Reddit Marketing Playbook: Validate, Market, and Monetize Any Idea Without an Audience

[00:00] I built a 17K MR SAS with less than 100
[00:03] followers on X. A few weeks back, I got
[00:06] a cold DM from a guy named Diego. He
[00:09] said, "Hey, I got a story for you." He
[00:11] told me about his successful app and how
[00:14] fast it grew. But when I checked his ex
[00:16] account, he only had 70 followers.
[00:19] I think anyone can build a successful
[00:21] business without an audience.
[00:22] I couldn't find him on YouTube or Tik
[00:24] Tok or Instagram. So, I asked, "Hey, how
[00:28] did you do it?" and what he shared blew
[00:30] me away.
[00:31] I call it the Reddit marketing playbook,
[00:34] and I just had to know more. So, today I
[00:38] brought him onto the channel to break
[00:39] down how you can use Reddit to validate,
[00:42] market, and make money from any idea.
[00:45] All right, let's dive in. I'm Pat Walls
[00:48] and this is Starter Story.
[00:53] All right, Diego, welcome to the
[00:55] channel. Tell me about what you built
[00:57] and what's your story.
[00:58] My name is Diego and I built an AI sauce
[01:01] that makes me around 17K per month. I
[01:03] started it 4 months ago and just by
[01:05] using Reddit alone, I've been able to
[01:07] get over 1 million eyes on my product
[01:09] while spending $0 in marketing.
[01:12] All right. Amazing. I'm really excited
[01:13] to talk about the Reddit stuff. But
[01:15] first, let's talk a little bit more
[01:16] about the app that you built. What
[01:18] exactly is the app and what does it do?
[01:20] My app is called App Alchemi and it
[01:23] allows you to build mobile app designs
[01:25] very fast using AI. It's like cursor but
[01:28] for designing mobile apps.
[01:30] Okay, cool. So, we're we're doing stuff
[01:31] in AI. How did you come up with the idea
[01:33] for this?
[01:33] A few months ago, I actually wanted to
[01:35] build my own mobile app and I paid a
[01:38] designer on Upwork for a decent design
[01:41] and it was hundreds of dollars and every
[01:44] time I wanted to make like a little
[01:45] change, I had to pay him extra. I
[01:48] thought that if I could build an AI tool
[01:50] around this, I could save people a lot
[01:52] of time and money.
[01:53] Sick. I love it. So once you had kind of
[01:56] found the idea for this, you started
[01:58] building it. How did you validate that
[02:00] this was something that you wanted to,
[02:02] you know, take all the way and actually
[02:04] launch?
[02:04] So it was a problem I myself had
[02:06] experience. So I knew there was
[02:08] something there. So I built the simplest
[02:11] MVP. I ended up building the MVP in
[02:13] about 2 weeks and I started marketing
[02:15] right away on Reddit. I got my first KMR
[02:19] and even more purely off Reddit.
[02:22] All right, two weeks to build this is
[02:23] insane. Would you have any tips for
[02:25] people watching on how to build apps
[02:27] quickly with AI?
[02:28] Yeah. So, I don't use the newest
[02:30] libraries or frameworks because AI is
[02:33] always going to be a lot better at the
[02:35] libraries that are the most used on the
[02:37] web. And something else that I do is
[02:40] that I use a lot of UI component
[02:42] libraries like Chakra UI or Antesign.
[02:44] And this allows you to prototype a lot
[02:46] faster and to make your website look
[02:49] nicer, too.
[02:50] Okay, before we finish Diego's story, I
[02:52] did want to point something out. Diego
[02:54] builds really fast. He doesn't waste
[02:56] time overthinking. He just goes for it.
[02:59] I talked to a lot of successful
[03:00] founders, and this is one of the most
[03:02] common themes I see. Build fast so you
[03:05] can validate faster. And that's exactly
[03:07] why I want to put Teneb on your radar.
[03:11] Tenweb is an AI powered platform that
[03:13] generates complete readyto-launch
[03:15] websites just from a single prompt. And
[03:18] what's even cooler is Teneb just
[03:20] launched their brand new AI website
[03:22] builder API. With just one API call, it
[03:25] can generate a fully functional hosted
[03:27] WordPress website from just a single
[03:30] text prompt. Tenweb is way more than
[03:32] just a typical template builder. It
[03:35] helps you build a real productionready
[03:37] site fast. With Tenweb, your users get a
[03:40] website that is SEO optimized and mobile
[03:42] friendly, drag and drop editable, fully
[03:44] e-commerce ready with Woo Commerce, and
[03:47] built on WordPress, but completely white
[03:49] labeled under your brand. This tool can
[03:52] literally save months of work. And
[03:54] Tenweb handles everything so you can
[03:56] focus on what makes your product unique.
[03:58] Just click the first link in the
[03:59] description to book a strategy call and
[04:02] see how it works. Thanks to Tenweb for
[04:04] sponsoring the channel. Now, back to
[04:05] Diego's story. Okay, cool. So let's
[04:08] let's go into the numbers a little bit
[04:09] on the business. Uh can you just share
[04:11] some of the numbers behind what you
[04:13] built?
