A side project can be technically finished and still be invisible. That is the awkward gap this source is trying to close: building software has become easier, but getting the attention of people who might use it has not. The useful question is not how to make a project look busy on every platform. It is how to create a small, trackable path from first discovery to a user who reaches value and decides to pay.
The source uses a micro-SaaS (a small software service built around a narrow problem) as its starting point and argues that distribution deserves attention before another round of code. I agree with the direction, with one qualification: distribution without a product people understand just creates more visitors who leave. Treat attention, activation, and retention as connected problems, not as separate marketing chores.
Start with one discovery path you can name
A touch point is the first place a possible user encounters the product outside the product itself. It might be a niche forum, a social group, an email, an article, or a post where the problem is already being discussed. The source’s example began in a Facebook group for dividend investing, which is a useful reminder that the audience belongs to the problem, not to the generic founder category.
The early goal is not to be everywhere. It is to find a place where people already have the vocabulary and pain your product addresses. A broad startup forum may provide sympathetic testers while producing few customers if the actual buyers never spend time there. Start with one channel and make the connection between the conversation and the product explicit.
- Niche communities. Join spaces where the problem is discussed without turning every reply into an advertisement.
- Relevant friends. Use people who resemble the intended user for feedback, not vanity signups.
- Specialist forums. Answer a narrow question and link only when the product genuinely extends the answer.
- Small social groups. Learn which phrasing makes the problem recognizable to the audience.
- Email contacts. Ask for a conversation or a trial from people who understand the context.
Each touch point should leave a trace you can identify later. If every visitor arrives as “direct” or “other,” you cannot tell which conversation deserves another hour.
Make the funnel visible from first click to value
A funnel is the sequence from initial interest through signup, onboarding, first use, and payment. The source describes the familiar path from a marketing page to registration, then onboarding and the first product screen. That sequence is more useful as a measurement map than as a promise that every user will behave in a straight line.
Define the events that matter before opening an analytics dashboard. For a small software product, the path may be discovery, landing-page visit, signup, onboarding completion, first meaningful action, and upgrade. Retention sits alongside the path because a user who pays once and disappears has not proven that the product delivers lasting value.
Avoid treating every stage as equally urgent. Find the largest drop, inspect the traffic and session evidence around it, and make one change that addresses a plausible cause. A signup problem and an onboarding problem are not the same repair, even if both show up as “low conversion” in a report.
Measure behavior with tools you can actually operate
The source recommends alternatives to Google Analytics and names Plausible, Umami, and OpenReplay as a possible combination. Plausible and Umami provide privacy-oriented site measurement, while OpenReplay records session behavior for inspection. The specific stack is less important than having a clear answer to what each tool is responsible for.
Use aggregate analytics for counts and paths. Use session replay or direct conversations to understand why a person stopped. Do not install three dashboards that all report page views while leaving signup, onboarding, and upgrade events undefined.
A practical starter instrument list looks like this:
- Acquisition source. Record where the visit began and which message brought the person in.
- Landing-page action. Track the call to action (the explicit next step you ask a visitor to take).
- Onboarding completion. Mark the point where a new user finishes setup.
- First useful action. Define the event that proves the product delivered an initial benefit.
- Paid conversion. Separate a trial or signup from an actual upgrade.
- Return behavior. Measure whether users come back and use the feature that created value.
This instrumentation is not a substitute for talking to users. It is a way to stop guessing which part of the path deserves the conversation.
Read metrics as clues, not grades
The source gives illustrative ranges for bounce rate, website conversion, onboarding completion, free-to-paid conversion, and monthly churn. Those numbers can be useful as orientation, but they are not universal pass marks. A blog, a targeted B2B landing page, and a consumer product will attract different visitors and create different denominators.
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing one page without a meaningful action. A high number can point to a mismatched traffic source, a confusing page, or a visitor who got exactly what they needed and had no reason to continue. Check the source of traffic before rewriting the page.
Conversion rate measures a desired action such as signup, a demo request, or purchase. Onboarding completion measures how many new users finish setup, while in-app conversion measures the movement from an activated user toward a paid plan. Churn measures customers who cancel or stop using the service in a period. Each metric needs a defined event and time window or it becomes a decorative label.
The source’s illustrative table lists average, good, and excellent bands, including bounce rates of 40 to 60 percent and free-to-paid conversion of 3 to 8 percent as average examples. Treat those as questions to investigate, not promises. Segment by channel, product type, and user intent before comparing one month with another.
Improve the weakest step before adding another channel
A landing page has a short window to explain the product. The source recommends a clear value proposition, one call to action, social proof used with restraint, mobile-first layout, fewer form fields, a visible product, and objections answered before they stop the visitor. That is a better checklist than adding another social account.
Traffic quality comes first. If a garden-management product is receiving visits from mechanic forums, a poor bounce rate may describe the audience mismatch rather than the landing page. A side project aimed at remote developers would expect more relevant sources such as developer communities, professional networks, and technical sites, but the principle is broader: compare the promise in the acquisition message with the promise on the page.
Once the source is plausible, change one page element at a time and watch the same event. Do not call a result meaningful because one afternoon looked better. The source recommends iteration and a month of testing for landing-page changes. That is a useful guard against turning random traffic variation into a product decision.
Trade-offs
Channel focus limits reach in the short term. Choosing one niche community means ignoring other platforms while you learn the language and the problem. The benefit is that you can tell whether the audience understands the offer instead of collecting unexplained impressions.
Privacy-oriented analytics can reduce the amount of ready-made reporting compared with a large advertising platform. Plausible, Umami, and OpenReplay still require setup, event definitions, and a decision about what session data you are willing to retain. The lower data burden is a design choice, not an absence of work.
Funnel measurement can tempt a founder to optimize clicks instead of value. A higher signup rate is not progress if users never complete onboarding or return. Instrumentation also takes time away from building features, and some metrics will remain noisy until the product has enough relevant traffic to make a comparison useful.
Distribution through someone else’s audience carries dependency risk. A community moderator can remove a post, a newsletter can change its focus, and a platform can alter how it surfaces content. Build owned contact paths, such as an email list or direct customer relationships, without pretending they become reliable overnight.
What I would tell past me
I would not open five social accounts before I could name the first useful action in the product. I would choose one audience that already discusses the problem, mark the path from discovery to value, and instrument only the events needed to find the largest drop. Then I would use the result of one month of focused observation to decide whether the bottleneck was traffic quality, page clarity, onboarding, or retention. More reach is helpful only after the product gives the new visitor a reason to stay.