How I Built a Reddit Marketing Tool to $30K MRR in 4 Months — With $0 Spent on Marketing
One year ago, I was working on an AI-to-consumer product. I spent about three months building it, only to realize I couldn’t find any real users. Every day I tried different social platforms, hoping to validate whether the problem mattered. That period was painful and exhausting.
Eventually, I realized the core issue: I was not a real user of my own product. Because of that, I couldn’t understand real pain points. I simply copied features from competitors who had launched earlier, which put me in a cycle of adding more features without actual usage. The product was doomed from day one. A month later, I shut it down. It was a real and valuable failure.
The turning point happened when I started searching for low-cost acquisition channels. I tried YouTube, but creators were too expensive, especially in AI. I tried TikTok, but nothing went viral even after a month of trying. Then I noticed some competitors were getting significant traffic from Reddit.
I’ve been a heavy Reddit user for years, so I decided to test it. Very quickly, I learned something important: if you publish good content on Reddit, you get traffic immediately. You don’t need followers. You don’t need ads. It’s a content-equal platform. We acquired traffic at almost zero cost. The product didn’t convert well due to poor market fit, but the channel itself was clearly powerful.
A few founder friends soon asked whether I could help them run Reddit marketing. That’s when the idea of building a Reddit marketing tool first appeared. This time, I was a real user with real problems, and I knew many others facing the same challenges.
Before writing any code, I started sharing everything I knew about Reddit marketing. Even though the product did not exist yet, I consistently posted content and built a small community of around 300 people. Talking with them every day helped me deeply understand what actually mattered. It also proved something important: you must get users before you build the product, not after.
Development took a little over a month. I still built too many features, but once the product launched, I immediately shared it with the community. In the first week, more than ten users paid for it. That gave me the confidence to continue. Today, without any marketing spend, the product generates around $30K MRR.
Here are the key lessons I learned while building it.
- Do not start by building the product. Start by finding users.
Before you build anything, you should already have users who confirm the problem is painful and are willing to pay. For SaaS and tools, payment is the clearest signal of real demand. Before launching Leadmore AI, I already had 300 users in my community, and I understood their needs clearly.
If you cannot attract users before building the product, the problem is likely not worth solving.
- Focus on real, painful problems—not nice-to-have ideas.
I researched every Reddit tool on the market. GummySearch was good but mostly analytical. Other tools like ReplyGuy were poorly executed. So I analyzed my own struggles while doing Reddit marketing:
Finding the right subreddits.
Knowing what type of content is safe.
Avoiding account bans.
Finding high-value potential customers.
Early users had the same problems, and importantly, they were willing to pay to solve them.
- Your first version should only include one core feature.
This was one of my mistakes. I built three major features for V1, but users only cared about one of them. If I had focused solely on that core feature, I could have launched 15 days earlier.
MVP requires discipline, not ambition.
- Long-term success comes from continuous improvement and continuous communication.
Once you launch, competitors will copy you. Some even copied my social posts word for word. Reporting them didn’t matter. What mattered was continuously improving based on user feedback. Competitors can copy your features, but they cannot copy your understanding of user needs.
Consistent engagement also matters. This is retention, not just growth. Retention is the real engine of SaaS.
- Talk to your users every day.
Talking with users daily has huge benefits. You understand their problems better. You build trust. You create organic word-of-mouth. Many feature ideas come directly from user questions. In the early stage, founders should personally handle support.
Finally, a quick introduction to my product.
My product is "Leadmore AI" (leadmore.ai), which I genuinely believe is currently the best Reddit marketing tool available. If you disagree, please tell me why -it helps me improve.
Leadmore AI helps you:
Discover the best subreddits for your product.
Post using real high-karma Reddit accounts built into the system, with scheduling, risk warnings, and exposure analytics.
Find potential customers on Reddit efficiently.
If you want to do Reddit marketing, Leadmore AI should be your first choice.
You’re welcome to join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/JH6CXgXhpM
We answer every question personally.
I’ve seen this pattern a lot: founders start building before they actually know who their first user is. I’ve had people come to me for MVP help, but when I ask who it’s for or what exact problem it solves, the answers are mostly guesses. I made that mistake myself once, and it turned into months of building something nobody really needed.
These days I tell people to start way smaller — put up a simple landing page, explain the idea, and see if anyone even cares enough to drop their email. Talk to those early folks. Even a tiny list gives way more clarity than any spec document.
