I Built the Automation Before I Solved the Traffic Problem
When I started building my digital product system, I spent a lot of time connecting tools.
Payhip handled payments and product delivery. Make connected the workflows. Telegram handled notifications. Notion kept things organized.
The technical side was interesting. Every time a workflow worked, it felt like progress.
But then I had to face a less exciting question:
How do people actually find the product?
A working payment flow doesn't bring visitors by itself. Automated delivery doesn't create demand. And a well-organized database doesn't tell you whether anyone wants what you're selling.
I realized I had spent a lot of time improving the system behind the business before proving that enough people cared about the product.
I'm still working on that part.
Instead of adding more features, I'm trying to focus on a few basic things:
- Publishing useful content where the right people already spend time.
- Making the free resources genuinely useful.
- Tracking whether readers move from an article to the repository or product page.
- Learning from actual user behavior instead of guessing what to build next.
It's a different kind of work from building automations, and honestly, it's harder to measure progress.
But it may be the more important work right now.
For those of you building small products: how do you balance improving the product with spending enough time getting it in front of people?
Top comments (1)
Your list of four things is all about content, but the third one is the only that tells you something: article to repo or product page. Without that number, publishing more is the same trap as adding more automations. I'd pick one article and look at that click-through alone for a couple of weeks before changing anything.