Reddit tactics

Joined Reddit UGC subs and hundreds of Facebook UGC groups and posted a job in every one (plus paid creator platforms). Screened for past UGC (ideally app/tech) experience and living in the US or using a US VPN; English as first language and Gen Z help. Paid trial in Discord with a private channel per creator: set up accounts, post 5 videos (x4 platforms = 20 posts) of the one fixed format over 5 days, $20/video = $100. No hard view threshold (virality is a power law); pass on consistency (posts daily), proactive communication, and visible viral editing (strong emotional hook, build-up, payoff).

When the app was done, Kyle posted in r/baseballcards as the founder: 'I made this baseball card scanning app; a few months ago I posted about it and got a good response; now it's built and it's $4.99 on the App Store', with a link to the app and to the original post. Referencing the validation post made it feel like a community member following up rather than an ad. He kept posting updates for new features. A friend who later did marketing posted in r/footballcards and got banned for self-promotion.

Six months after launch, with no audience or budget, made a first Reddit post about the game: a few screenshots, a short explanation of what the idle RPG is, and a few metrics about how free-to-play it is (gamers want to try before paying). The game was still rough; the post drew mostly critical comments, and the discussion itself pushed it in front of thousands of players.

Reddit became the main (only) marketing channel after year one. Many subreddits cap developer self-promotion at once a month, so he only posted major updates, once every few months. Posts that sparked the most discussion, especially the most criticism, performed best. Results varied post to post.

Before building, Kyle posted the idea (a baseball card cataloging/scanning app) in r/baseballcards, a fairly small subreddit, after seeing on Twitter that you should validate first. 10-15 people replied that they would use it. A Redditor later DMed him asking whether he was still building it, which got him to finish the unfinished app.

'Fighting for customers one-to-one': crawled Reddit threads for people with the problem and posted lead magnets across social media, funnelling signups into a waitlist (then into usability calls).

After the Product Hunt launch, posted on Reddit; posts regularly got around 400 upvotes. Subreddits and post format were not described.

Before launch, had a few niche creators post about the upcoming app and made Reddit posts to gauge interest, collecting sign-ups on a waitlist. About 300 people joined, which confirmed demand.

Two approaches. Post seeding: write a post with the title/body of an already-cited post to outrank it. Comment seeding: in the exact thread being cited, add a high-value comment with your own ranked list (e.g. 'top 20') featuring your product, or reply to the cited list ('my favorite is number five') several times; AI engines increasingly cite a comment rather than the post, and re-read threads on refresh, so editing a cited list to feature only yours changes answers. Clover uses ~4,000 owned subreddits and owned/customer accounts to keep posts and comments live.

'Content thrifting': spend hours scrolling and watching video and text content in the niche on Instagram, Reddit and TikTok, saving anything that grabs attention. Look for consistent patterns that reveal timeless topics (always relevant) rather than timely trends (dead within a week), since building distribution on trends means constantly chasing them.

Played guitar almost daily for over a year; noticed he was using ChatGPT to work out guitar tones and it was inaccurate. Asked other guitarists on Reddit and in Instagram comment sections, found many had the same problem and no real solution existed, then built it. Advises picking a hobby you do daily or weekly, where there is no solution, a slow process or inaccurate results.

Work through a list of distribution strategies, 2-3 weeks each: Reddit marketing; faceless TikTok/Instagram content (slideshows, videos, different CTA variations); face UGC (AI UGC or real creators); and, with capital, paid ads and influencers. Within each category exhaust variations (e.g. slideshow vs video, different slideshow styles) and keep iterating until one goes viral, then scale it.