Title: launched redchecker a week ago. made 3 stupid mistakes. still at $0 mrr. here's everything raw.
hey indie hackers
been sitting on this post for a few days because i wasn't sure how to write it.
but here it is. the honest version.
launched redchecker about a week ago. the response was overwhelming. 200+ notifications on day one, comments flooding in, dms from founders, people sharing it in discords and slack groups. on the surface it looked like a win.
but i'm still at $0 mrr.
so let me tell you everything. starting with what the product actually is, then the mistakes i made, and where things stand now.
what is redchecker and why i built it
i was doing reddit marketing manually for months. the routine was painful.
open a subreddit. scroll through 30 posts. find something maybe relevant. spend 20 minutes writing a reply that doesn't sound like an ad. post it. get ignored. or worse, banned. then do it again tomorrow.
4-5 hours a week. most of it wasted. because i was guessing everything. which posts to engage with, what tone works in that subreddit, whether my account even looked trustworthy enough to post.
got shadow banned twice. lost weeks of work. decided to stop guessing and build something.
that something is redchecker.io
here's exactly how it works.
you paste your website url and your reddit username. that's the entire setup.
it reads your site, builds your product profile automatically, understands your audience without you configuring anything. no keyword lists. no manual tagging.
first thing it shows you is your account health. karma score, spam risk, authenticity score. so you know before posting a single thing whether your account is healthy or if you're one post away from a shadow ban. this alone would save most people weeks of frustration.
then it fetches 50 fresh reddit posts where your target audience is already talking. every post scored by relevance. so you're not guessing which ones to jump into. the tool tells you.
real time alerts fire when someone posts about your keywords. you stop refreshing reddit every hour and start getting pinged when a high intent conversation is actually happening.
then AI writes your reply. human tone. built around the context of that specific post. anti-ban strategy baked in. it doesn't sound like a promo because it's not written like one.
and if you want to post original content, the post generator creates something that fits each subreddit's culture. not a generic post blasted everywhere. something that actually belongs in that community.
4-5 hours of manual reddit work down to 20 minutes. and no bans.
that's the product. now let me tell you how i fumbled the launch.
mistake 1: i set the free tier rate limit at 20
when i was building the free plan i thought 20 was reasonable. 20 posts fetched, 20 relevance scores, get a feel for the tool.
it wasn't reasonable. it was so low that free users hit the wall almost immediately. before they could actually see the value, before they could find a good post, write a reply, feel the difference from doing it manually. they were already blocked.
it was like letting someone take one bite of food and then taking the plate away. they didn't get enough to want more.
i realised this a day after launch reading through the comments and dms. people were interested. they signed up. they hit the limit. they left.
mistake 2: the rate limit killed every conversion
here's the brutal truth. if people can't experience the value, they don't pay.
i had 200+ warm leads land on redchecker in the first few days. people who read a long post, resonated with the pain, clicked through. not cold traffic. warm founders who already understood the problem.
and i put a wall in front of them before they could feel the solution.
not a single one converted to paid. zero. the interest was there. the conversion path was broken. completely on me.
mistake 3: i'm still at $0 mrr
i'm saying this out loud because too many launch posts only show the highlight reel.
the 200+ notifications looked great on the outside. the mrr tells the real story.
a week since launch. zero paying customers. zero dollars.
not because the product doesn't work. it does. not because there's no demand. the launch proved there is. but because i made a setup mistake that stopped people from getting far enough to care.
what i'm doing about it
i fixed the rate limit. free users now get enough room to actually experience the product before hitting any wall.
and because i made a mess of the launch, i want to give everyone here a real reason to try it properly.
50% off redchecker. today only.
coupon code: IN26
this isn't a marketing tactic. it's genuine. if you tried it during launch week and hit a wall, come back. it's better now. if you're hearing about it for the first time, now's a good time to try it.
lessons from the first week
set your free tier generously enough that people can actually feel the value. if they can't feel it they won't pay for it.
monitor your conversion path during launch, not after.
200+ notifications means nothing if your funnel has a hole in it.
vanity metrics feel good. mrr is the only number that tells the truth.
still building. still at zero. not stopping.
if you want to follow the honest version of this journey i'll keep posting here. not the highlight reel. the real numbers.
-musha
