tapurl.io

I launched tapurl (a link shortener for affiliates) on Product Hunt

last month. It flopped — barely a ripple. My first instinct was "the

product's wrong." But looking closer, the problem was simpler: Product

Hunt is full of makers and founders, not affiliate marketers and media

buyers. Right product, wrong room.

So I stopped chasing one big launch moment and started building two

slower engines instead.

1. Show up where the pain actually lives. My users hang out in

affiliate subreddits and forums, asking exactly the questions tapurl

answers — "how do I send US and EU traffic to different Amazon stores

from one link?", "why do my YouTube links convert so badly on mobile?"

(that one's an in-app browser problem, by the way). I answer those

genuinely, no link-dropping, ~9 helpful comments for every 1 that

mentions what I build. Slower, but the traffic is actually qualified.

2. Own the search intent. People google "bitly alternative" and

"geo-targeting affiliate links" every day. That's warm traffic that

finds me instead of the other way around. So I'm writing real content

(here's one on the engineering behind it:

https://tapurl.io/blog/building-a-link-shortener-fastapi-htmx) and

getting listed where people compare tools.

The meta-lesson: a flopped launch usually isn't a broken product, it's

the wrong audience in the room. Find the room where your users already

complain about the problem you solve, and show up useful.

Building tapurl solo on a lean FastAPI + htmx stack. Happy to answer

anything about the distribution grind — still very much in it.