1,500 Users in 30 Days Without Paid Ads — Here’s How We Did It with Zilu App
We just wrapped our first month after launching Zilu — a semantic AI tool that helps readers discover books based on mood, vibe, or premise (not popularity or keywords).
In our first 30 days, we grew to 1,500 users with zero paid ads. Even better, 50% of visitors performed at least one search, which signals some early product–market fit.
Here’s what worked for us:
1. Reddit = Rocket Fuel
We engaged directly in relevant subreddits like r/books, r/fantasy, and r/printSF. Not to spam, just to genuinely participate, offer value, and share Zilu when it made sense.
We also asked mods before posting and followed each sub’s vibe.
2. Local Book Clubs → Superusers
We tapped into a few local book clubs and got a dozen power users who gave us amazing feedback. It helped us test early retention and understand our search UX in the wild.
3. Long-tail SEO is Already Paying Off
We focused on specific search intent from day one.
Pages like this one are already ranking and driving organic traffic:
👉 Books that will leave me gobsmacked
We’re now working on:
Search prompt suggestions for vague user intent (beta version is live).
Testing monetization with affiliate links and direct e-book sales.
If you are doing organic growth, I'd love to swap notes.
And sharing Zilu with your reader friends would me a lot to us! 💜
This is awesome. Super curious how you made Reddit work without feeling spammy. We’ve been trying to get early traction for our tool Louis (makes demo videos from just a prompt), and Reddit’s been hit or miss for us. Any post style or tone that worked best for you?
Commenting actually works better than posting for us, it's more natural for example when someone asks for a book suggestion and i can find something exactly fits their description on zilu and share the link with them. so if you can, it's best to find places where you can directly provide value with your product. as for the tone when posting, my best performing post was framed as an update: what's changed and what we've achieved since i shared my project last time.
🔥 Amazing achievement!
Would love to get you on IndieHustle.co to share your journey, if you're interested!
All the best!
thx, looks cool! this would mean the advertise with you offer on your about page i assume?
No.
I don't charge anything for my interviews. It's completely free.
sure, i'd be down, lmk how we should proceed
The info is worth shairing, Kudos to you . your have an impressive ui
That's some great looking UI! I'm more of a non-fiction reader though, so I only briefly test used it.
This is awesome, Zihan! Love how you leaned into community and gave value first—Reddit is gold when used right. The book club angle is super smart too. Congrats on the early traction, and I’m definitely bookmarking Zilu. Would love to swap notes on organic growth sometime! 🚀📚
Read this post and checked it out - immediately created an account and spent 20 minutes looking at books similar to all the ones I read. Great platform and excited to see what is in Zilu's future! Also - over how long would you say it took for you to generate 1500 users?
nice! this means a lot to us! we are live since mid Feb so a little over 3 months
This is inspiring, hope I'll get to this too!
Impressive and congratulations to your 1.5k users. Reddit is such a good place. You can also make use of LinkedIn platform. And I am a social media manager for SaaS startups help them grow online and generate leads. If you need one, I’d love to be part of your team
Reddit is such a good resource. Most communities don't allow direct advertising so you really have to be a decent citizen in your chosen spaces. This can really help build your reputation
Amazing strategy. First of all congratulations on 1500! Would you mind us to shout out about Zilu from our linkedin page? Also would love to onboard you as an early access user to our platform. Feel free to join our funding intelligence tool. We are also going to come up with "get featured" tab for startups like yours! Let me know :)
Keep rocking, lets build together.
Nice strategy
Congrats on 1.5k users! I'm just getting started with my own solo project and found your approach super inspiring — especially the Reddit angle.
Curious: How did you approach subreddit mods when asking for permission to post? Any tips on doing it right without sounding like you're promoting?
Following Zilu's journey!
thx! you could position yourself as a student doing research and make your post about asking for help or feedback, also avoid links, instead, tell ppl how to find your project if they are interested. i'd start with subs that are not super duper strict about promo, they tend to have a weekly/monthly thread for members to talk about their projects. meanwhile make genuine comments in relevant subs before starting to post. it's a tricky platform and you gotta have patience, but the effect definitely compounds over time. good luck!
Thanks a lot for the detailed advice!
I’m definitely going to take that approach — focusing more on genuine engagement and framing my posts as research/questions without direct links.
Starting with more relaxed subs and building up credibility sounds like a smart strategy.
I appreciate you taking the time to share this, really helps me navigate the tricky Reddit world.
Looking forward to growing step by step! 🙌
Awesome! Getting 1,500 users organically is impressive.
thx! appreciate it!
ui is amazing what are you using??
thx, the front end is just Next.js + TypeScript
any UI component library??
Looks great, congrats!
Could you share a bit about your tech stack, specially around the AI part? High level, no need to reveal any details.
Sure, the AI Coding & Development Tools we use:
Claude for code gen
GitHub Copilot for code assistance
V0 for transforming Figma designs into implementable UI code
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Very nice. The growth is amazing. Great growth strategies there!
thx!
Impressive growth! That 50% search rate is a strong PMF signal - most discovery tools struggle to get users to actually engage.
Your Reddit strategy is spot-on. The key is being genuinely helpful first. Book communities are especially receptive when you're solving real problems vs. just promoting.
Quick thought on monetization: Have you considered implementing dynamic pricing alerts or "book availability" notifications? When someone searches for a specific vibe and finds the perfect book, they're primed to buy - but timing matters.
For the affiliate strategy, personalized recommendations based on search history could boost conversion rates significantly. Users who searched for "dark academia vibes" might respond differently than those searching for "feel-good beach reads."
The local book club feedback loop is genius - real user behavior beats surveys every time. Those dozen power users are worth their weight in gold for product development.
thx for the thoughtful comment! the monetisation idea sounds interesting, there are a few gaming sites that do this pretty well. as for personalisation, i feel like we rely too much on algorithmic recs and i'd like to first build it for those who know what they want and give them the tool to search for that, pull instead of push if you know what i mean..
I would agree with you on the initial plan. I wish you the very best!
Wow, interesting! I thought about this before! I did not dare to work on the idea, but I respect you built what you had an idea about.
thank you! it's been fun to build.
Just curious - is your plan to monetize this eventually? and if so how?
Love the concept btw (and semantic AI is not the easiest thing to work with so nice job there)
thx man, yeah i'm testing affiliate sales with online booksellers as a first step to monetisation.
as an ardent reader myself i'd have loved this as a teenager!!
haha how do you like it now?
love it all the same haha, just don't read as much now
wow, are you pre-revenue?
yes
would love your feedback especially if you are building something with semantic AI!
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