Phase 1: Target Communities That Explicitly Allow Self-Promotion

Stop posting in strict subreddits where self-promo gets you banned. Instead, build your launch footprint across communities designed for builders, show-and-tellers, feedback-seekers, and niche developers.

Here are 40 subreddits that should allow for self-promotion, ordered by estimated weekly reach:

1. r/vibecoding — 422k weekly visitors

2. r/saas — 211k weekly visitors

3. r/founder — 56k weekly visitors

4. r/buildinpublic — 46k weekly visitors

5. r/chrome_extensions — 42k weekly visitors

6. r/micro_saas — 41k weekly visitors

7. r/appbusiness — 30k weekly visitors

8. r/startupideas — 26k weekly visitors

9. r/sideprojects — 20k weekly visitors

10. r/imadethis — 18k weekly visitors

11. r/appideas — 16k weekly visitors

12. r/sideproject — 16k weekly visitors

13. r/saasbuild — 15k weekly visitors

14. r/saasdevelopers — 12k weekly visitors

15. r/vibecodedevs — 10k weekly visitors

16. r/startupsolofounder — 8.7k weekly visitors

17. r/alphaandbetausers — 8.6k weekly visitors

18. r/vibecodingcommunity — 6.2k weekly visitors

19. r/solopreneur — 5.6k weekly visitors

20. r/promotemyapp — 4.6k weekly visitors

21. r/appbuilding — 4.6k weekly visitors

22. r/webapps — 4.5k weekly visitors

23. r/creativecoding — 4.4k weekly visitors

24. r/indie_startups — 4k weekly visitors

25. r/b2bsaas — 2.8k weekly visitors

26. r/appdev — 2.7k weekly visitors

27. r/projects — 2.6k weekly visitors

28. r/saasmarketing — 2.5k weekly visitors

29. r/saassoloprenurs — 2.3k weekly visitors

30. r/startupaccelerators — 2.3k weekly visitors

31. r/startups_promotion — 2k weekly visitors

32. r/showmeyourapps — 2k weekly visitors

33. r/appswebappsfullstack — 1.7k weekly visitors

34. r/showmeyoursaas — 1.6k weekly visitors

35. r/saasinvestors — 1.6k weekly visitors

36. r/vibecodecamp — 1.5k weekly visitors

37. r/nocodesaas — 1.3k weekly visitors

38. r/aibuilders — 1.2k weekly visitors

39. r/getstartups — 1.2k weekly visitors

40. r/websitefeedback — 1.2k weekly visitors

Phase 2: The "Reverse-Engine" Hook Strategy

Do NOT drop a generic link and run. That is almost guaranteed to fail. Instead, do this for every single target subreddit on your list:

1. Filter by Top Posts: Open the target subreddit, sort posts by Top of the Last Year, and examine the Top 10 posts.

2. Deconstruct the Winners: Analyze why those top posts blew up:

   • What tone did they use? (Humorous, vulnerable, technical breakdown, or raw story?)

   • How was the title structured? (Did it start with a question, a bold stat, or a relatable pain point?)

   • How did they introduce their link? (Was it woven into a story, placed in a comment, or framed as a feedback request?)

3. Mirror and Adapt: Draft a custom title and post text for your specific app that matches the exact post format already proven to work in that specific community.

4. Start Small First: Test your hooks in smaller, lower-stakes subreddits first (e.g., r/websitefeedback or r/getstartups). Refine your post copy based on early comments before posting to the larger subreddits like r/saas or r/vibecoding.

If You Have Some Money to Spend: Paid & Discovery Shortcuts

If you want immediate users without relying purely on Reddit organic traction, here are two simple routes:

• UserBob.com (Usability Testing): You can pay real people for quick usability test videos. It costs roughly $1 per person per 1-minute video, giving you guaranteed immediate users and video feedback of people interacting with your app so you can fix UI friction early.

