Week 1 update: first trial signup, first comment, first competitor showed up in my comments to promote their tool. Here is everything.
One week since launching Rudnex.
Here are the real numbers:
✅ Free trial signups: 1
✅ Reddit posts that worked: 1
✅ Reddit accounts banned: 2
✅ Views across all platforms: 500+
✅ First competitor promoted their tool in my comments: 1
❌ Paying customers: 0
❌ Organic Google traffic: 0
Honest. Ugly. Real.
What actually worked this week:
Not my launch post.
Not my LinkedIn announcement.
Not my Product Hunt page.
A single Reddit comment on someone else's thread about WordPress automation.
That comment drove the first trial signup.
The person did not find me through my best content.
They found me through a genuine two sentence comment I left at 11pm.
First lesson of week one:
Distribution is not your launch.
It is every small genuine interaction you have in the places your customer already lives.
The most useful feedback I got:
Someone told me my onboarding had too many steps.
They were right.
I simplified it to three steps the same day.
Paste API key. Set schedule. Done.
Time to first published post went from 25 minutes to under 10.
Second lesson of week one:
Your first user's confusion is more valuable than any feature you could build.
Listen to it immediately.
The competitor who showed up in my comments:
Someone promoting Nextblog AI replied to one of my Reddit posts saying my free setup produces generic content and their tool makes targeted content for real traffic.
They were not entirely wrong about the targeting gap.
I am building that next.
Third lesson of week one:
Your competitors will find you before your customers do.
Treat their criticism as free product research.
What Rudnex actually is for anyone new here:
A WordPress plugin that auto-publishes SEO blog posts on a schedule using your own free API key.
No credits. No manual work. No article caps.
Google Gemini free tier = 1M tokens per day = 500 free articles per day.
Yet competitors charge $99 to $429 per month for the same outcome.
Live at rudnex.in — 7 day free trial, no credit card.
Week 2 goal:
First paying customer.
If you have been through this stage and have advice — especially on converting free trials to paid — I would genuinely love to hear it.
What worked for you?
