i published 50 posts on indie hackers and 39 articles on dev.to in 3 weeks. total revenue: $0. here's what i learned about content marketing when nobody is buying.
the numbers
- 50+ indie hackers posts — building in public, cold email journey, product validation
- 39+ dev.to articles — technical tutorials, code breakdowns, tool comparisons
- 92+ notifications on IH — genuine engagement, comments, collaboration offers
- 2 collaboration offers — viascan (accessibility scanning), HarshGarg06
- $0 revenue — zero sales, zero downloads tracked, zero paying customers
what worked
engagement is real. people respond to honest building-in-public content. the cold email failures, the gmail restriction, the $0 revenue — these resonate with other founders.
dev.to articles index on google. my articles about scraping agency emails and building cold email pipelines will eventually rank for commercial keywords.
collaboration opportunities. the viascan partnership (combining SEO + accessibility scanning) came directly from an IH comment.
what didn't work
IH engagement doesn't convert to sales. the people reading my posts are indie hackers, not agency salespeople who need contact data.
volume alone isn't a strategy. 50 posts doesn't matter if 50 posts reach the wrong audience.
gumroad has zero organic discovery. nobody finds products through gumroad's marketplace.
the real distribution channels
after 50 posts, i've identified what will actually drive revenue:
- email outreach — 2,000 personalized emails ready to send when gmail restores
- google SEO — dev.to articles ranking for buyer keywords
- direct partnerships — viascan collaboration creating a combined product
the products
if you're building outreach tools or need agency data:
- free SEO chrome extension — audit any website in 10 seconds ($9 for pro)
- free 50-agency contact sample — verify the data quality before buying
- managed outreach service — we handle the entire pipeline
content marketing works. but it works on the timeline of months, not days. the first dollar will come from email outreach, not from blog posts.
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