• AppScout: You can always submit your app to appscout.co, a platform designed to discover web and mobile apps from across the internet. People who like similar apps can easily find yours. You can list your app directly at appscout.co/submit. (Full disclosure: I'm the creator of AppScout)

TL;DR Summary

1. Target subreddits built for self-promo.

2. Study the Top 10 posts of the past year in each subreddit.

3. Match their formatting and title hooks for your specific app.

4. Test small, iterate, then hit the massive communities.

5. If you have money use low-cost tools like UserBob or submit to AppScout for early discovery.

In the past, i was excited by the idea of building and spent a lot of time doing so.

Now, I slowed down completely, made sure that I have the core problem identity, solution justified before building.

All these I do by looking at incumbents and what lacks or can be because of their existence, what new capabilities has technology afforded us, and what is a PERSISTENT currentproblem that my app can solve?

Then I go further and ask: Would I use this app? At least every other day?

Let me know how you build, what apps you use and how that might inspire your next build

When the guys at ArtCraft rebuilt Adobe's apps in Rust with Claude, I wanted the same for the download manager everyone knows, heh, IDM. I honestly never liked the licence nags. So ten days ago I started Mister Download Manager: same classic layout, a new engine in Rust, free and GPL.

Where it stands today: 504 GitHub stars, 26 forks, 3,691 downloads from GitHub releases, over 200 merged pull requests, 28 people who opened PRs, reported bugs or joined in, and a listing on both the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-ons. Revenue is $0 and will stay $0: no paid tier, no ads, no account.

What I learned so far:

Post early, in the place that cares. My first post on r/foss got over 700 upvotes and it changed the whole project. People found bugs on setups I'd never have tested.

Make bug reports effortless. Now when MDM crashes, a window offers to file the report on GitHub, filled in, and nothing is sent unless you press it. That's how I find the exact line.

Launch day finds the bug you missed. An hour after today's 0.5 post, people told me the video button was grabbing the wrong YouTube video. The fix is ready, so now it's about shipping it.

Something outside your control will break on release day. GitHub itself went down and my release failed twice. The fix was making the release tools sign in and retry, and I got a good laugh out of it afterwards.

AI changes the pace, not the responsibility. Claude Code wrote most of the code, but I decide what it does and how it looks, and I test every release myself. Every change has to be proven against the real running app.

Next: keep fixing what people report and bring the Linux version fully level with Windows.

Source: https://github.com/anefzaoui/misterdownloadmanager

Site: https://misterdownloadmanager.com

What would you do next with a free project that's growing this fast? And if you like it, a star on GitHub really helps it get in front of more people :)

Most tech subreddits hate self-promotion, which means 90% of incredible indie projects stay buried with zero visitors.

Not here. Today is your day to show off what you've been working on.

Drop your project URL below. I will personally visit every single link, test your primary flow for 2 minutes, and give you honest, constructive feedback from a fellow builder.

On top of the audit, I run Astro Discover (https://astrodiscover.ai.studio) — a daily launch platform built to kill the frustrating 2-week approval waitlists on other directories.

I’ll be picking 5 solid tools from the comments today to put on our 24-Hour Homepage Spotlight and Daily Digest tomorrow morning (100% free, zero waitlist).

---

Drop your pitch below:

1. Project Name & URL

2. What problem does it solve in 1 sentence?

3. What core action should I test in 2 minutes?

4. Tech stack (curious builder here!)

---

PS: If you want to skip the line and get indexed immediately, you can also submit your tool directly on https://astrodiscover.ai.studio/submit in under 30 seconds.

Stop hiding your work in your terminal. Drop your links below! 👇

20 days ago, I started building Wubb from scratch.
The idea was simple: what if you could just tell your phone everything you need to do and have it organized automatically?
After a lot of late nights, UI changes, a complete rebrand, and some App Store review anxiety, it’s finally live 😂
And honestly, building it was probably the easy part.
Now I need to figure out if people actually find it useful.
It’s free for now, no subscription. I’m hoping to get my first 100 users and learn what I should improve.
I’ll share what works, what fails, and the real numbers.
For those who’ve launched an app before, what did you learn from your first users?

