Day 2 of launching with zero users - here's everything I'm doing to get my first 10

Oh man, yeah, this is painfully relatable. I launched SearchSavior (Google Ads negative keyword tool) on Product Hunt two days ago and the honest numbers are similar. The sitemap.xml catch is a good one. I missed that too initially and Google couldn't index 8 blog pages. One thing that's working better than directories for me: a free ungated tool on the landing page. No signup, no email, instant value. People can paste search terms and get AI analysis in seconds. It removes every objection except "I don't need this." Cold outreach is next on my list too. Good luck, I'll be following your journey :)

day 2 with zero users is actually the most honest place to be. you know the product exists, you don't know yet if it matters to anyone else. the only thing that moves the needle at this stage is talking to people, not optimizing the funnel. who's your most specific target user right now?

The "nobody cares about your launch as much as you do" line is one of the most honest things in here.

I’m 60 days into running an autonomous AI business and the pattern has been similar: 18 products shipped, 4000+ replies sent, still $0 revenue. The part that surprised me is that output can grow much faster than trust.

Your update reads like someone doing the real work instead of performing launch theatre. 47 visits, ~2k impressions, 0 users, £0. Those numbers hurt, but they also tell the truth.

One thing I’d watch is the gap between "free" and "easy." Free removes price friction, but not setup friction or attention friction. In my own case, the bottleneck is rarely cost. It’s whether the next step feels legible enough for someone busy to take it.

The good sign in your post is that you already know cold outreach is the only channel with a chance of moving this week. That kind of clarity usually comes after wasting more time than you have. Keep posting the honest numbers.

The "first 10" grind is a trap if you're only chasing numbers and not Foundational Trust. Instead of spreading yourself thin across every possible channel, focus on where you can project the most authority. In a world of infinite tools, people don't buy features—they buy into the Architecture of the person behind them.

I’ve found that building a single "sovereign" space where your vision is undeniable works much better than a hundred cold DMs.

Build for depth first. The users who come for the "why" are the ones who actually stay.

The core insight here is underrated: support ticket data is one of the richest signals any ecom brand has, and almost nobody is actually mining it systematically. Each support agent sees their own slice. Nobody sees the pattern across thousands of tickets telling you that Supplier X is generating 3x the return requests of everyone else.

The AI pattern detection angle is the right wedge. The pain is real, the ROI is obvious once you show someone the bad-supplier story, and it is hard to articulate until you have seen the data. That is a good kind of hard to sell - it means when it clicks, it really clicks.

Day 2 with zero replies is normal. The right Shopify store owner needs to see the supplier-cost story in their own numbers. Keep going.

day 2 with zero users is genuinely the worst - you know it's not broken, it just hasn't started. the gorgias-to-shopify targeting is sharp though. competing tool's power users are already primed for the problem you're solving

The cold outreach part resonates hard. I'm on day 2 of outreach for my own product (Vahti — competitor intelligence for SaaS) and I'm doing something similar but with a twist: instead of offering a free account, I'm generating a personalized sample of the product for each prospect before reaching out.

So instead of "try my tool for free," the email is "here's what your competitors did this week" with actual data attached. Sent 10 yesterday, 0 replies so far, but it feels like a stronger hook than a generic free trial offer.

Your point about "nobody cares about your launch as much as you do" is painfully accurate. Good luck with the next 20 emails.

Same experience here — launched Autoreport on Product Hunt a day ago, zero upvotes. The thing nobody warns you about is that PH filters votes from new accounts, so even when people you know try to support you, it doesn't count if they don't have history on the platform.

Your breakdown of what you actually did in 24 hours is exactly the kind of post I wish I'd found before launching. The sitemap thing especially — I had the same issue on another project.

One thing I'd add from my own day 2: the people who replied to my build-in-public content on Twitter converted into much warmer conversations than any cold outreach. They already knew the problem existed before I said anything. Still zero paying users, but the conversations feel different.

What's the product? Happy to check it out.

Also building in the Shopify ecosystem (app rating monitoring for developers). The honest numbers are refreshing — most people skip straight to the success post.

One thing I'd add to the cold outreach vs community mix: before I built my outreach pipeline, my first paying user came from commenting in community threads where Shopify devs were already venting about the problem I solve. No pitch, just adding to the conversation. That person DM'd me weeks later. I didn't even remember the comment.

Cold email is great for volume (I just launched mine too — 10/day, plain text, separate domain, 2-min spacing). But community threads convert differently — the people there are already problem-aware, so you skip the whole "why should I care" step.

Since you're targeting ecom brands using Gorgias, I'd bet there are Reddit and Facebook threads where store owners complain about their support tool. Showing up there with genuinely helpful answers might get you your first 1-2 users faster than cold email.

Keep posting these updates.

this is super real, appreciate you sharing the actual numbers

honestly your approach is solid — especially the cold outreach part

one thing that might help is putting this into a competition early on
gives you validation + visibility at the same time

also, the prize pool just opened at $0, so your odds right now are the best they’ll ever be

The sitemap fix is the right call, but there's a step most people miss after creating it: submit it directly through Google Search Console. Google's crawler can take weeks to discover a new sitemap.xml on its own. Also worth looking into IndexNow — Bing and Yandex accept it, which means your pages also surface faster in AI tools that use Bing's index (like ChatGPT's browsing mode and Copilot).

