---
title: Marketing channels for a solo founder — Marc Lou's 11, ranked by cost and effort
slug: indie-marketing-channels-ranked
summary: Marc Lou's map of the channels that drove traffic to his ~30 small SaaS and digital products (cold email, free tools, affiliates, Hacker News, cold calls, programmatic SEO, Meta ads, personal brand, Reddit, directories, YouTube live), with cost/effort/ROI, his traffic numbers, and which channel to pick when.
domain: marketing
tags: [indie-hacking, saas, distribution, channels, solo-founder]
related: [cold-email-outreach-for-saas, free-tools-as-marketing, show-hn-and-reddit-launch-posts, product-hunt-and-launch-directories, programmatic-seo-for-indie-products, saas-affiliate-program-setup, building-in-public-and-live-coding, indie-case-studies-common-patterns, evaluating-new-ad-channels]
sources: [yt:6SdpwZzUk_w, yt:D1BjJB-n9lg]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Marketing channels for a solo founder

## TL;DR
- Most of Marc Lou's channels were free; paid channels (Meta ads, generous affiliate commissions) only made sense **after** a product already converted.
- Fastest money with no audience: cold email (one $199/month customer per day from 20 emails). Best long-term ROI: a personal brand.
- Launch channels (Hacker News, Reddit, Product Hunt) give spikes; free tools and programmatic SEO give compounding traffic.
- Pick the channel that does not feel like marketing *to you* — Marc burned out in 2018 doing cold email; free tools, pSEO and fun launch videos kept him going.
- Judge fit quickly: after ~1,000 visitors he says he can tell whether a product has potential.

## Details
Marc Lou says he tried every channel he could find while broke and audience-less; ten of eleven still bring revenue.[^1] His own scoring (cost / effort / ROI) and evidence:

| Channel | Cost / effort | Marc's evidence | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold email | ~$0 / low-medium | ~$80k for a 2018 SaaS, no ad spend | B2B with findable owners → [[cold-email-outreach-for-saas]] |
| Free tools | $0 / low | LogoFast (3-day build) → $10k+ for his course | Anything → [[free-tools-as-marketing]] |
| Affiliates | commission / low | $50k+ across products | Products that already sell → [[saas-affiliate-program-setup]] |
| Hacker News | $0 / minutes | 25,000+ visitors total | Dev tools, trendy tech → [[show-hn-and-reddit-launch-posts]] |
| Cold calls | $0 / high | — | Learning sales psychology |
| Programmatic SEO | $0 / medium | 50,000+ visitors | Searchable intent → [[programmatic-seo-for-indie-products]] |
| Meta ads | significant / significant | ~$1.4k spend, ~$48 per purchase, ~$6k revenue in a month | Converting products only |
| Personal brand | $0 / lots of time | Twitter 160k → 2nd traffic source after direct | Long term → [[building-in-public-and-live-coding]] |
| Reddit | $0 / low | one post → 50,000 visitors in a day | Stories, free tools |
| Directories | $0–paid / low | 20+ Product Hunt launches | Any launch → [[product-hunt-and-launch-directories]] |
| YouTube live | $0 / low | 50k views on a 3-hour stream | Dev and B2C apps |

Table sources: cold email[^1], free tools[^2], affiliates and HN[^3], pSEO[^4], Meta ads[^5], personal brand[^6], Reddit[^7], directories[^8], live[^9].

**Meta ads, Marc's minimum setup:** install the pixel (check with Meta Pixel Helper), track only the purchase event (fired on the post-payment page), start with retargeting of past visitors rather than cold audiences, and adapt proven ad templates (Notes-app screenshot, memes, "competitors do it wrong / we do it right") instead of designing from scratch.[^5][^10]

**Cold calls** are on the list as a training ground rather than a scale channel: script the opener and objections with ChatGPT, research the owner's name and a hook (bad reviews, fully booked) first.[^11]

**Founder–channel fit.** Marc says ByeDispute (Stripe dispute prevention) needed cold email to big companies or fear-based marketing, neither of which he wanted to do, so he under-grew it. WorkbookPDF (language workbooks) got ~100 SEO clicks a day but he thinks it belongs on TikTok-style social, and the same goes for his habit tracker.[^12][^13]

## Disagreements / caveats
- Every number is self-reported by one creator whose audience (160k+ Twitter, 120k+ YouTube by 2025) boosts later launches; early-stage founders should expect smaller spikes.
- Marc ranks cold email as "boring but fastest", yet it is also what burned him out — the ROI ranking and his personal recommendation differ.
- Channel numbers date from 2018–2025. In 2026 Marc notes indie hackers report declining Google traffic (see [[programmatic-seo-for-indie-products]]).

## See also
- [[indie-case-studies-common-patterns]] — what channels the case-study founders actually used
- [[evaluating-new-ad-channels]] — when testing a paid channel is worth it
- [[people/marc-lou]]

[^1]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 00:00 — Marc Lou
[^2]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 04:36 — Marc Lou
[^3]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 12:35 — Marc Lou
[^4]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 17:18 — Marc Lou
[^5]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 20:21 — Marc Lou
[^6]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 24:59 — Marc Lou
[^7]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 28:04 — Marc Lou
[^8]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 31:12 — Marc Lou
[^9]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 34:19 — Marc Lou
[^10]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 23:27 — Marc Lou
[^11]: yt:6SdpwZzUk_w @ 17:18 — Marc Lou
[^12]: yt:D1BjJB-n9lg @ 11:29 — Marc Lou
[^13]: yt:D1BjJB-n9lg @ 09:06 — Marc Lou