Why Distribution Belongs Inside Your MVP, Not After It

I spent a year building fourteen products. Most of them are good. Some of them solve real problems. Almost none of them have users.

The reason is embarrassingly simple: I treated distribution as a post-launch task. Something to figure out after the code works, after the design is polished, after the landing page is just right.

That was wrong.

The build trap

Here's what happened. I'd validate a niche, build an MVP in a few days, ship it, post it somewhere, and wait. The product worked. The landing page converted okay. Nobody came.

Four of my products had solid problem-solution fit. Users who found them liked them. But "users who found them" was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, because almost nobody found them.

What actually moved the needle

After months of near-zero traction across the portfolio, three things started working:

SEO comparison pages. Instead of trying to rank for head terms, I built pages comparing my products to established competitors. These pages rank faster because the query intent is specific and the competition is lower. One product (, a portfolio of small products looking for traction. If you're in the same boat, I'd love to hear what distribution channels work for you.