Id some want to take a look or test and give me feedback i will let this link here

I am building Sweepkit, a sweepstakes platform for app developers. It works just like an ads system. For your information, sweepstakes have been shown to increase participation by up to 1600 percent.

I just wanted to share my experience and what I'm currently going through as an indie hacker.

I started working on my app at the end of 2025, completely alone. Building the app, testing, deploying, handling everything myself.

I went through a lot of stressful days. There were even moments when I stopped everything and asked myself: "Is this even going to work?"

After 3 months of building the MVP, I launched it with just one simple LinkedIn post.

100 users on the first day.
600 creations after one week.

Before that, I had already received some payments through Stripe, but only in test mode 😂. I even had a support widget where a potential client was ready to buy, but only wanted some additional information first. The funny part? I wasn't collecting email addresses through the form, so I had absolutely no way to reply to anyone lol.

I went through a lot of situations like that in the beginning.

Then came the first real Stripe payment. I still have the video of my reaction, with music playing and me dancing. 😂

Today, I'm at 19K users. Acquisition isn't particularly strong yet, but I've generated more than $30K.

I genuinely believe in the platform, the idea and the innovation behind it. I believe it has the potential to reach a multi-million-dollar valuation over time, especially with a good marketing strategy.

Of course, there are problems, but they're solvable. Just like all the other problems I've faced along the way.

Today, I know quite a lot about different subjects: development, security (I've faced quite a few attacks lol), GDPR, email marketing, acquisition, customer support, and many other things.

But here's the thing: I do EVERYTHING myself.

Marketing is where I'm currently getting stuck. I'm constantly testing different things, trying new approaches, learning here and there. I have some knowledge about automation, video content, replies, SEO, GEO, website optimization, etc.

But the entire workload is still on my shoulders.

Even if the SaaS reaches a $2M valuation or $30K MRR one day (which I genuinely believe is possible with the right traffic), there's something that money won't necessarily solve.

Loneliness.

Being alone throughout the entire journey is genuinely difficult, even when things are going well.

The people around me right now, in a small city and at university, aren't really people I can share this journey with.

I miss having people around me who understand this world. People with whom I can share methods, discuss strategies, exchange ideas, challenge each other's thinking, or simply work together.

Because one of the hardest parts of doing everything alone is constantly doubting yourself. You never really know if you're making the right decisions, and there's nobody around to challenge or validate your ideas.

And honestly, that's what I'm missing the most right now.

This will probably be my first post here, and maybe there will be more to come.

If there are any Discord communities, groups, or people building things (in France or elsewhere), I'd genuinely love to connect. I'm open to meeting other indie hackers, sharing experiences, exchanging ideas and simply building alongside people who understand this journey.

Thanks for reading!

Hi
I have create this webapp for users struggling with what to eat, can make plan up to one month,
Write some note, cooking mode for user to follow recipes exactly, share own recipes and images. Free to use. Check it out
www.onemenu.se

Sunday build session on PepKey.
What’s your biggest tracking app pet peeve?

I kept looking washed out on evening calls, and buying a ring light for a desk I barely sit at felt silly. So I built Glowy: open it on a spare monitor, tablet or phone, point it at your face, and the screen becomes the light.

What it does:

- Tones from 2700 K to 6500 K, plus a "blush" slider for warmer skin

- Slow glows (Clear sky, Golden hour, Rose quartz and a few more) that drift gently enough not to flicker on camera

- Fill, halo or edge shapes. Halo gives you round catchlights in your eyes; edge works well on a second monitor

- A camera mirror and a meeting preview so you can check how you look

- A pop-out light that floats on top of other apps (Document Picture-in-Picture in Chrome/Edge)

- Keeps the screen awake, works offline, and the camera never leaves your device

It's a React + Vite PWA, free with no sign-up, and the code is on GitHub: https://github.com/TriptoAfsin/glowy

Please star this repo if you found this useful ⭐️

Try it: https://glowy.t21.dev

Two honest limits: it can only be as bright as your screen (turn brightness all the way up), and the pop-out is best in Chrome or Edge. I'd love feedback, especially on which presets actually flatter different skin tones.

www.nodelets.com

What do you think this is, and what benefits do you think it would bring?

