I spent $100 on Reddit ads. Got 0 conversions.
I was looking for quick results and quick money. Like many first-time founders, I jumped into the Reddit Ads dashboard and started spending.
I spent $100 over 4 days and got zero conversions.
Not a single one.
Why I thought it would work
I had just launched PostClaw, a tool that helps you manage all your social media from one chat interface. The idea felt solid, and the landing page looked decent. I just needed people to see it.
Paid ads seemed like the obvious shortcut: pay money, get traffic, get customers. It felt like simple math.
But it wasn’t that simple.
What actually happened
The clicks started coming in, 100 in total. People were landing on the page.
But then they left right away.
I refreshed my dashboard every hour for four days, watching the spend go up while conversions stayed at zero. It’s that sinking feeling when you realize the money is gone and you have nothing to show for it.
The problem wasn’t the product—it was me. I wasn’t ready for paid ads. I had no tested copy, no retargeting, and no trust built with the audience. I just threw money at a problem that money couldn’t solve at this stage.
What I did instead
I stopped the campaign, took a breath, and wrote a post.
It was just an honest post on IndieHackers about what I was building, where I was at, and what I was learning. No budget, no targeting, no ad creative.
9 signups.
Then I committed to organic growth, posting three times a week on Reddit and IndieHackers. I started building in public, sharing real numbers, and being honest about what was working and what wasn't.
9 days later: 35 customers.
The math that hurts
| Approach | Spend | Duration | Customers |
| Reddit Ads | $100 | 4 days | 0 |
| Organic content | $0 | 9 days | 35 |
I spent $100 and got nothing. But when I shared content for free, I gained 35 customers.
Why organic actually works
Paid ads act like a megaphone, while organic content starts a conversation.
On Reddit and IndieHackers, people aren't scrolling to buy things. They're there to learn, share, and connect. An ad interrupts that. A genuine post about your real experience joins it.
The IndieHackers community especially is full of builders. They can tell when someone is just trying to sell to them, but they respond to people who are honest about their journey.
Paid ads also need infrastructure I didn't have: battle-tested copy, a proven conversion funnel, and retargeting sequences. Without that, you're just lighting money on fire and hoping someone notices the glow.
Where I'm at now
I now have 35 customers, and the number is growing. I’m still posting three times a week.
I'm not saying paid ads are dead — I'm saying they're a scaling tool, not a launch tool. You need to know your conversion rate, your CAC, and your LTV before you start paying for traffic. I knew none of those things.
Focus on building your organic growth first. Learn what makes people convert. Then, if it’s working, consider paying to reach more people.
I don’t plan to run paid ads again anytime soon.
Have you ever spent money on paid ads early on? What did you learn from it?
yeah this is such a common trap. paid needs proven copy to work - organic is what actually tells you what message lands before you hand it to an algorithm. the signals you get from free posts (what gets engagement, what questions people ask) basically become your ad creative later. curious if you ended up testing any retargeting once you had that organic traction, or just stuck with the free channels?
This mirrors my experience exactly. Just this week I boosted a tweet for my product and the account got suspended before I even saw results. Meanwhile, an organic post on r/bloggers got 2K views and 14 comments, and a Reddit post on r/SideProject got genuine engagement and feedback. All free. The "paid ads are a scaling tool, not a launch tool" line is the whole post in one sentence. You need to know what converts before you pay to amplify it. Building in public and posting honestly has done more for us in one week than any paid channel. Thanks for sharing the numbers.
Exactly! Thanks for sharing your experience
The “megaphone vs conversation” comparison is spot on.
Ads interrupt people, but organic posts invite them into the story.
I’m curious — when you started posting organically, do you think people connected more with the product itself or with the build-in-public journey?
I would say both
I'm in the same predicament, so I'm glad I came across this... It's helped me avoid spending money before I need to, great insight, thank you.
Yes, don't waste money on ads at the beginning. Try to grow organically
Thank you for sharing your story, this is a really great insight on how to start getting users. I am exactly at this point and at the moment more like feeling discouraged, but this gave me inspiration :)
You're welcome! Don't be discourage, it takes time, you just need patience
The thing is you never know if the views are bots or real persons on reddit...
Used to be great don't get me wrong but now its flooded with bots, so unless for bigger campaigns, redit ads is the best way to burn your cash
That's what a lot's of peoples told me
Having encountered similar reactions, I read it because it resonated more.
I feel like I know what it means to grow organically by consistently cultivating it, but somehow paid advertising seems faster.
Since it's the first time I'm distributing it, I want to think that's probably because I'm feeling impatient and people don't know...
I need to calm down a little.
First of all, I learn that.
