Instant Replay
The instant replay system used by live broadcasters & media
Quick context: I run Instant Replay, a paid OBS Studio plugin for slow motion instant replays. $80 one time or $25 a month. A week ago I had zero idea how to get users without paying for ads.
So I tried something counterintuitive: instead of posting in a subreddit where mods delete product mentions on sight, I posted on my own Reddit profile. Result: 6 free trials in 2 days from one post. Zero spend.
Here is exactly what I did.
The profile setup
Used my existing account, not a brand new one. Reddit flags new accounts that immediately post products as spam.
Display name: my real name plus role: "Rafael, OBS tools." Not a marketing slogan.
Bio (200 chars): "Dev building tools for streamers and live event broadcasters. Made Instant Replay, a replay dock for OBS."
Avatar: real photo of me. Not the product logo.
Turned on the Brand Affiliate tag in the Reddit composer. Built in disclosure that you are affiliated with what you are promoting. Keeps mods relaxed.
The post
Format: Link post, not text. I pasted my YouTube demo URL as the link. The video embeds as a player above the body, which is the strongest free hook Reddit gives you.
Title (86 chars of 300 max): "I built an instant replay dock for OBS, save highlights live, play them back"
Body: around 200 words. Explained what the dock does, who it is for, 14 day free trial. No hard CTA, just info.
Why I think it worked
Subreddit posts get deleted by mods. Profile posts do not, because your profile is your space.
Profile posts get a slow, long tail crawl instead of a quick burst. People discovered it days later.
Link format beats text format for visual products. The YouTube embed does the heavy lifting.
No subreddit means no ban risk if your tone is slightly off.
What I would do differently
Add UTM tags to the link (I did this for the next post)
Wait 7 to 10 days between profile posts. Reddit penalizes frequent self posting.
Reply to every comment in the first 24 hours. Replies boost visibility in the algorithm.
The attribution proof
I built per trial attribution into my signup flow. UTM source, medium, and referrer captured per trial, stored in Firestore. So I can verify those 6 trials came from utm_source=reddit and utm_medium=profile. Not "I think Reddit brought them" but concretely tracked per user.
Happy to share
The exact post copy, profile setup, or the attribution code (Cloudflare Worker plus HTML snippet). Ask in the comments.
Rafael, building Instant Replay
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