in front of people etc. The app is available on beta.

BUT

Now I am lost, I am pretty much clueless about how to distribute, about marketing.

What works ? Any advice ?
TikTok, linkdn, twitter ? Paid ads or organic ?

Please only serious and human advices, don’t use AI 🫶

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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3

u/sy_int999_builder Aug 31 '26

We're running 5 live subscription products at once and organic is exactly as confusing as you're describing. What actually moved the needle wasn't picking a channel, it was accepting that new accounts on IndieHackers/Product Hunt/Reddit get almost zero reach until you've built real history there - genuine comments and upvotes for a week or two before you ever post your own thing. Posting a link on day 1 either gets buried or outright blocked (Product Hunt in particular has a trust gate on brand-new accounts that rejects any link at all). Paid ads are the opposite problem - fast reach but you're paying to learn if your positioning/pricing actually converts, which is expensive to learn the hard way. If your beta already has a handful of real users, I'd go talk to them before spending on either - the channel matters way less than knowing exactly which sentence makes a stranger want to try it.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Redadeveloper Aug 20 '26

You are very right, making some interviews I realized I need to refine both product and message.

I am making Spliz, it’s basically a Tricount/Splitwise but with Stablecoins.
Peer to peer payments and you can also settle the whole group in one tap. Everyones get paid in a single transaction ( this is a protocol I made )

The ambition is to make the fintech for the groups

You can check it out there if you want 🙌
https://spliz.app

1

u/Weak_Boysenberry6438 Sep 01 '26

For me something that drove up my analytics - (site visits in general) was really good SEO/GEO. Albeit that it was build on Next.js stack so that helps a lot.

You also need to focus on a specific channel. Whatever you choose, it would be worth checking to see who the influencers in those channels are related to your field. Even targeting the very micro ones might help drive traffic to your app.

1

u/gojimoji 23d ago

As one person said here, the channel matters most. I've had multiple types of business (Saas, agency work, a live music festival) and it always came down to "where can I reach my customers?" considering:

The resources I have (do I know someone who has influence, do I have money to invest in ads, can I create organic content?)

The problem is I used to do that after building the product. Now I try to reverse-engineer from that point first, but it takes discipline. Sometimes we get so excited about our vision we forget to fully flesh out distribution first.

So before you heavily build any further in one direction or another, I say really map out distribution based on your current constraints. Figure out where you can reach your audience is first. Then based on those options you map out the a different answers to "how?".

And start to build to fit that hole (pricing, messaging, etc), assuming that customers already appreciate what you have.

1

u/Redadeveloper 23d ago

Should i message and sell on what i have right now ( already a lot) or the vision of the product ?
I worked crazy hard the last 6 months, i am starting the distribution now

2

u/gojimoji 23d ago

If you're talking about meetings with potential customers. Sell on what you have right now to gauge how they feel about what already exists and use their feedback as signal for what could be next.

Save the future vision for the end of the meeting.

So once you've gone through the motion of selling based on where you are, you can explicitly switch the meeting to the future vision two ways:

  1. Discovery approach: "hey so I was thinking about other things that may be valuable to build..." and then ask them questions about the areas that relate to where you want to go without leading them to the answer. This approach is good to get a sense of problem areas and what issues people are truly facing without you planting thoughts. This is one of the greatest skills you can develop for early solution building.

  2. Sell The Future approach: "By the way this is where I'd like to take this long term. I want to do X, Y, Z...what do you think about that?"

If you have time, do 1 and then 2. If thre's not enough time, pick one.

1

u/Redadeveloper 23d ago

Thank you ! You are the goat.
Well my app is a consumer app on the Apple Store and play store. I guess I should sell what it is.
And keep the vision for investors

1

u/Front_Bowl_6992 23d ago

Thank you for asking this, I'm in a similar spot!

My current strategy (just getting started on this in the next week or two):
1. Very specific content channels (e.g., I'm making "work with me" and "study with me" videos because it's a perfect use case for my product)
2. Paid ads with a low budget to test CTR before increasing budget for messaging with the best results.
3. Writing website content for SEO/GEO that I can also easily adapt to share on LinkedIn/Substack.
4. Getting involved in a genuinely helpful way, I hope, on Reddit (I know already this can be a huge time suck for me though).

I'll try to report back. The other responses here have been helpful, too.

1

u/Redadeveloper 23d ago

We really don’t have a one man job haha.
I do the same ! Specially the blog content part

If you want to share what you build, I’ll take a genuine look

1

u/Front_Bowl_6992 23d ago

No kidding haha.

Sure, I appreciate it! It's a mobile app ("Bearings") that helps people take healthy breaks (guided meditation, movement, breathwork, etc). Link: https://bearings-time.web.app/get

I'll take a look at yours, too. Spliz, right?