[04:13] Right now there are more than 1K paying
[04:16] customers. I've got it around 20K or
[04:19] more signups on my product purely from
[04:22] Reddit and the traffic per month is
[04:25] about 20K.
[04:26] Okay. So one of the reasons why I wanted
[04:28] to bring you on the channel and what I
[04:29] love about your story is that you did
[04:30] this with basically zero audience. At
[04:33] the time of recording this, you have
[04:35] less than 100 followers on X, no YouTube
[04:38] channel, and just friends and family on
[04:40] your Instagram. But my big question and
[04:42] why I wanted to bring you on the channel
[04:43] is how did you do it?
[04:44] So, a lot of people think that you need
[04:46] a big audience to grow a SAS nowadays. I
[04:50] got my first KMR and even more purely
[04:54] off Reddit. I would say that Reddit is
[04:56] probably the most underrated marketing
[04:58] channels for two different reasons. One,
[05:01] you can get a lot of reach for no cost.
[05:04] The other reason is that compared to all
[05:06] the other platforms, you can get very
[05:09] precise targeting. In Reddit, there is a
[05:12] subreddit or think a community for
[05:14] pretty much everything. So, you can
[05:17] choose a lot of different communities or
[05:19] subreddits that are related to the
[05:20] product you're selling and target the
[05:22] actual users that are interested in what
[05:25] you're building. All right, so we know
[05:26] the power of Reddit. Let's actually dive
[05:28] into the specifics into this whole
[05:30] Reddit marketing playbook. Can you give
[05:32] me your playbook for getting users and
[05:35] making money from Reddit?
[05:36] Absolutely. So, the first step is
[05:39] actually becoming an active Reddit user.
[05:41] If you're not using Reddit already,
[05:43] start using it daily. This has two
[05:45] different purposes. The first one is
[05:48] becoming familiar with the platform and
[05:50] seeing what kind of posts do well. The
[05:52] second one is warming up your account
[05:55] because any posts that come from a newly
[05:57] created account will be automatically
[06:00] filtered out by Reddit. So step two is
[06:03] creating a list of subreddits. And this
[06:05] one is very important because you need
[06:07] volume for this to work. The more the
[06:10] better and you can go broad and narrow.
[06:12] So, there are a lot of different ways to
[06:15] find subreddits related to your product,
[06:17] but the one I recommend the most is
[06:20] using a Reddit ads tool, and you don't
[06:22] need to pay for any ads for this. You
[06:25] just go to the Reddit ads page. You
[06:28] create a new campaign here. When you go
[06:30] to the targeting section, you can look
[06:32] for communities. If I look for, for
[06:35] example, no code, which is related to my
[06:37] own product, I'll get a lot of different
[06:40] communities that are related to this
[06:42] one. and I can keep adding more and I'll
[06:44] keep getting more recommendations. So,
[06:46] the third step is creating a killer
[06:49] organic post. The reason that most
[06:51] people fail on Reddit is that their
[06:53] posts don't feel natural. They feel very
[06:56] pushy and they make it completely around
[06:59] their own product. What you want to do
[07:01] instead is provide a little bit of value
[07:03] in your niche and then you can block or
[07:06] link your product in the middle of the
[07:08] post. The good thing about Reddit is
[07:10] that most successful posts have actually
[07:13] the same structure. Here I have a post
[07:15] of mine that did very well for App
[07:17] Alchemi. And as you can see here, every
[07:20] successful post starts with a catchy
[07:22] attention grabbing headline. What most
[07:24] people do here instead is that they
[07:27] mention their new product or they
[07:29] announce it like they announced the
[07:31] launch. And this is not what you want to
[07:33] do. After the catchy headline, you still
[07:36] don't want to mention the product
[07:37] immediately. You want to provide some
[07:39] value in your niche first. In this
[07:42] specific post, I did a case study on a
[07:46] very successful mobile app. This one, I
[07:48] actually found it on Twitter and I
[07:50] summarized it and then I plugged my
[07:53] product at the end. If you link your
[07:55] product directly, you're going to get a
[07:57] lot more traffic to your website instead
[08:00] of just like mentioning it. Although
[08:02] many subreddits don't allow you to link
[08:05] directly or is prohibited, if you
[08:07] actually provide some value first and
[08:09] you're not just like pushing your
[08:11] product, they will actually be okay with
[08:13] it. For more stricter subreddits that
[08:16] don't allow you to link your product, I
[08:18] would recommend linking an extra product
[08:21] beside yours. Plug like a complimentary
[08:24] product. So for example, for mine is
[08:26] like a design tool. So like cursor
[08:29] complements it very well because it's
[08:30] for development. So I usually plug that
[08:33] one after mine and that way your chances
[08:35] of getting banned or your post being
[08:38] removed for self advertisement is a lot
[08:40] lower. So on the other hand I want to
[08:43] give an example as well of what not to
[08:46] do. So as you can see in this example
[08:48] right here the founder plugs the product
[08:51] right away like mentioning it in the
[08:53] headline. He immediately starts talking
[08:55] about the product, all the features,
[08:58] everything about it. He even like links
[09:00] the Discord. And as you can see from the
[09:02] engagement, this both didn't do very
[09:04] well because people don't care. They
[09:07] want to get some value first. They want
[09:08] to read something interesting and then
[09:10] if your product is related to that,
[09:12] yeah, you can plug it and then they
[09:14] might be interested in it. So step four
[09:17] is grabbing the post we did on the last
[09:19] step and posting it on multiple
[09:22] subreddits and volume here is super
[09:24] important because that increases the
[09:27] chances of one of your posts getting to
[09:29] the Reddit front page and that is going
[09:31] to give you like a lot of traffic. Even
[09:33] if that doesn't end up happening, let's
[09:36] say that you post on 10 different
[09:38] subreddits and each of the posts gets on
[09:41] average let's say around 10k views.
