u/OkPangolin8152

Posted here two months back asking about promotion on a tiny budget. Some of the advice actually helped — someone said stop pushing the whole platform, just lead with one small feature, so I did that with an AI thing that helps freelancers write their first profile. Seemed to work better than pitching "the platform."

Since then I've just been manually messaging people in Singapore, China, Malaysia instead of posting and waiting. Got about 20 real conversations, 48 signups, 5 people actually finished a profile. Tried X ads again too, just to be sure — 70k impressions, 12 likes, nothing real came out of it. Not doing that again.

So the freelancer side is finally moving. Problem is I've got basically one real client, and I had to talk them into it myself, it's not like the platform brought them in.

Every employer I do manage to talk to asks the same thing basically — can they actually get someone good, has anyone made money doing this yet. Which I can't really prove with one data point.

Kind of worried too, freelancers signing up and seeing nothing posted is its own problem, they'll just leave.

Anyone dealt with this before — one side of a marketplace moving, other side just not showing up? How'd you find your first real employers.

Background: I built SereinWork, a 0% commission freelance platform, solo.

A few of you signed up last time and told me straight up the platform felt empty on the client side. You were right. Fixed the homepage since then — it used to try to talk to freelancers and clients at once, now it doesn't. Also toned down the AI mascot stuff that was confusing people.

Spent the last few weeks doing manual outreach across Singapore, China, and Malaysia — DMs, comments, actual conversations, no ad spend. Tried X ads again anyway out of curiosity, 70K+ impressions got 12 likes and nothing else. Confirmed twice now that's not the move.

Since then: about 20 conversations, 48 signups, 5 real profiles, 1 actual job posted (a SG fitness brand looking for a content creator).

First time growth actually moved instead of sitting flat. But now freelancers are outpacing employers by a lot, and I had to personally convince the one client who posted. Not sure what happens once there are way more freelancers than jobs.

If anyone's hired freelancers before or built a two-sided thing through this stage — where do you even look for early employers?

Quick background — solo dev, two months into SereinWork (0% commission freelance platform, people get found by their work instead of a résumé). Still trying to crack the cold start problem.

Past couple weeks I've been running the same basic pitch — "here's what I'm building, here's what's broken, can you help" — across X, Reddit, and Xiaohongshu (a Chinese platform, kind of like Pinterest/Instagram, big for freelance/side-hustle stuff over there). Wanted to share how differently it went.

X: Paid promotion, 40k+ impressions on one post. Zero comments, zero replies. Bought eyeballs, not engagement.

Xiaohongshu: People comment fast and casually — "I do this too," skills dropped in replies. Good for finding people quickly, but conversations stay pretty surface-level.

Reddit: This is where it actually got real. One person signed up, poked around, and told me straight up the site felt empty because there's nothing for clients/buyers yet — just freelancers. A full-stack dev offered to test it after I replied to their comment. A couple people called my cold DMs borderline spammy, which stung a little but was fair. None of that depth happened anywhere else — just a different kind of crowd here, more willing to actually dig in and tell you what's wrong.

The thing I still haven't cracked: I've got a small handful of freelancers in now (marketing, translation, dev, design), but almost no one on the demand side — people or teams who actually need to hire someone. Classic two-sided marketplace problem, doesn't matter how good one side looks without the other.

If anyone's cracked getting the "buyer" side moving early on a marketplace, genuinely want to hear how. And if you've got a small project that needs a hand — happy to see if there's a fit, no pressure either way.

Quick background if you missed my last post — I'm a solo dev in Singapore, two months into SereinWork (a freelance platform, 0% commission, people get discovered by their work instead of a résumé). Still at zero real users. Tried paid ads on X, tried organic posting. Both went nowhere.

So this weekend I tried something that felt slightly embarrassing: I went to r/freelance_forhire, found people with [For Hire] posts, and just... DMed them. Not "check out my app," more like "hey, your work looks solid, I'm building this thing, would you be open to setting up a profile and telling me what's broken."

Some notes from doing this for the first time:

The DM limit is real. Reddit caps how many DMs you can send per day if your account isn't established. I hit it after like 6 messages. Had to wait a full day to send more. Did not know this was a thing.

Writing the message was harder than I expected. I kept re-reading my drafts and thinking "does this sound like I have an exciting opportunity for you 🙏" — which, if you've ever gotten one of those, you know exactly the energy I mean. Took a few rewrites to get something that didn't sound like that.

