u/No_Cake8366

That’s probably the biggest thing I’ve learned from working around small AI and SaaS projects.

You can get an MVP running surprisingly fast now. The harder part starts after launch: figuring out where to share it, which directories are worth the effort, and how to avoid spending half the day manually tracking submissions.

While looking into different launch resources, I came across Nick Launches. I liked that it seems more focused on the actual launch process rather than just being another place to list a product.

It got me thinking about how other founders handle distribution.

Do you still put most of your energy into places like Reddit and Product Hunt, or have smaller launch directories and communities actually brought you decent users?

I keep a catalog of launch directories, 172 in it now. For each row: domain rating, traffic level, backlink quality, pricing model, niche, and link type.

Link type is the field that decides whether a submission was worth the twenty minutes, and it is the one no listicle includes.

A no-follow link from a DR 80 directory does less for you than a do-follow from a DR 30 one. Listicles sort by domain rating because domain rating is easy to look up. It is also the number that matters least when the link is no-follow, behind a /out/?url= redirect, or on a page Google has never crawled.

Of the 172 rows, 6 are no-follow. Their domain ratings are 91, 80, 75, 74, 52 and 43. The no-follow ones sit near the top of the DR sort, which is precisely where a listicle tells you to start.

Two checks before you fill any form:

>link type. Open the page, read the attribute
site: query on the directory's own domain. Plenty have thousands of listing pages and a few hundred indexed. An unindexed listing page is a page nobody will crawl

Both are mechanical enough to hand to an agent. The form filling is what stays manual, half of them break on autofill.

Catalog is free and public on my site under tools. Not linking it here since I run it, ask and I will send it.

This is the subreddit for Nick Launches, a product discovery directory for indie makers. It is not a promo board for my site and will not become one.

The daily thread. Every morning there is a thread asking what you are working on. Lowest effort way to be here.

Posting your own thing. Allowed. Two conditions: say what it does before you say why it is good, and if you drop a link, leave feedback on two other people first.

Removed: link drops with no context, the same product every week, AI written walls with no personal detail, asking for upvotes.

About me. I run Nick Launches. When I post numbers they are real and I say where they came from and when I measured them. If I post something that reads like an ad, call it out and I will take it down.

Go say what you are building 🔥

Not "what have you tried". Where does your product actually exist right now, as in a page someone could land on today.

Your site. Your X or LinkedIn. Any directory listing. Any community post that is still up. A GitHub readme. A YouTube demo. Anything with a URL.

Most products under 100 users exist in exactly two places: their own domain and one social account. That is not a marketing failure, it is a surface area problem. Nobody can find you because there is almost nothing to find.

Drop:

• what it does, one or two sentences
• your landing page
• every other place it currently exists (just list them)

I will tell you what is obviously missing for your category and which gaps are actually worth filling. Some of them are not.

Fair warning, if your list is short this is going to be a boring answer: go make more surface area. But most people have not counted, and counting is the thing that makes it obvious.

https://preview.redd.it/mmiob67gg7fh1.png?width=854&format=png&auto=webp&s=0689f483e0eb94158ef3e948f9a9a8793110b5bf

Still feels a bit unreal typing this. 82 days ago I launched a directory for indie products with zero users and zero traffic. This week Stripe crossing 7k.

Context: I run Nick Launches, a launch platform where builders submit their products. The free tier is the whole engine: listing is free, every product gets a permanent dofollow backlink, and there are daily visitors browsing new launches. Right now it holds 900+ live products from 2,100+ builders and takes 100+ submissions a week.

The revenue comes from two paid things on top of the free tier: premium launch placement, and a done-for-you directory submission service. For that one we manually submit your product to 30+, 60+ or 100+ other launch directories (real humans filling real forms) and send back a report with every listing URL so you can verify it yourself. That service turned into the bigger revenue source, which honestly surprised me. I expected placement to win.

A few things that actually worked:

• Posting on X every day. Building in public: numbers, flops, milestones, announcments. Being useful in replies beat every growth hack I tried.
• Giving away the thing competitors charge for. Most directories paywall the backlink. I made it free and permanent, and it became the reason people submit. The site went DR 0 to 67 in under 3 months (badges on listed products compound, every new product makes the domain stronger, which makes the free backlink more valuable, which brings more products). The free tier sells the paid tiers, I never have to.
• Doing the unscalable checks by hand. Every landing page that goes into the weekly newsletter gets opened and checked by a human before it's featured. Builders notice, and they come back with their next product.
• Selling the grind I was already doing. The submission service exists because I was doing directory submissions manually anyway and know exactly how tedious it is: every directory wants a different tagline length, half want a different logo size, some make you come back next day to confirm. Founders happily pay to not spend 40+ hours on that. If a boring manual task keeps showing up in your niche, that's a product.