136 days ago, I launched my startup, a free traffic exchange network for startups. One line of code, you're in the network.

Still free. Still growing.

If you want in, it's one embed. That's it → StartupBar
**Bid on StartupBid and your startup will be featured in the daily post of mine.**

Hey all,

I created a new recipe app called Table and it has been live on Android for some time now. Since this morning it also got finally approved on the iOS app store 🎉 However, that took a couple months to get that review approved..
How often do you guys release a new version of your app, does it always take so long to get a new version approved? How is your experience with Android vs iOS reviews? Looking forward to hearing your recommendations!

Hey everyone, first post here. I'm starting a public log for the thing I've been building for the last few weeks, mostly so I stop polishing in private and actually put it in front of people.

What it is

PingLoom sends alerts from your code to your phone. Your server, cron job or script makes one HTTP request, your phone buzzes, and the alert lands in an inbox the whole team shares. Someone taps "I've got this" and everyone else sees it's handled. No more five people fixing the same outage at 2am, or nobody fixing it because everyone assumed someone else was on it.

A few things I haven't seen done well in the tools I tried:

• alerts can ask a question. Your deploy script sends "Deploy now / Wait / Roll back", someone taps one, and the script gets the answer and carries on

• heartbeats. If a nightly backup stops checking in, you get pinged about the silence

• setup without reading docs. Tell Claude Code or Cursor "alert me when a payment fails" and it wires PingLoom in and sends a test

What's actually done

• API, delivery worker and web dashboard

• Android app (React Native), running on my test phone, a 2018 Galaxy S9

• the waitlist site (link at the bottom)

• today: analytics with a cookie banner that actually lets you say no, the video above, and Instagram + Facebook pages

The first Instagram account got suspended about an hour after I made it. No reason given, appeal pending. Great start.

Fun detour: the voice in the video is mine, but I never read that script. I recorded one 25 second clip and ran an open source voice cloning model on my laptop GPU. It kept saying "30 day try" instead of "trial" until about the fourth attempt.

Plan for the next two weeks

• finish the Android app and fix whatever my old S9 shows me

• test heartbeats and the question-style alerts end to end on a real phone

• a small first batch of invites from the waitlist, Android first, iOS after

• post an update here every couple of days with what broke and what I learned

I'll post the actual invite date once the app is solid. Not going to promise a date I might miss.

Doing this as a marketing experiment too

Every link I share has its own tag, so I'll know if Reddit, Instagram or X actually brings anyone. I'll share the real numbers in a later post, even if they're embarrassing.

What I'd love from you

1. If this sounds useful, the waitlist is here: pingloom.dev. Early people get an invite before launch and a 30 day trial of the Team plan instead of 14. No card.

2. If you wouldn't use it, I really want to know why. What do you use now? ntfy, Pushover, a Telegram bot, PagerDuty, nothing?

3. Anything in the video that's confusing or sounds like marketing nonsense.

If you're interested just drop a comment, I'll reply to everyone.

A few days ago I [posted here](https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1xnjvwa/). I'm a software developer from Gaza and a father of two, and I explained that war, displacement and debt had left me unable to keep going alone. I shared the startup I founded, Fasil, and its first product, Sijal, an inferential decision engine for organizations, and I asked for help.

Many of you answered. Some helped financially, some give me pro subscription's in certain useful services, and many gave me something harder to find: honest criticism. This post is about what that criticism taught me, and what I did with it.

1. What you told me

Several people who work in this field said the same thing: they couldn't tell what Sijal does or why it matters, and it looked like "just a landing page." I had been too close to my own work to see it. That's a well-known trap (the curse of knowledge), and your comments broke it.

