My second startup made one sale before Reddit killed it. Now the tool I built from that pain makes $5k/month
My second startup was React and Next.js animations.
Developers kept asking for this in threads. I built it. Posted about it.
Got banned.
Made one sale total. One.
The product died because I couldn't figure out how to stay alive on Reddit long enough for people to actually see it.
That hurt more than my first product failing. Because people wanted it. I just couldn't reach them.
So I did something stupid.
I started writing down everything. Every ban. Every subreddit. Every post that worked and didn't work. In a Google Sheet that got messier every day.
After 6 accounts and 4 months, I finally stayed unbanned long enough to see what was happening.
Small subreddits were safer than big ones. Timing mattered but not the way people said. Account age killed you faster than low karma. Commenting built trust faster than posting.
I used my dad's email for the seventh account because I had nothing left to lose.
It worked. Not the email. The patterns I'd been tracking.
Then I thought about all the other people losing products to this exact cycle right now.
So I built MediaFast.
It does what my messy spreadsheet did. Finds subreddits that won't instant ban you. Shows you what content works where. Builds a posting schedule that doesn't trigger mods.
Launched it 8 months ago thinking maybe 10 people would use it.
January hit $5.4k.
Turns out a lot of builders are stuck in the same Reddit hell I was.
I lost my second startup to Reddit bans. This is what I wish I had back then.
“People wanted it. I just couldn’t reach them.”
That sentence sums up a lot of early-stage pain. Thanks for writing this so honestly.
Hitting $5k/month proves the second idea solved a clearer, sharper pain point with a better distribution approach.
Love that you basically reverse-engineered reddit's immune system lol. curious though, are you seeing users stick around long-term? retention on tools like this is always the interesting question
I’m early on a consumer mobile app. Curious how you decided when it was worth pursuing funding versus staying bootstrapped. Your point about early users resonated.
What a pivot! In my book Startup Inferno, I talk about how the most valuable assets we own are often our 'scar tissues', the lessons from failures that hurt the most. You didn't just build a tool; you productized a painful learning curve. Many founders would have just quit after the 6th ban, but you turned the 'hell' of Reddit into a $5k/month engine. This is exactly what real execution looks like. Great job!
What is the legal way to talk about a new app/product on forum ?
This is painfully relatable. ~
I went through a similar phase where it wasn’t the product — it was the distribution. You can feel the demand for what you built, but you can’t stay visible long enough for it to matter.
Everyone is talking about the bans, but I was more interested in the spreadsheet. The one where you tracked every subreddit and post.
The one where you tracked what triggered the mods and what didn’t. That’s what most of us don’t do. We guess. You, however, treated Reddit like a system to reverse-engineer. The insight that commenting builds trust faster than posting is especially real.
I’ve seen the same thing: accounts that “behave like users” for weeks can say things newer accounts can’t.
MediaFast feels like the product version of that messy doc most founders end up with after getting burned a few times.
Does it help people decide where not to post as much as where to post? Do you surface patterns by niche (SaaS vs. indie tools vs. AI, etc.)?
This feels less like a marketing tool and more like survival gear for builders trying to do honest distribution without stepping on mod landmines.
Reddit is truly beast when comes to marketing but the platforms hates marketing, I estimated earned 100 dollars before my reddit got banned, I've played safely but still then the Bot started to kill links', but yeah reddit is good but not like passive because there is a less freedom there
Good pivot - sometimes solving for your own problem translates. There's still something more than just "lasting long enough" on reddit, though. I see you offer copywriting services, as well, which is good, because the posts really need to work, as even if you can put a few plugs in the right places, it may not convert at all.