No Feedback Loop to Know If a GTM Channel Is Working — No Benchmark, No Stop/Scale Rule

Summary

Solo founders and indie hackers pour money and effort into GTM channels with no way to judge whether the channel is working, what 'normal' looks like, or when to stop. The evidence is brutal and specific: a founder spent €3,190 on PR distribution and got 946 'publications' that were mostly automated syndication copies, zero original journalistic coverage, no measurable traffic, and only 6 clicks — which were his own visits — ending with a debt-collection dispute; another burned $1,000 on YouTube ads for 350K impressions, 150 clicks and just 2 $10 subscriptions; another stares at a fresh-domain Search Console showing 11.2K impressions, 109 clicks, and average position 20, and admits 'I genuinely can't tell whether 109 clicks is bad or completely normal' while 'flip-flopping' on whether to fix CTR or wait. Every article they find is written by someone selling the service they're evaluating, so they cannot separate real reach from vanity metrics (impressions that 'lie', syndication that isn't coverage). The result is repeated budget waste, constant tactic switching, and no rule for when to double down, fix, or kill a channel. Existing analytics dashboards show numbers but provide no verdict or stop/scale rule tied to a founder's specific product and week — this is the missing review loop, and it is unsolved.