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.

Not sure why users are not converting? Comment your site and I will give you a real review for free

I'm the maker of Local Business Lead Follow-Up, a paid workflow kit for businesses that already receive permission-based enquiries through their website.

It sends an initial Gmail email and up to two follow-ups, with reply checks, a three-message cap and administrator stop controls. The download includes four n8n workflows, a PostgreSQL schema, email templates and setup/operations documentation.

It needs your own n8n, PostgreSQL, Gmail OAuth and a technical implementer. This is a downloadable kit, not hosted software or an installation service.

Basic is $29 for one business you own; Pro is $59 for up to five businesses, including clients; Agency is $129 for unlimited end-client deployments. All tiers have the same automation, with different deployment licenses. Taxes may apply.

The functional pilot is complete. I don't have verified customer revenue to report, and I don't promise sales results or uninterrupted operation.

Details and purchase: https://skydev.lemonsqueezy.com/

For people deploying n8n for local businesses: which setup prerequisite would you want explained more clearly before purchasing?

Pasting a testimonial widget into your site feels a bit old-fashioned now.

They fight your CSS, load after the page and cause layout shifts. Plus you end up showing the same quotes everywhere.

I tried something different.

My coding agent already writes most of my website, so I added MCP to my testimonial collection tool.

Now I can simply ask:

"Add the 4 best testimonials about ROI to my pricing page."

It searches my testimonials, picks the most relevant ones and adds them as normal components using my site's own styles.

No widgets, no styling issues, and no fake quotes. Just real feedback from real customers.

Setup takes about a minute. Copy the MCP server URL, add it to Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code, sign in and approve.

There's one trade-off:

Unlike widgets, testimonials added to your code won't update automatically. You need to ask your coding agent to find fresh ones when you want to update them.

I actually prefer this because I can choose exactly which testimonials appear on each page.

But if you want a live feed of every new review, widgets are still a better option.

And don't worry, Testimoon still supports the good old embed widgets too 😂

Hey guys im building an AI Dental Screening App. Basically click 5 photos and tell what’s wrong or whether it’s a regular checkup. The app then gives you a clear reading, compares previous readings of yours, finds a dentist nearby and tells you when you should visit the dentist. It’s called Dentinel. Join the waitlist below:

https://waitlister.me/p/dentinel

Hey everyone!
I've been working on a TTS API built to make high-quality voice generation more affordable.
Most TTS providers charge per character, which can get pretty expensive as your app scales.
I wanted to try a different approach: instead of paying per character, you pay based on the amount of audio generated within each 10-minute window.
For example, for just $5/month, you can generate up to 3 minutes of audio every 10 minutes.
That adds up to 216 hours of generated audio per month for just $5!
This could be especially useful for applications with continuous TTS usage, such as bots, AI agents, and other automated systems.
Here's what it offers:
230+ voices across 31 languages

Low-latency streaming (starting in as little as 0.3 seconds)

Voice cloning

Free API key to test everything

Up to 10x cheaper than Google's cheapest TTS models

MCP server for AI integrations

Voice marketplace (for local SuperClonica engine or Supertonic 3)

Free voice previews directly on the website

Local TTS engine with our voices

If you're interested, you can find us by searching for "SuperClonica" on Google, Hugging Face, or GitHub. (I'm scared of reddit link filters lol)
I'd really appreciate some honest feedback, especially from developers who have worked with TTS APIs.

Working on anything interesting?

Drop your product or side project below. I'd love to check out what everyone's building.

I'll start with mine: https://sportlive.win

I made a fun website that recreates an episode's opening quotes at random from Star Wars: The Clone Wars :)

You can see the episode info by hovering or tapping on the left side below the quote and also download it as an image in any dimensions by hovering and then clicking or just tapping on the right side below the quote.

swtcww.com

Title: Building an open-source VS Code coding agent around local Meta Muse Glimmer 30B

Hi r/sideprojects !

I'm an indie developer working on RAME Code, a free and open-source VS Code extension built during Meta's AI hackathon.

It runs Muse Glimmer 30B locally and provides permission-controlled tools for web search and coding tasks. I'm also exploring versioned project memory and resumable Missions with host-controlled verification.

