2 years building, 2 weeks launched, 2 Reddit bans, 0 users. What am I missing?

Hey IH,

Two weeks ago I launched costonks. Costonks is a free social (virtual) investing tracker.

The numbers

- Signed up users outside my friend group: 0
- Website visitors: 1 visit a day
- Reddit bans: 2 accounts

Not exactly what I imagined after 2 years of solo development.

What I tried

Reddit seemed like the obvious place to reach investors. I posted in a few subreddits, got banned almost immediately for self-promotion. Fair enough, I didn't read the rules carefully enough.

Launched a public testflight url of my app. Limited clicks on it, 0 logins (my app required login at the time).

So I built a reply guy setup instead. Python scraping + Gemini that scans relevant subreddits, scores posts for relevance. I then comment on truly relevant posts.

Then I got banned again. Turns out posting in a subreddit you were previously banned from even with a different account is ban evasion. Didn't know that. One account is permanently gone, the other has a 7 day suspension lifting soon.

Lesson learned the hard way: I completely underestimated how strict Reddit was on this.

What I'm doing now

- Set up proper analytics — Umami on the marketing site, GA4 on the web app & IOS app
- Posting on IndieHackers and building in public (see post below)
- Build a complete guest onboarding flow, no login required, you can try out the app, buy a virtual stock, add it to your portfolio, try for yourself app.costonks.com
- Waiting for ban to lift on reddit, will still make posts but be more careful and less promotional

What I am considering to do next

- Targeting Belgian investors have a concrete reason to use Costonks right now because the Belgian government introduced a new capital gains tax with an annual 10K exemption on realised gains.
-I already briefly considered makings post on TikTok (of all places) but I don't even have the app installed. I like building, not filming.

For those who've been through this phase, any advice?