What flopped or nearly killed it:

• Got hit with a programmatic SEO penalty in week 1. Thousands of thin generated pages, Google noticed fast. Cut them, recovered in days, but it was a scary start.
• Google indexing is still the slowest part. You can have a DR 60+ domain and Google will still take its time discovering new pages. Backlinks and internal link hubs move it, nothing makes it instant.
• Slow days on the feed taught me the feed is not the funnel. Some of the quietest days on X were the best sales days. Views and revenue are two different graphs.
• Strangest milestone: someone on Reddit started recommending my directory in threads as their own. "Try mine!" I happened to be in the same thread. Apparently nobody impersonates a product with no reach, so I'm taking it as a compliment.
• If you're launching something soon or launched recently, the listing is free and the backlink is permanent: nicklaunches.com. And if you have questions about running a directory, or what I see from 200+ submissions a week (most launch pages repeat the same 5 mistakes), happy to answer everything in the comments.

Hi everyone,

I am looking for coding, vibe coding or tech websites for guest posting from UK-USA. Please DM or share list. Thanks.

You spent three weeks setting up over-engineered infrastructure for an app with zero users. Tell us what you built your project with, and let the comments debate why it’s completely wrong for 2026. Convince us you didn't waste your time.

Share what you are currently working on

I'm a building Nick Launches where builders get more visibility and people discover exciting new products 🔥

Two months ago Nick Launches had a DR of 0. Today it is 63. Here is everything that actually moved it, and nothing that didn't.

Quick context: Nick Launches is a directory where indie makers submit their product and get a listing, a backlink, and a steady trickle of people who are specifically browsing for new tools. Over these two months more than a thousand builders have used it to get discovered. Growing the site's own authority is what makes those backlinks worth more, so DR was the thing I obsessed over.

What worked, in order of impact:

1. Curated do-follow directories only. I submitted to every directory that gives a real do-follow link and skipped the spam lists that point at 10,000 sites. The quality of the linking page matters more than the count.

2. Launch week everywhere at once. Product Hunt plus every niche launch site in the same week. The links cluster and the referral traffic compounds instead of trickling.

3. Trade features with builders in your lane. I featured other makers, they featured me. Both sites win, both get a relevant do-follow link.

4. Turn every milestone into a page worth linking to. A "0 to DR 40" writeup, a weekly recap, a small free tool. People link to a resource, not to a homepage.

5. Show up every single day. The more consistent you are in public, the more people link you without being asked.

That is the whole thing. No PBNs, no bought links, nothing I would be embarrassed to explain.

The part I did not expect: helping other builders get discovered turned into the biggest growth loop. Every product listed is another page, another reason for someone to link in, another maker who shares it. Discovery and authority end up feeding each other.

Happy to answer anything. What is your DR right now, and what is the one link that moved it the most?

The problem:

I was using AI every day for marketing, research, and product work. And every day I was burning 15-20 minutes before I could even start — just trying to figure out how to phrase the prompt.

The AI worked fine. My inputs were the problem. I'd write something vague, get a mediocre output, rewrite it, get something slightly better, rewrite again. By the time I had something useful, I'd lost half an hour.

I tried the advice: "be specific, set a persona, give examples." Good guidance in theory. Not a tool. Not something you can use when you're staring at a blank box with a deadline.

What I built:

Prompt Builder generates model-specific AI prompts in seconds — you answer a few guided questions and get a prompt tuned for whichever model you're actually using (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Grok, etc.).

[Insert screen recording here — 30-60 seconds showing: open the tool, select a use case, pick a model, generate and refine a prompt, copy to your AI tool of choice]

How it works:

→ Pick your use case (marketing, coding, research, SQL, social, and more) → Select your target AI model → Answer guided questions about your specific task → Get an optimized, model-aware prompt in seconds

Where it's at right now:

Built this over 17 months, launched last week on AppSumo as a lifetime deal. Early days — no reviews yet. Using it myself every single day, which is how I know it actually works, but I'm genuinely curious what gaps people find.

What I'd love feedback on:

We built templates for 8 use cases: Marketing, SEO, Coding, Data/SQL, Product, Support, Social, Research. Are there obvious ones missing? And does the model-specific angle matter to you, or is "better prompts generally" value prop enough?

---

Happy to answer questions about the tech stack, the journey, or the AppSumo decision.

15 days ago I shipped a launch platform for SaaS and indie founders who are tired of one-day spikes on crowded leaderboards.

Day 15 numbers:

- $425 revenue
- 213 products live
- 450 signups
- 12K page views (up 2,138%)
- 1,800 X followers (from 120)
- DR 44 (from 0)
- 350 newsletter subs

Pre-MRR. Revenue is one-time fees for featured slots and a hand-done submission service while I work out the right recurring plan.

What worked, ranked by signups:

1. Replying to other founders on X. If someone tweeted "just launched" or "looking for users", I replied with something useful and a soft mention. Biggest source by a wide margin.
2. X ads. Small daily budget, indie/SaaS targeting. Cheap, steady trickle.
3. My own X audience. 120 to 1,800 followers in 15 days. Daily posts with a number or a screenshot. Day 1 posts got 4 likes. Day 14 posts get 600+.
4. Reddit. r/SideProject, r/buildinpublic, r/IndieDev, r/juststart, r/linkbuilding. 30K combined views. Numbers + lessons format only.
5. Free dofollow backlink on every approved submission. Builders forwarded it to each other.

Happy to answer anything in comments.

Disclosure: I'm the founder. Will share the link if asked.