Once you’ve got real people interested, building the MVP stops feeling like guesswork and things move a lot faster.
I think I might be learning this the hard way. Building in isolation is
more comfortable to me. I'm at least solving a real problem I have
(evaluating angel investment memos), but honestly the marketing side is
way harder than the building. Next one I might try the landing page/find users first
approach.
✅ Totally agree . I learned that the hard way after spending 3 months building an AI job-search assistant without a single real user.
Since then, I don’t write a line of code until someone actually raises their hand and says, “yes, I want this.”
Just asking users isn’t enough. Users sometimes lie — you need a way to verify whether they’re actually willing to pay.
Yes, the development itself isn’t difficult — understanding user needs is the real challenge.
The way Leadmore AI was built is super interesting and the lessons are really helpful for me especially the part about starting marketing before building the product I’m definitely going to give Leadmore AI a try.
Thanks I’ll keep improving Leadmore AI and making the product and service even better.
Why there is no pricing on your website, despite the FAQ says that the service is paid?
Thank you for sharing. I'm currently struggling to promote a marketing-focused smart software called Amplift. ai , and your article has been very helpful!
A really powerful story. Reading it, you can feel the real journey from confusion and frustration to clarity and grounded product thinking. What stands out most is how honestly you acknowledge your mistakes and turn them into the foundation for your next idea. The insight about not being a real user of your own product is especially important. It’s one of those things everyone nods at in theory but very few actually act on, and it changes everything about how quickly you learn and how deeply you understand the problem.
Your decision to build a community before writing a single line of code deserves a lot of respect. Most founders avoid that stage because it forces them to face reality early. But that’s exactly what separates products people need from products that just look good in a Notion doc.
What’s even more interesting is that your success didn’t come from some hidden growth hack. It came from consistency, common sense, and talking to users every day. This is one of the rare cases where the principles of customer development actually translate into real traction and revenue.
Honestly, after reading this, it’s hard not to feel curious about how Leadmore AI will evolve. Stories built on real pain and real experience usually end up being the most durable.
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful reply!
For Leadmore AI, our next steps are to keep improving the product experience. As our user base grows, there are many details that need refinement, and users have suggested a lot of improvements. I need to prioritize these and work through them step by step — that’s the most important thing.
Also, we’ve noticed that many Leadmore AI users have GEO needs, so I’m launching a new GEO product as well. It’s still in beta, but anyone interested is welcome to try it: modelfox.ai
@Richard_ai
AI-driven music tools like the ones you described gain massive traction on Reddit, especially in sub-communities where producers, creators, and indie artists actively discuss new workflows and revenue models. The right subreddits can put content like this in front of thousands of high-intent users organically, not just for awareness, but for real conversions. If you ever want a breakdown of which Reddit communities align best with your niche and how to position posts so they avoid moderation filters and actually drive traffic, happy to share it.
Really enjoyed this breakdown — super refreshing to see an honest story about failing, regrouping, and then building something with actual demand behind it. The point about becoming a real user before writing a single line of code hits hard. Your focus on community first and product second is exactly what most builders overlook. Congrats on hitting $30K MRR, that’s huge — and the lessons here are gold for anyone working on SaaS right now. 🙌
Thanks — I’m glad it can help everyone. You’re also welcome to try Leadmore AI and share your suggestions to help make it even better.
This is such a textbook example of why ‘build first, validate later’ kills most products before they even start. The shift you made—from building for a problem you thought existed to building for a problem you personally felt and saw others struggle with—explains the entire difference between zero traction and $30K MRR.
What stood out most is how you used Reddit before building anything: sharing knowledge, building community, understanding real pain points, and getting users before writing code. That’s the part most founders skip.
Also love the reminder that competitors can copy features, but they can’t copy the depth of insight you get from talking to users every day. Big respect for turning a failure into a system that actually works.
The founder built a Reddit marketing tool, validated demand before coding, launched quickly then hit $30K MRR without spending anything on marketing.
Really inspiring story! I love how you emphasized finding real users before building — that’s something we focused on while developing QVista too. Understanding actual pain points first makes all the difference.
Yes, let’s keep pushing forward together.
This is such a valuable lesson! Building a product without being your own user is basically shooting in the dark. Love that you pivoted to a problem you actually faced—and the $30K MRR speaks for itself. Huge props for starting with the community first, not the code.
