I shipped 18 micro tools and 27 browser games — nobody came. What am I doing wrong?

#discuss #webdev #gamedev #showdev

Over the past few weeks, I've been on a building spree:

18 free micro web tools — password generators, color pickers, JSON formatters, markdown editors, unit converters... all hosted on GitHub Pages
27 HTML5 browser games on itch.io — everything from tower defense to word puzzles
10 digital products on Gumroad — dev tool bundles, prompt packs, cheat sheets

Total visitors across everything: basically zero.

No traffic. No downloads. No sales. Just me and a mass grave of side projects.

What I tried

Posted tools on a few directories
Published articles on Dev.to (yes, including the clickbaity "10 AI prompts" kind — I know, I know)
Set up analytics, SEO basics, sitemaps

What I think went wrong

I optimized for shipping, not for distribution. Building 45+ things felt productive, but nobody knew they existed.
Zero community presence. I didn't comment on anyone else's work, didn't participate in forums, didn't build relationships.
Generic everything. My game descriptions were literally "A fun HTML5 X game!" copied 27 times. My tool landing pages had no personality.
No audience before launch. I built in a vacuum and expected people to magically find things.

What I'm changing

Actually participating in communities before dropping links
Writing about the journey (like this post) instead of listicles
Focusing on 2-3 tools that solve real problems instead of 18 mediocre ones
Making each project page unique and actually compelling

My question to you

Have you shipped something that got zero traction? What did you do differently the second time around? I'd love to hear what actually worked for you.

All tools are free and open source at maxmini0214.github.io. Games at maxmini0214.itch.io. Roast my approach — I can take it.

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