Stop Just Posting and Praying — Smarter Ways to Promote Your Product

A True Story

I know a guy who built a product. Good product, solid execution — but traffic just wouldn’t come.

So he did some research on the search volume in his niche. Turns out, the total search traffic was actually pretty decent — but it was split evenly across dozens of competitors. Everyone got a little slice, nobody got enough.

Then he had an idea: he reskinned his product and launched 30 similar versions. Different names, different landing pages, but under the hood, they all funneled back to his original product.

After launch, the search results in his niche were dominated by him. No matter what users searched for, they ended up in his funnel.

You might think that’s a bit aggressive, but this is what’s called the “matrix strategy.” Plenty of TikTok creators do the same thing — run a dozen accounts posting similar content, covering different keywords and audiences. At least one of them will catch the algorithm.

I’m not saying you should copy this exactly. What I’m saying is: when it comes to promotion, sometimes the problem isn’t that you’re not working hard enough — it’s that you’re thinking too conventionally.

Why “Normal” Promotion Doesn’t Work

Everyone knows the standard playbook: Build in Public, post on Twitter, launch on Product Hunt, write blog posts, make YouTube videos…

Are these methods valid? Sure. Do they work? Sometimes. But here’s the thing — everyone is doing them.

You tweet something, it drowns in the feed. You launch on Product Hunt, 30 other products are competing for attention that same day. You write a blog post, and Google doesn’t even bother indexing your brand-new site.

It’s like shouting at a farmers’ market — no matter how loud you are, there are a hundred other people shouting too.

The people quietly making real money are usually doing things you can’t see.

Some Tactics I Think Are Pretty Smart

The methods below — some I’m trying myself, some I’ve seen others use, some are a bit controversial. But they all share one thing: they don’t rely on being loud. They rely on being in the right place.

1. Programmatic SEO — Use Code to Dominate Search Results

Ever searched “USD to EUR”? Wise (an international money transfer tool) auto-generated thousands of pages for every possible currency conversion pair. Each page targets a specific long-tail keyword.

Indie developers can do this too. Find a dataset, build a template, generate pages at scale. Each page covers a niche search term.

It’s not rocket science — just a database, a template, and a bit of code. But most people won’t do it because it feels “too mechanical.”

Mechanical is the point. Promotion isn’t poetry — it’s plumbing.

2. Directory Site Moat — Build a Ring of Outposts

There’s an indie developer named John Rush who makes $2M a year. His signature move is building a bunch of “Best XX Tools” directory sites around his main product.

Say you built an AI writing tool. You then create a site called “Best AI Writing Tools 2026” and put yourself at the top. Then you make “Best Copywriting Generators,” “Best Blog Writing Tools”… each one is a traffic funnel that leads back to your main product.

Same logic as the matrix strategy — don’t hold one position, hold the entire area.

3. “Powered by” Badges — Turn Users Into Billboards

If your product has embeddable components — a form, a chat widget, a review badge — add a small “Powered by [Your Product]” link at the bottom.

Every user’s website becomes a free ad placement for you. And these are high-quality backlinks that boost your Google rankings.

Typeform, Intercom, and TrustPilot all do this. TrustPilot alone got over 200 million backlinks from this strategy.

You might think nobody reads that tiny text. But Google’s crawler does.

4. Q&A Platform Hijacking — Answering Questions IS Advertising

The founder of IPinfo answered 99 questions on Stack Overflow related to IP addresses. Each answer naturally mentioned his product — not as a hard sell, but as “you can use this API to solve that.”

Result? 2 million developers learned about his product.

Platforms like Stack Overflow, Quora, and Reddit have tons of high-traffic questions that sit on Google’s first page for years. Write a solid answer, get it ranked, and you’ll get traffic for free.

The key is that this traffic is free, and these users come with specific problems — conversion rates are way higher than social media.

5. Competitor Interception — Let Others Plant the Trees, You Enjoy the Shade

Before buying a product, many people search for “XX alternatives.”

Like “Notion alternatives” or “Canva alternatives.”

Guess what — creating content specifically targeting these keywords is incredibly effective. People searching this already have purchase intent. They’re just looking for a better option.

You don’t even need to be much better than the competitor. You just need to show up in those search results.

6. AI Search Optimization — The Next Battleground

This is the biggest new variable in 2025-2026.

More and more people are skipping Google and going straight to ChatGPT or Perplexity. “Recommend me a tool for XX” — whether AI mentions your product could determine your survival.

How do you get AI to recommend you? It comes down to being mentioned across more high-quality content. AI recommendations are fundamentally based on what it has “read.” The more places you appear, the more likely AI will mention you in its answers.

This is exactly why the strategies above — directory sites, Q&A platforms, programmatic SEO — are even more important in the AI era. The more content you’ve spread, the higher the probability that AI will pick you up.

The Underlying Logic

You’ll notice all these methods share something:

They don’t depend on your personal influence.

Build in Public requires followers. Making videos requires charisma. Tweeting requires a feel for social media. These are all “human” skills.

But the matrix strategy, programmatic SEO, directory sites, Q&A interception — these are “system” skills. You build them once, and they keep working. No need to tweet every day, film videos every day, or stay online every day.

One is shouting at the market. The other is building an aqueduct.

Stop shouting, and the traffic stops. But once the aqueduct is built, water flows on its own.

Final Thoughts

I’m not saying traditional promotion methods are useless. If you can create content and build a personal brand, great. But not everyone is comfortable putting themselves out there, and not everyone has the energy to update social media daily.

If you’re more technical, more introverted, more into “building systems” than “performing for an audience” — the approaches above might be a better fit.

The essence of promotion isn’t making the whole world know about you. It’s making sure the people who are already looking for you can find you.

Sometimes, instead of desperately posting for attention, you’re better off quietly planting signposts at the right intersections.