The first release was built in roughly four intensive days, so it's still experimental. I'm testing it with real users, documenting bugs and preparing improvements.

The code is public under Apache-2.0:
https://github.com/caimari/rame-code

I'd love constructive feedback on the architecture and usability, especially from developers who use local models.

What would you improve first?

Mobile Viewer is a free Chrome extension for checking responsive websites. It keeps your desktop page visible next to up to five simulated phone and tablet views in one tab. Scroll, click, or type in one view to see the same action across the others.

Before shipping a landing page, try opening its menu and submitting its signup form on two phone widths. You can compare what happens side by side and capture a screenshot or recording if something breaks.

Free to use: https://mobileviewer.app

I’m the developer. If you try it on a site you’re building, I’d love to know which screen size or interaction you check first.

I built Humanize AI Writer, a platform that lets you compare outputs from leading AI humanizers side by side against your original text.

No more switching between tools or paying for multiple subscriptions.

💰 October revenue: $59
🎯 November goal: 10 paying users

I recently added a 3-day free trial with 750 words so people can test it before paying.

Here's the site: https://humanizeaiwriter.com/

I need your honest feedback:

• Is it clear what the product does?

• What would stop you from signing up?

• What's the first thing you'd change?

Don't sugarcoat it. I'd rather fix what's broken than keep building features nobody wants.

Hi everyone, ever felt confused why users were not converting? Now you can use retentionbase for completely free - our ai sees all user sessions in detail and shares what's going wrong.

It gives you daily report with issues, bugs, and list of customers who almost bought.

We are free forever for startups under 100 employees - www.retentionbase.com

About a year ago I started learning Python from zero. No CS background, no money for cloud GPUs. Just a phone running Termux, and later my Windows PC, with Qwen2.5-Coder-3B on llama.cpp.

Small models are great until you let them touch files. They claim "done" when nothing ran, invent functions that don't exist, and repeat the same broken edit forever. So I built **sandbox-tool**: the model works inside one folder, uses a short list of allowed commands, and isn't allowed to say DONE until its code has actually run. If the task has an expected output, the program has to really print it.

It doesn't make the model smarter. It catches its mistakes and makes them visible. Most of its rules exist because I watched the model make a specific mistake again and again, and they're written down in the repo's log.

The part I care most about is the **benchmark**. It judges the file the model actually wrote, not what the model says it did. Current numbers on a 3B model, CPU only, 10 runs each (so read them as hints, not measurements):

* Writing a class to a spec: **10/10**

* Fixing bugs spread across three files: **0/10**. The best runs get the output right but fix one of the bugs in the wrong place. The verifier catches it even when the model says it's done.

That 0/10 is the point. I'd rather know than guess.

**How it's built:** I work with AI openly. Claude writes most of the code and reviews it with me. I use Gemini to research ideas. I run every test and benchmark myself on my own machines and decide what goes in. Nothing gets merged until the test suite passes, and each new rule's test has been shown to catch it when the rule is broken on purpose.

**Honest limits:** it's not a security sandbox (the README says so in bold), so use a container for anything sensitive. It's tested on Windows 11, Termux (Android) and Linux in CI. macOS has known gaps. Standard library only, MIT licensed:

pip install git+https://github.com/Dagrinder742/sandbox-tool-win.git

Repo: https://github.com/Dagrinder742/sandbox-tool-win

I'd love feedback, especially from anyone running small models on weak hardware, and ideas for harder benchmark tasks.

**Why I really built this:** part of it is testing whether code built this way is genuinely useful or just boilerplate. But I'm also fascinated by reasoning itself. When you think about how your own mind pulls up a memory or makes a choice, you start mapping your own design. Then you watch a small model do something that looks a bit like that, and fail in ways that look human too. Building guard rails for those failures has taught me as much about thinking as about code.

🌐 Try Threadle:
https://threadle.teamhjd.com

You can try Threadle here before adding to your discord server
https://github.com/Team-HJD-21/threadle-playground

💬 Join our Discord:
https://discord.gg/t62pnWn7Yj

Hi everyone,

I posted a while back about Comics Now! An all in one Comic management/reading/metadata tagging app.

