Distribution Use short-form video for awareness, not conversion
Makes sure your email lands in the inbox
Short-form video is the cheapest reach available right now, but it is a top-of-funnel instrument, not a checkout. Valentin's shorts for Dr. Ursula earn real awareness, putting the app in front of people who would never type its name into a search box, and that is exactly the job to ask of them. The mistake is expecting a fifteen-second clip to close a sale; its purpose is to make a stranger aware the thing exists, then hand them to a funnel that does the converting. Measure shorts on reach and new awareness, not on direct installs, and build the step that turns that awareness into a user separately. Match the metric to the stage and the channel stops looking like it is underperforming.
Related advice
Valentin Bora Reuse one top-of-funnel playbook across products
Valentin runs the same move twice: a free diagnostic tool fronts a business email product, and free short-form video fronts a consumer psychology app. Both start with something genuinely useful and free that earns attention, then attach the paid layer behind it. A distribution playbook that works is not single-use; once you have one that reliably earns attention, it transfers across very different products. Find your repeatable top-of-funnel motion, then apply it again instead of reinventing distribution for every launch.
Valentin Bora Ship a free tool as the top of your funnel
A narrow, free, no-signup tool that solves one frequently-Googled problem is not charity, it is a lead magnet. The whole email-deliverability category (mail-tester, GlockApps, Warmy) gives away the check because running it is itself an admission of a problem the same vendor sells the fix for: it self-qualifies warm prospects and ranks for high-intent queries like "does my email go to spam." The indie sequence is to ship the magnet first, let it accumulate search traffic and word of mouth, and only then bolt on the paid layer (monitoring, a plugin, a done-for-you fix). The catch the room raised: a magnet only works if activation is effortless, so the single most important screen is the one where the user gets their answer.
Valentin Bora Translate an invisible technical problem into plain English
doesmyemail.work could have reported "SPF: softfail, DKIM: none" like every other tool and helped no one. Instead it says "does your domain say yes, I sent this." Turning opaque jargon into a sentence a non-expert understands is not decoration, it is the product, because the user's real problem is that they cannot tell what is wrong. When your tool surfaces a technical diagnosis, spend the effort to say it in the user's language. The translation is often worth more than the diagnosis itself.
Valentin Bora For a free tool, the answer screen is the whole product
A free, no-signup tool has exactly one moment that matters: the screen where the user gets their result. Everything before it is setup and everything after it is upsell, but that one screen is where the user decides whether the tool was worth their time. For doesmyemail.work, the diagnosis screen is the product. Pour disproportionate care into that single moment (speed, clarity, zero friction) because a lead magnet that fumbles its activation screen never gets to the lead part.
Extracted from
Indie TM #10: Four Builds and the Reach Problem