Thanks.
so cool ，THanks for sharing this, I'll try your product
Welcome to try Leadmore AI - it works perfectly for all SaaS, AI, and B2B products.
THanks for sharing this, I'll try your product
Welcome to try Leadmore AI — it works perfectly for all SaaS, AI, and B2B products.
Really inspiring. Reddit often feels restrictive. But if you can use it efficiently, then it's a gold mine.
Curious to hear more about how you initially got traction on Reddit without getting flagged by mods. Was there a specific posting pattern, subreddit strategy, or style of contribution that consistently brought the right users without crossing community lines?
I’ve also had tons of posts removed and quite a few accounts banned. The overall methodology is still the same: you need to really understand each subreddit’s rules, provide valuable content, and be able to tell a good story — and most importantly, you need unlimited accounts, haha.
Later on, I mainly used Leadmore AI to solve the banning issue, and it worked much more thoroughly. If you rely on your own accounts, there will always be a risk of getting banned.
This is an inspiring story, especially the “get users before building the product” part — I totally relate. In my 8+ years doing digital marketing and working with SaaS & agencies, I've seen many founders build complex features without really knowing their audience. One thing I’d add: before even sharing content or building a community, test whether the problem is priced-painful — for example with a bare-bones landing page + email wait-list. If a significant % signs up or converts during that test, it signals real demand, not just interest. Did you run such a pre-launch validation or only rely on community building?
Interesting! How did you come up with this free marketing strategy?
Honestly, I don’t really know either. I just keep thinking, over and over—it’s really just continuous thinking. There isn’t any special methodology behind it.
Nice advice, I'll have a try. But I'm a newbie to Reddit, if I just publish articles continuously, the traffic comes natrually?
Post valuable content and share your insights; I recommend using Leadmore AI to publish, otherwise early account bans might frustrate you enough to give up.
Thank you for sharing. It's very rewarding, especially with this sentence: Finding users is important before product release;
I want to know, how did you manage to persist in sharing so much content and establish a community of over 300 people?
And how should the core functions of the MVP stage be determined?
Thanks for your sharing.
Question 1: I had no money, so I could only rely on free traffic — helpless but necessary.
Question 2: Build the feature users are most willing to pay for.
Keep going, brother!
Thanks for your reply!
Your insight about "being your own real user" hits hard. I made the same mistake once, building something for a problem I only understood from the outside.
Keep it up, and you're welcome to use Leadmore AI as well. Thanks!
"Before you build anything, you should already have users who confirm the problem is painful and are willing to pay. "
-- That, in my humble opinion is a key to success.
A founder friend once told me that before even building, run a short campaign explaining the problem - and if you got clicks (into a simple landing page), you start having some kind of a validation.
Really enjoyed reading this. Thanks 🙏
Great story! I really do see some resemblants to my own journey. Especially the overdoing of features, and the build before you validate the problem. Keep up the good work!
Let’s keep pushing together! And you’re also welcome to use Leadmore AI haha.
“Great insight, thanks for sharing!”
Keep going — you can do it too!
Really solid breakdown, Richard, thanks for the honesty !
The part that resonated most for me: building without users.
I spent 3 months on an AI tool to help with job searching… and ended up killing it because I couldn’t get any real momentum. No users, no signals, just me adding features into the void. Brutal, but necessary.
Also love your point about being your own user. Looking back, that was exactly the issue: I wasn’t one. So I was basically guessing.
The “one core feature” reminder hits hard too. My V1 had… way too many V1s inside it.
Huge respect for the $30K MRR with $0 spent : that only happens when you deeply understand the problem.
Thanks for sharing this. Super actionable 🔥
You’re welcome — I’m just sharing real experience to help everyone. And feel free to use Leadmore AI if you or your friends ever need Reddit marketing support.
really helpful, thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome — feel free to use my product and share any suggestions.
How do you prioritize which user feedback to act on first when improving Leadmore AI?
In general I ask myself a few questions to determine priority here are some for reference
1 Is this feature something we absolutely need to build
2 How much will it impact revenue if we don’t build it
3 How many users actually need this
Of course there’s also a more ROI-driven approach which is simply to focus on whatever maximizes revenue but I don’t think that mindset is always the best one.
that’s actually a solid way to filter feedback i also look at it the same way impact on revenue urgency and how many users truly need it usually shows what to build next it keeps the roadmap practical instead of just chasing roi
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