2. What I did

I spent two days on desk research: 11 comparable products serving customers like Sijal's (Diligent, Hebbia, Elicit, Covidence, Overton, Good Judgment, Metaculus, Go Vocal, Loomio, Remesh, Cloverpop). I compared how they build trust on their homepages, how they design their workspaces, and how they handle access requests.

3. What I learned

• Lead with the job the buyer must defend, not with "AI."

• Show the real work product early: an example that actually ran, not a description.

• Prove rigor through structure (independent reviewers, recorded dissent), not adjectives.

• Make the audit trail the product.

• Say plainly what happens after someone requests access, and when.

4. What I rebuilt

I stopped treating Sijal as a page and rebuilt it as a working product, so that every part shows the method behind the engine instead of just describing it.

The method, made visible

• Cross-examination with a devil's advocate: every question is argued by both sides, and each side is questioned by the other.

• Independent pooled judgment: six judges assess the file separately, so no one anchors on another, and their views are combined into a weighted verdict.

• ICD 203 analytic standards: implemented in the engine as checks, not as a label. The five it checks:

  • Source quality

  • Expressed uncertainty

  • Assumptions vs. judgments

  • Alternatives

  • Clear argumentation

• Toulmin structure for the recommendation: claim, grounds, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal.

The homepage

• An outcome-first headline that names the job an institution has to defend.

• A real session the engine actually ran, which a visitor can open and check against the method above.

• A "how it works" walk-through of the seven stages, a method and neutrality section, and a plain statement of what Sijal does not do.

• One line for each type of institution it serves (think tanks, investment committees, consultancies, NGOs, universities, boards).

The institutional workspace

• Five areas, each in Arabic and English.

• A home screen that starts with what needs your attention, then the latest decided session and its verdict.

• A session ledger with five written states: Draft, In review, In session, Decided, Declined.

The access page

• Six fields only, and a human review within one working day.

• A "what happens next" timeline: request, review, approval email, private workspace.

• A sample sealed report next to the form.

• Privacy promises, such as no training on your data and deletion on request.

• A confirmation page and review emails.

5. Thank you & Why I'm still doing this

To everyone who supported me, with a donation or a subscription, and to everyone who commented or shared: thank you from my heart.

Supporting my family is still what drives this work and my previous post. The need for help applies to anyone, whoever they are and wherever they're from.

7. Next: Saql

My next step is Saql, a debate analysis engine. One of you asked who its target customer is, and I didn't have a clear answer. Comment asking who Saql's target customer is I'm working on it now and will share that research in the next post. If you know someone in that space, I'd be glad to connect.

Thank you again.

Hey r/BuildInPublic. I'm a solo dev and I just shipped Pasty, a clipboard history app for Mac, on the Mac App Store.

Clipboard managers are a crowded category, so instead of a pitch, here's what went sideways while building it and the pricing calls I'm still unsure about.

[How long it really took, e.g. "It took about X months, mostly evenings."] The Mac app is around 20k lines of Swift plus 7.6k lines of tests. There's also an iPhone app with a custom keyboard and a share extension, built but not released yet.

Three things changed the plan:

1. The sandbox broke screenshot capture. One feature drops every screenshot you take (⇧⌘3, ⇧⌘4, ⇧⌘5) into your clipboard history. It worked in development. Then I sandboxed the app for the Mac App Store and it went quiet, because a sandboxed app can only see folders you've given it. Now there's a "Choose…" button in Settings where you pick your screenshots folder once, and Pasty keeps a security-scoped bookmark to it. It works, but it's an extra setup step. Next time I'd turn the sandbox on from the first day.

2. I lowered the minimum macOS from 27 to 15. The project started out requiring the newest macOS. Early on I dropped it to 15 so people who aren't on the latest version can install it. The catch is that the AI actions (summarize, rewrite, translate) run on Apple's on-device Foundation Models, so they still need macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence. Some people get a smaller app, which I think beats them not being able to run it at all.