In this article and in my experience as well.
Thank you for sharing the painful experiences and lessons of failure.
Building a product takes time, you need to be patient. Good luck buddy!
Hey Adrien, thanks for your article, I'm right on the same situation lol, looking to onboard real testers for my SaaS but 0 conversion through paid ads... How did you manage this first kick off on your side ?
By posting content on Reddit, X and IndieHackers, try to post 3 - 4 times a week
Thanks mate, looking forward for being able to post in IH! I tried to find you on Linkedin since we are geographically close, you don't have company page yet ?
Where are you located? here is my LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrien-b-5b479598/
"Scaling tool, not a launch tool" is the right frame, and it applies beyond ads. I made a nearly identical mistake with cold email outreach for ThreadLine — sent a few hundred emails before I had real conversion signal and got almost nothing back. Same root cause: paid or scaled channels amplify what's already working. They can't manufacture product-market fit. The 35 customers you got from organic posting are also giving you something ads never would: they're telling you why they showed up. That's the positioning and copy you need before you ever consider paying to reach more people.
Yea I feel you I have about 3 weeks of runway left and I learnt that staying in the private little bubble is not going to help me ,so yea I still think reddit is insane good.But only when you find your customers talking about the problem your product sovles.Something I have been working on recently.
Yes! What are you working on?
Sorry for the late reply and thank you for your curiosity.
I'm basically building a distribution intelligence tool for founders, basically solving the problem I kept running into myself. Every time I build something the hardest part wasn't the product that can easily get the product up and running. I'd spend hours and hours manually searching Reddit, HN, IndieHackers, trying to get the right conversations to join so that I'd hopefully find the customers that my products solved.
Yeah basically I'm doing that. I'm just building something that automates this, scans the place for founders, and eventually you can join in.
I hope we can chat about PostClaw that you're working on.
I already have my inner voice for that lol
Reddit is a bot heaven; your money was spent on showing your ads to them.
I don't know, there are still some peoples on it
Nice write-up — the 0-conversion ad spend is painful but super common.
One tactical thing that helped me: before paying for traffic, run a "message match" test with 5 founders. Ask them to read your headline for 5 seconds, then answer:
If 3/5 can’t answer all three, ads will usually burn cash.
If useful, I can run a $1 quick roast on your landing page and send back the top 5 conversion leaks (24h turnaround): https://buy.stripe.com/cNi14ndiH1uceH93L89k403
Hello Indie Hackers! 👋
I'm excited to share that my latest micro-SaaS, SachCheck AI, just got approved and featured on the SideProjectors homepage!
The Problem:
In India, fake news in regional languages like Hindi spreads like wildfire. Most tools are built for English, leaving 600M+ Hindi speakers vulnerable.
The Solution:
SachCheck AI is a lightweight tool that uses the Google Fact Check API to verify claims instantly in Hindi.
Tech Stack:
I am now looking for a new owner to take this forward and scale it. You can see the live listing here: https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/sach-check-
Would love your feedback on the tool!
This matches my experience. No ad spend until 10 organic sales is my rule. 18 days in, zero sales, but organic conversations beat cold clicks every time.
Love this rule! I will make sure to apply it
Ads before product-market fit is basically paying to discover you have a conversion problem. The root issue is usually the same: we build first, then go looking for who wants it. The step I was missing was checking whether the pain already existed in the wild — people actively complaining about the problem on HN/ProductHunt/IH — before spending a dollar. Built DemandRadar to automate that daily signal. Your 35 customers from organic posting is actually the proof: they found you because they already had the problem.
You're right, thanks for sharin this
Same experience here. I've launched several apps this past year and the temptation to throw money at ads early is real. It feels like you're doing something productive because there's a dashboard with numbers going up. But clicks without conversion data are just expensive analytics.
The thing that stood out to me is the 35 customers from organic posting in 9 days. That's not just better ROI, it's also better signal. Those people found you through your story, which means they actually understand what you're building and why. Ad traffic usually has no context so the landing page has to do all the heavy lifting of explaining, convincing, and converting in seconds.
One thing I'd add: organic content builds compounding assets. Every post stays up, gets indexed, gets referenced later. An ad disappears the moment you stop paying. After a year of consistent posting about my own projects, I still get traffic from stuff I wrote months ago that I'd completely forgotten about.
Yes, every organic post last in the time, and it compound. Thnaks for comenting!
Your post resonates. As far as I understand, Reddit ads don't work well for niche products because they show ads to a broad, unrelated audience. I had the same issue with them. Their ads work for movie tickets, Amazon sales, things like that.
Yep, learn this the hard way. Thanks for sharing it!