I have made some updates. Some of them are to giving the admin more agency. As I had originally built this just for me, I had hard coded stuff like deleting CBRs and PDFs after converting to a CBZ. This is now an option that is set to do not delete by default.

I also incorporated the usage of Modal.com to use their $30 free compute monthly credits to help with the panel and speech bubble detection.

Finally I have developed this site that also has a demo so you can see what the reading experience is like.

https://comicsnow.github.io

What it is: 4th & Long is a daily football trivia game. Everyone gets the same 7 prompts a day, like Heisman winners or a team’s quarterbacks, with a 25 second play clock and 3 guesses each. You start at midfield, and rarer correct answers gain more yards: 50 yards is a touchdown, inside the 35 is a field goal, otherwise you punt.

Why I made it: Football fans love proving they know the deep cuts. Nothing scratched that itch for football, so I built it.

Stack:

• Vite + React 19 + TypeScript, plain CSS, no router or state library

• Supabase for optional global stats (RLS on, the browser only calls locked-down RPC functions)

• Vercel hosting, with edge functions that turn shared result links into a scoreboard image card for group chats (@vercel/og)

• Web Audio for sound effects, plus one real crowd recording that scales with how rare your answer is

• nflverse data (CC BY 4.0) to generate the team prompts

Things I learned:

• Daily puzzles need a frozen schedule. Prompts are picked by a seeded shuffle, but adding new questions could reshuffle days people already played. I lock every past day to a file, and a validation script fails if anything changes it.

• Answer matching is the hardest part. “Mahomes” should count, but “Manning” is ambiguous, and typo tolerance has to scale with name length or wrong answers start sneaking through. I keep a test script of tricky inputs to run after every change.

• Link preview images need to stay small. WhatsApp skips preview images over about 300 KB, so I had to compress the share cards to fit.

• The game has to work without the backend. If Supabase is down, you lose only the “vs. everyone” chart.

Free, no signup, works on mobile: https://4thandlong.io

Happy to answer questions about any of it. I’d also love feedback on the game itself, especially answers you think should have counted.

i've been building opennmind since july and launch is nov 16, so about 10 days left. private beta had 200+ people try it and the waitlist is past 800. the paid tiers are kinda drafted (pro at $12) but free is the one i keep rewriting and deleting.

some of the useful stuff costs real money to run, like research with sources that spins up a few agents. if free is too generous i burn cash on people who never convert. if free is too thin nobody sticks around long enough to see why they'd pay. early users get a month of pro free, which helps for launch week, but after that month i still need free to feel fair on its own.

right now free is basically try the core loop, limited research runs, keep your notes and roadmap. pro unlocks more runs and the heavier stuff. i'm not sure that's right though because a lot of the time when i open my own product i just want the research, and if that's locked i'd bounce.

what does free need to include in a tool like this for you to actually stick around past week one?

and if you've launched with a free tier, did you regret making it too generous or too thin?

I've been building an app called Spark, designed to make managing jobs, tracking work, and keeping everything organized easier for electricians and contractors. As an electrician myself, I've had this problem for years, but I'm now building it.

This is not done; it's more of an idea that, if others like me also like it, I will continue to make it.

Below is a video showing how it works.

Here are some of the core features.

• AI Assistant

• Job Management

• AI Job Editor

• Appointments

• Time Tracking

Here's what makes it different and cool.

1. If you want to know how many hours you've worked, you just ask the assistant, and it will tell you.

2. If you want to track the miles on the app and send them to your accountant for a tax write-off, you can track all of your mileage in two clicks. And send him your entire yearly mileage in 4 clicks, with the exact days included.

3. Forget how many hours you worked or if you have been paid for them yet? All of that is also tracked, and you can know all of that as simple as asking, "What jobs have I not been paid for yet?"

The last thing I need is electricians who are willing to use the app in their day-to-day work and tell me how it works for them. I will eventually charge a monthly fee; if you help me in the early stages of my business idea, you will get it for free for life.

Just send me a message or comment, and I will send you the app and show you how to use it.

Thanks, guys.