We got shadowbanned on Reddit, blocked on Quora, kicked out of Discord servers — and we still don't know where our users are
We're building Meteorra AI — metadata optimization for YouTube, TikTok and Instagram creators. 6 months in. Product works. Distribution? A complete mess.
Here's the honest recap:
Reddit — warmed up an account for weeks. Posts removed. Then shadowbanned. Then permanently banned. Found out by checking in incognito.
X — posting consistently, some posts flagged before reaching anyone. Algorithm rewards momentum you don't have yet when you're starting from zero.
Quora — answers blocked the moment they smelled like promotion, even when the answer was the best one in the thread.
Discord — tried engaging in VidIQ's server, full of our exact target audience. Mentioned an alternative. Instantly banned. These communities exist to retain users inside competitor ecosystems, not have honest conversations.
The one bright spot: directories. Fazier gave us Product of the Week with 80+ upvotes. Real feedback, real engagement.
But here's the problem — that audience is developers and founders. Our actual users are content creators. We found people who liked us in the wrong room, and the right room keeps kicking us out.
No funding. No PR budget. Just a product that solves a real problem and no clean path to the people who have it.
Has anyone cracked this? How do you reach a non-developer audience organically when you're bootstrapped and the obvious channels are either pay-to-play or owned by competitors?
That Reddit shadowban loop is brutal — and it usually means the account looks promotional before the content does. Two things that helped me: (1) stop linking entirely for 2 weeks, only reply where you can add a specific answer without mentioning your product, (2) hunt threads by pain phrase in small subs, not broad launch posts. The harder part isn't the reply — it's finding the 2-3 fresh threads daily where someone already describes your ICP's problem. What product are you trying to find users for?
Its for Meteorra AI (https://www.meteorra.ai/ ) a tool for content creators to target the right audience which would bring them more likely people who would subscribe and watch there content , not randomly selected people by youtube, tiktok, instagram algorithm.
Meteorra makes sense — creator audience targeting is a clear pain, and Reddit shadowban usually means account pattern (links/promo replies), not that the channel is dead for you.
For creator tools I'd hunt Reddit differently than r/SaaS:
The hard part is finding those threads daily before they're 3 days old — not writing the reply.
If you want — I can hand-build a free sample digest for Meteorra: 5 Reddit threads where creators describe audience/discovery pain + reply drafts. Reply here with 2–3 subs you want to test beyond the big platforms.
to be honest these were the threads that banned me , its not easy to ask there help or promote application.
Yeah that makes sense — those creator subs are brutal if you've already been flagged. Same thing happened to me when I tried replying in r/SaaS too fast.
The digest isn't really "go promote here." It's more like — here are 5 posts from today where someone is already complaining about the exact problem Meteorra solves. You open them, read, and most of the time you don't reply at all. The draft is just so you're not staring at a blank box when one actually fits.
If Reddit still feels radioactive for you, fair — IH comments might be the better loop for Meteorra anyway. But if you want the sample feed just to see if the hunting part saves you time, I'll build it. If not, no worries.
As i said I am solo founder , no much financial backing and something like this would cost , i have to keep it under budget !!! Thanks for the offer though!
Totally get the budget thing — I'm a solo founder too.
The sample I offered is free. No charge, no card, no trial that auto-bills. I'd literally just send you a link with a handful of threads + drafts so you can see if the hunting part saves you time. That's it.
The $39/mo thing only matters if you ever wanted it daily — and only after you looked at the free one and decided it's useful. Zero obligation.
If Meteorra's budget is tight right now, skip it — no hard feelings. But don't skip because you think the sample costs money. It doesn't 🙂
Happy to answer any questions about the journey, and genuinely looking for advice on the distribution problem