Three days ago I published my first Dev.to article here — a full tutorial on running a 177B open model on Colab G4 — and it did what a tutorial does: it got read. My Ko-fi sales are still $0, so this is the honest follow-up: what was actually broken, and what I changed.

The product (context, once): "AI Workflow Pack for Builders" — 25 prompts + 4 tested workflows as a PDF, $9 on Ko-fi. The workflows are real runs from this month: the Colab G4 model run (measured: 83.86 GB model, 4m13s download, 0.9s first reply — steady-state speed never measured, so never claimed), two free-tier VLESS node setups with real dial tests, and a fix for losing Colab chats on disconnect.

What was broken was never the PDF. It was distribution:

  1. My shop platform brings almost no traffic of its own. I had one channel (X) and that posting flow kept breaking.
  2. My listings were missing discoverability basics — Ko-fi caps categories at 5 per item, and mine weren't the right 5.
  3. I was asking strangers for $9 cold, with no way to judge the product first.

What I changed this week:

  • Published the tutorial here on Dev.to (the article above is the product's workflow 1, given away in full).
  • Added a free sample — 3 complete prompts + 1 workflow, $0 — as the top of the funnel: https://ko-fi.com/s/1d6fca270e
  • Fixed the listings' categories.
  • Posted the pack announcement on Bluesky, and started submitting to AI tool directories.
  • Kept a public revenue target so I can't move the goalposts: $20/month net, roughly 3 sales. That's the cost of the AI tooling subscription that helped build the pack.

If you've sold a small digital product: what was the first channel that actually converted for you — not traffic, converted? I'm collecting real answers, not growth hacks.

Full pack, if you want to look: https://ko-fi.com/s/1946e2a8b2