I've seen this so many times it hurts.
You build a nice website, fill it with good copy, write a few blog posts. You hope someone will find it, read it, and magically decide to give you money.
Then you build an MVP, a nice little app with a clean UI and all the basic features. You post about it on Indie Hackers and hope someone will find it interesting enough to try it out.
When nothing happens, you add more features. You write more blog posts. You post more content. You hope harder.
Hope is a terrible business strategy.
I know because I've done this. A lot. For years. Multiple businesses, multiple attempts, multiple failures. Always hoping that THIS TIME it will work.
Here's what actually works:
Cold email 100 potential clients. Get on calls with 5 of them. Figure out what they actually need. Offer them what they already want to buy. Get paid. Repeat.
Sure, some of them will hate you for reaching out. Some will mark you as spam. Some will tell you they don't need anything.
But that's information! That's learning! That's progress!
Every rejection, every piece of negative feedback, every "not interested" is a data point that helps you adjust your approach.
Compare this to hoping your content will somehow reach the right person who will somehow decide to reach out to you who will somehow end up buying from you.
Hope is passive. Action is active.
Even wrong action gives you something to work with. Something to learn from. Something to adjust.
Stop hoping. Start doing.
(And yes, marketing is mostly hope based. That's why it's so much harder than direct sales. But that's a story for another day.)