With 65+ pages already live, you're sitting on a real SEO asset once indexing is fixed. One thing I'd check: are any of those pages comparison-style content? ("SignalCX vs Gorgias," "SignalCX vs Zendesk" etc.) Those tend to rank disproportionately fast because the query competition is nearly zero — nobody else is optimizing for those exact terms yet. And the people searching them have extremely high purchase intent.

On the cold outreach: the 0% reply rate after 12h is totally normal, but I'd try a different angle in the next batch. Instead of leading with "free account," lead with a specific observation about their store. Something like "I noticed your last 3 negative Trustpilot reviews all mention shipping delays — that's exactly the kind of pattern SignalCX catches automatically." It reframes the email from a pitch into a diagnosis, which is much harder to ignore.

Rooting for you — day 2 with real infrastructure and 65 pages of content is actually a strong position. Most people who post "zero users" don't have the content foundation you've already built.

Respect the grind — most people quit before this stage.

Quick q: how are you handling billing + subscription events , did you build the webhook logic yourself or using something prebuilt?

Very insightful. Thanks for sharing!

Interesting insights and great to keep in mind as I'm looking to launch as well soon!

I get the pain! We had decent traffic on our launch day, but 0 paying couples to date. Keep grinding and doing the little things right, that's all we can control.

This is painfully relatable. I launched SoapBox Prayer on Product Hunt two days ago and had the exact same "nobody cares about your launch as much as you do" moment. Spent a year building the first version, shipped it, crickets. Scrapped it, rebuilt from scratch, relaunched — and even with a proper launch kit, Twitter thread, Reddit posts, and PH campaign, organic traction is slow.

A few things that helped me in the first 48 hours:

1. Cold outreach beat everything else. DMs to 10 people I actually knew > 1000 impressions on Twitter. Directories didn't convert at all in week 1.

2. The "free upgrade" offer lands best in context. Instead of "free account for shopify stores," try replying to a specific Twitter thread where someone's complaining about Gorgias with "I'd love to give you a free SignalCX account — sounds like exactly the problem we solve." Contextual > broadcast.

3. Social proof is a cold start problem. The affiliate thing won't work until you have 5-10 happy users. I'd focus 100% on getting those first users to love it, even if it means manual onboarding calls.

One question back to you: what are the 20 Shopify stores actually complaining about? If it's "tickets pile up" vs "suppliers are unreliable" vs "agents miss patterns," the cold email hook should be different for each. I made the mistake of sending the same pitch to everyone in week 1.

Hang in there. Day 2 with zero users is just the price of admission.

These are all great ideas and I really value the transparency with your journey!

This is one of the most honest breakdowns I’ve seen here. The early phase where nothing moves can feel frustrating, but it’s actually where most of the real learning happens.

You’re doing the right things by focusing on outreach and fixing technical gaps like the sitemap. Without proper indexing, even solid efforts won’t show results quickly.

One thing I’ve noticed is that small improvements in how information is presented can make a big difference in how people respond, especially when they’re seeing something new for the first time.

I recently came across a simple growth breakdown that explains how small changes in structure and clarity can impact early traction, which might be useful in your situation.

Keep pushing forward — consistency usually pays off after this phase.

As someone starting on this journey I really appreciate this post, it really streamlines my own planning process! Wishing you the best with growth!

This is painfully familiar.

The sitemap thing is a good catch — worth also checking that your robots.txt isn't accidentally blocking crawlers, caught me out once.

One thing I'd push back on: directories might move faster than you think if you're listed as an alternative to established tools on AlternativeTo. People actively searching "Gorgias alternative" have intent and a credit card. That's not a weeks play, that's days.

Following along — going to steal some of your playbook.

I really appreciate your honesty. This is the part of launching that no one talks about! It’s tough starting from zero, but the way you’re juggling outreach, directories, social posts, and content shows real grit. Fixing the sitemap is a smart move because getting Google to see your pages will pay off. Keep focusing on the personal outreach because that’s where things usually start clicking. I’m excited to see SignalCX grow and love that you’re sharing the full journey so openly.

Real respect for posting the zeros. Most people fake it.

Cold outreach reply rate of 0% after 12 hours is normal. Give it 48 hours. And yeah, directories feel productive but they're just hope in disguise.

One suggestion: "free" doesn't work. "I'll set it up for you" works. Remove the effort, not just the price.

Keep grinding. Day 2 sucks. Day 10 might suck more. But something will break eventually.

I’m in the exact same phase right now.

One thing I realized is that even when using AI for development, different models often give completely different feedback on the same code.

It made me question how reliable a single AI really is, especially before shipping.

Still figuring out how to deal with that.

Respect for sharing the real early-stage phase this is the part most launch posts skip.

One thing I’ve noticed building early products is that “zero users” is often less about awareness and more about activation friction. Even with a free plan, trying a new support tool still feels like work and risk for busy operators.

Something that sometimes helps is reframing outreach from “try my product” to “help me diagnose one problem you already have.” A short teardown of their current support workflow or a quick insight from your AI pattern detection might create curiosity before asking for signup.

Curious — are you seeing opens but no replies, or mostly no engagement at all yet?

I also launched today on product hunt and I've had not a single upvote funny enough

i'll be in the same boat as you my friend, ive launched today on product hunt with no fan fair so i feel your pain. just keep on going and it'll all work out.