[09:44] That's a total of like 100k views
[09:46] already, which is really good. So, it's
[09:48] still worth it. So, the last step of the
[09:50] playbook is to repeat this process. You
[09:53] should be trying different type of post
[09:55] to see what does better in your niche.
[09:57] You can try videos, you can try case
[09:59] studies, and you can try other type of
[10:01] posts as well. A good rule of thumb is
[10:04] posting two to three times per week. I
[10:06] think that anything more than that will
[10:08] probably get you banned, so you should
[10:10] probably stick to that rule.
[10:11] All right, cool. Well, there you go.
[10:13] That playbook was amazing. Let's switch
[10:14] gears a little bit. Could you just break
[10:17] down your tech stack? How did you build
[10:19] these products? What tools did you use
[10:21] and what's your stack?
[10:22] Yeah, so I use cursor for development
[10:24] and for building. I use Nex.js and React
[10:27] as my main frameworks and I use Firebase
[10:30] for O and for database stuff.
[10:33] And okay, so you're doing about 17K MR.
[10:35] What are the actual costs to run this
[10:37] business? What do the profits look like?
[10:39] So the overall margins are about 70%.
[10:42] cursor is 20 per month. Versel hosting
[10:45] is about 40 per month and then my most
[10:48] expensive costs the AI API backends
[10:50] which are about 2.5K per month. Okay, so
[10:53] you I mean you crushed it in the last 4
[10:56] months you've found this whole Reddit
[10:58] strategy. You're making money online.
[11:00] What has been the biggest lessons
[11:01] learned in your journey so far? I would
[11:04] say that when it comes to building a
[11:06] SAS, you should be solving a problem in
[11:09] a growing market and a good example I
[11:12] can give is building a SAS tool for
[11:15] newspaper owners for example which like
[11:18] newspapers are in decline or you can
[11:21] build a tool for like vibe coding which
[11:23] only in the last months has been
[11:25] exploding and it's going to keep
[11:27] growing. Something else that I would
[11:29] recommend to everyone is that like in
[11:31] any other business model in SAS,
[11:33] marketing and distribution are actually
[11:35] very important. So even at the start,
[11:38] you should be spending a lot of your
[11:40] time marketing instead of like adding
[11:42] more features no one asked for. And
[11:44] lastly, as a solo founder or small
[11:46] company, speed is one of your major
[11:48] advantages. So take advantage of that
[11:51] whenever possible.
[11:52] Okay, those are awesome. The last
[11:54] question that we ask to everyone who
[11:55] comes on Starter Story, if you could sit
[11:56] on Diego's shoulder before you cracked
[11:59] Reddit, before you were making any money
[12:01] online, what would be your advice?
[12:02] Right now is the best time to build. I
[12:04] would say that if you have an idea, get
[12:07] a simple MVP out there and start
[12:09] marketing it as soon as possible.
[12:10] All right. Well, that's the best advice
[12:12] I heard all month. Thank you, Diego, for
[12:14] coming on the channel. I love the Reddit
[12:15] stuff. That's why I really wanted to
[12:17] have you on this channel. It reminds me
[12:18] of when I first started. So, thank you
[12:20] for coming on. I imagine you're gonna
[12:21] keep growing and we'll have you on when
[12:23] you're doing a million. So, thanks for
[12:24] coming on, man.
[12:25] Thanks for having me.
[12:26] I love Diego's story because it's proof
[12:28] that you do not need an audience to be
[12:30] successful. He did it all just by having
[12:33] a great working product and of course a
[12:36] killer marketing strategy. I really
[12:38] think that anybody can do this, put this
[12:40] into practice and create something that
[12:42] changes their life. But of course, you
[12:44] actually have to build something. If you
[12:46] never build it, you'll never know. And
[12:48] this is why I created Starter Story
[12:50] Build, our flagship program to help you
[12:52] build anything with AI. In less than two
[12:54] weeks, you'll go from just an idea in
[12:56] your head to a fully working app ready
[12:59] to ship to the world. And more
[13:01] importantly, you'll learn the skills to
[13:03] build whatever you want forever. If
[13:05] you're interested, head to the link in
[13:07] the description to check out Starter
[13:08] Story Build. Thank you guys again for
[13:10] watching. I'll see you in the next one.
[13:12] Peace.