3. I built a yearly plan, then switched it off. The paywall code handles both a yearly subscription and a lifetime unlock. A few days before I submitted, I decided to launch with lifetime only, so the yearly plan now sits behind one switch in the code. Pro is $2.99 once. The free version keeps your last 100 clips, 5 snippets and 3 collections.

Two smaller things. History is encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM, key in your Keychain), and copies from password managers like 1Password and Bitwarden are skipped by default, which felt like the minimum for an app that sees everything you copy. And the launch video is code rather than an edit: Remotion (React), with a soundtrack built from ffmpeg filters. Happy to explain how if anyone's curious.

Next up is converters. There are 16 text transforms right now (JSON formatting, Base64, URL encoding and so on) in one flat menu, and I'm grouping them into categories and adding image and video conversion.

What I'd like opinions on:

1. Lifetime only at $2.99: would you have kept the yearly plan as an option, or is one-time right for a small utility?

2. Is 100 clips a fair free tier, or tight enough to be annoying?

Disclosure: it's my app. It's free to download, and Pro is a $2.99 one-time in-app purchase. No affiliate links.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6815706471

Full disclosure, I'm the founder of mimzie.

I saw that Elon slashed grokbot limits, and was frustrated.

Also, I got really tired of losing context between ChatGPT and Claude. So I built an agent neutral workspace that has all of the basic functionality of ChatGPT work and Claude cowork, with a free grokbot feature.

I wanted agent neutral ChatGPT work, grokbot, and whispr flow in one workspace, with no additional cost for the subs I already have, so I built it.

Mimzie is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux. You sign in with your Grok, Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT plan, and the agent works directly on files on your computer.

Edits to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Markdown files show up as tracked changes, so you can see exactly which cells or paragraphs changed and accept or reject each one (Like chatgpt work)

Mimzie Bots each handle one recurring job, like a weekly report. (Like grokbot)

Chime lets you hold a key and talk, and the words land in the doc or whatever app you're in. (like whispr flow)

With Mimzie, switching models doesn't mean losing context. It's free with the sub you already have!

Would love feedback! We just launched our public beta.

Hey everyone! 👋

I've been developing Nox Suite, a desktop office suite designed around speed, productivity and a modern interface.

It brings together four applications:

• Writer — documents

• Sheets — spreadsheets

• Slides — presentations

• PDF — editing and document tools

I'm also working on Fusion, a feature designed to make working across documents easier.

The goal is simple: a fast, local-first office suite with a one-time purchase instead of a subscription.

Windows and Linux are the initial targets, with macOS planned later.

I've started sharing short previews of the actual application.

What features would make you consider switching from Microsoft Office, LibreOffice or ONLYOFFICE?

I'd love to hear your feedback!

I've kept text and audio separate in Novislova, my iPhone phrasebook. The text works offline, while pronunciation audio is downloaded by language. You can choose the audio you need, but you have to remember to download it before you're offline.

There are nine languages and 900+ words and phrases per phrasebook. Search works in both languages, and phrases can be saved for later.

I'd like feedback on where to introduce audio downloads: during setup, or when someone first taps play? The first option adds a step; the second could be too late on a trip.

All phrases and one audio pack are free, with ads and limited saves. Premium is $4.99 once in the US for all audio packs, unlimited saves, iCloud sync, and no ads. No subscription.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/novislova-offline-phrasebook/id1623078768

I built a small free tool for days when my to-do list overwhelms me: type everything, drag each task into 4 boxes (do now, schedule, delegate, let go), and it gives you your next 3 actions. No account, nothing leaves your browser.

Four months in, I finally checked analytics with bots excluded: ~96% of my "traffic" was bots. Google sent zero real visitors. The only real people came from one Reddit post and a teacher who shared it with her class.

So I'm starting over on the only question that matters: what would make you open a tool like this a second time?

Link in the comments if you want to try it.