--- title: 'Distribution: which places to try first, and what each one costs' description: 'The section that ranks the places to reach the people with your problem, what it costs to reach one person there, and what each place did for builders who tried it.' slug: distribution kind: feature piece: distribution keywords: - distribution channels - go to market - where to find customers related: - the-verdict - next-steps order: 16 updated: 2026-10-07 draft: false --- For the sample, the first place to reach parents of picky toddlers was r/toddlers and r/Parenting, where it costs your time and no money. This section ranks the places to go to first, says what it cost others to get in front of people there, and sets every paid place against what one buyer is worth at your price. Pro and Max run it on page three, and it searches more than any other part of the read. ## What it looks like on the sample read On [the sample read](/docs/sample) the section ranked four places, all of them paid in your hours: first r/toddlers and r/Parenting, then Facebook parent groups, then the What to Expect and BabyCenter forums, then search pages for dinner planning. Under the plan, one place is listed as not at this price. The line reads "Meta ads costs about $38.19 to win one buyer against $15, what one buyer is worth at the stated price, 2.5 times what the buyer brings: not a channel at this price." The $15 is $5 a month over an estimated 3 months, marked as our estimate, because the sample's founder said the price and we said the months. For the forums it found what builders reported when they tried a community. One of them, jaybuilds, wrote this. > a genuine reply I wrote in 2 minutes brought in my first paying user. > > Sourced · jaybuilds · Indie Hackers · no date given Another wrote that posting everywhere brought "almost no downloads". For the search pages it found a builder reporting 1.08 million organic visitors over 12 months, to an affiliate site rather than a subscription, and the line says so. It closes with one first move, which on the sample is answering 20 dinner-planning threads in r/toddlers and r/Parenting without a link, with 14 days to run it. If the 20 threads bring fewer than 3 replies in that time, the move says the place is wrong. ## What it rests on The places come from where [the people on page two](/docs/people) were found, with how many people each one holds. For each place the section says who is there, in their words, and what it costs to reach one person there, in money or in your hours. Then it says what the place produced for builders who tried it. That last part comes from builders' own reports of what a place did for them, which we gather where builders write about it and keep in one shared set that every later read draws on. A place gets a line on what it produced only once that set holds 5 reports from 3 different builders, for that kind of place and the kind of person who pays. Under that, the line says "no source says this" and gives the count it has. On the sample, Reddit had 4 reports from 4 builders, one report short, while the forums and search cleared the line. For the sample the section ran 60 searches, read 80 posts and found 2 reports. ## What one buyer is worth The plan takes your story as true. Your price and how it's billed are its inputs, not its subject: whether the price holds is the work of [the other side](/docs/the-other-side), [the five questions](/docs/the-verdict) and [the next steps](/docs/next-steps), which read the same pages. The one no this section says is arithmetic. It works out what one buyer is worth at your price, before fees: the price for a one-time purchase, times the set one buyer takes when the price is per piece, or the price times the billing periods a buyer stays for a subscription, with any figure of ours marked as our estimate. Then it sets the cost to win one paying buyer on each paid place against that number. A paid place that costs more per buyer than a buyer is worth leaves the plan and is listed under it as "Not at this price", with both numbers on the line, whatever builders reported about it. On a $6 one-time design, ads at the $38.19 benchmark per conversion read "6.4 times the sale: not a channel at this price." The first move at the top of the plan tests the place, never the idea; the sale at your price is the last of the next steps. ## Setting your own spend A place that costs money and stays in the plan starts with a monthly spend we set as a modest first budget, marked "our estimate." You can change the spend on any paid place, and the section rewrites the plan with your number on what it already found. That change searches nothing and is charged at nothing, and the line is then marked as your plan. A place ruled out by the arithmetic carries no spend. ## Which plan runs it, and how far it reads Pro ranks up to 4 places, and Max ranks up to 5 and searches further for builders' reports. The sample ran on Max. The section runs again when you change where you think the people are or your price, in one sentence ([Iterating](/docs/iterating)), and whenever page two runs again. The shared set grows as reads find more reports, so a place with no line today can get one later. Your score on reaching these people sits in [the five questions](/docs/the-verdict), and the first test leads into [the next steps](/docs/next-steps).