Most people haven't responded yet. Which, fair — I'm a stranger DMing them out of nowhere. But one person, a full-stack dev from Singapore who replied to my other post (also does craft/maker stuff on the side), said they'd be open to it. Following up with them today.

The honest part: I don't know yet if any of this will turn into an actual user. But it already feels more real than anything paid promotion did — at least now there's a specific person, with a specific reply, that I can follow up with tomorrow.

If anyone else has done this kind of manual, one-by-one outreach for an early product — genuinely curious what worked, what didn't, and how long it took before it started feeling less like cold-DMing strangers and more like... actually building something.

Hey everyone, SG-based indie dev here.

Over the past year I built two projects by myself:

CozyWeek — a travel guide for people visiting China who have no idea where to start (payments, trains, apps, the stuff Google doesn't really explain well).

SereinWork — a freelance platform where people get discovered through their work, not their résumé. Zero commission. No middleman cut, ever.

CozyWeek got some traction through SEO. Not making money, but people are actually reading it.

SereinWork? Two months in. Still at zero real users.

The first "match" I made was completely manual — I saw someone on social media looking for a custom cosplay wig maker, found someone who makes them, connected them over DM. They're now working together. That felt real. But I haven't been able to repeat it through the platform itself.

I know the product works on paper. The AI inside it has had thousands of real conversations helping people draft profiles and project briefs. But nobody's actually using it to find work or hire someone yet.

I've tried paid promotion on X. Poor results. I've tried organic posting. Also poor results.

What I'm starting to think: the problem isn't the product. It's that a marketplace with no people on it looks empty, and empty things are hard to trust. Classic cold start.

So I'm trying something different — instead of waiting for users to show up, I'm going to manually build the first few real cases myself.

If you're a Singapore-based freelancer — designer, developer, writer, video editor, anything — and you'd be willing to create a profile and tell me honestly what's broken, I'd really appreciate it. Not looking for encouragement. Looking for "this part is confusing" or "I'd never use this because X."

5 people is all I need right now.

Drop a comment or DM me. Happy to also just chat about the cold start problem — feels like a lot of us are stuck in the same place.

Hi everyone,

I’m a marketing beginner, and I’m trying to figure out how to promote my websites with a very limited budget.

Over the past year, I built two projects by myself:

1. A travel website
2. A freelance platform

I learned a lot on the technical side: building pages, improving the product, writing content, basic SEO, integrations, etc.

But now I’m hitting the real wall:

I don’t know how to get users.

For the travel website, because I’m just an individual developer with no team, I mostly tried what seemed realistic: OTA affiliate programs, SEO, and detailed travel content.

The SEO actually worked a little in the first half of the year. Some users came to read my detailed attraction guides and travel information.

But the painful part is: I made basically no money from it.

I’m starting to wonder if my monetization path is wrong. Maybe trying to sell hotels, train tickets, eSIM cards, or other affiliate travel products is not the right angle for my site, or maybe I’m attracting readers who are not ready to buy anything.

The second project is a freelance platform, and honestly, it’s the one I care about the most.

But this one has been even harder.

I spent some money trying to promote it on social media, but the results were poor.

The first order came from me personally helping someone through social media. After that, two new users joined, and then basically nothing.

What I noticed is interesting but frustrating:

People sometimes praise the website, the design, or the fact that I built it alone.

But they don’t seem to trust it enough to actually use it.

It feels like there is a big distance between “this is a nice indie project” and “I will put my freelance profile here / use this platform seriously.”

I’ve been trying to adjust the positioning.

I added AI features. I even created an AI assistant character to interact with users and help them work on their projects or profiles.

But so far, people still don’t seem very interested.

So I’m trying to be honest with myself:

Maybe the product is unclear.
Maybe the positioning is wrong.
Maybe I’m targeting the wrong users.
Maybe I’m trying to sell a marketplace too early.
Maybe my marketing is just bad.

My questions are:

1. If you had two early websites like this and a very limited budget, where would you focus first?
2. For the travel site, how would you think about monetization beyond basic affiliate links?
3. For the freelance platform, how do you build trust when you don’t yet have many users or clients?
4. Should I stop trying to promote the whole platform and instead promote one smaller, useful tool or feature first?
5. What would you test next if you were in my position?

Right now I feel like I can build things, but I don’t yet understand how to make people care enough to use them.