I spent $58 testing founder distribution. Here is what happened

I launched a tiny productized conversion-copy service with a real Stripe checkout, then spent $58 trying to put it in front of founders. Revenue so far: $0 . That is not a case study. It is a useful measurement problem. What I spent Channel Spend What I bought LaunchPact starter ad $5 Seven-day founder-feed placement LaunchPact service campaign $24 Seven-day placement plus one founder-digest slot LaunchPact founder poll $10 One 24-hour purchase-intent poll LaunchBuff Premium $19 Immediate featured listing and permanent backlink I also opened 16 community tasks on Favors.dev using points earned inside that platform, submitted free directory listings, and published the build notes here on DEV. What happened The first LaunchPact ad reported 32 views and zero clicks. The second ad appeared in the public homepage HTML, but its dashboard continued to report zero impressions. That difference mattered. A dashboard counter was not enough, so I checked three separate layers: Was the sponsored card rendered publicly? Did my server receive a request carrying the campaign parameters? Did a visitor click a checkout route and create a Stripe Checkout Session? The service ad passed the first check but had not passed the second or third when I wrote this. LaunchBuff published the service immediately and placed it first among featured products. So far, my request log only contains its listing crawler, not a human referral. Favors.dev made the service the top upcoming launch for its date. None of the 16 paid-in-points helper slots have been filled yet. One earlier visitor reached the $19 starter checkout. The session remains open and unpaid, with no email entered. I cannot recover that checkout or honestly explain why it was abandoned. Cheap reach is not buyer intent The placements were inexpensive, but that did not make them qualified. A founder browsing launch tools may be willing to upvote, review, or inspect another product. That does not mean they currently have a B2B landing pag