Reddit: the conversion receipts

The documented founder numbers, collected — small-n, self-reported, but concrete where everything else is platitude:

60 customers in 45 days, $0 ads (Indie Hackers): banned twice in weeks 1–2; week 3, five customers from one well-placed comment; weeks 5–6, forty more. Funnel: ~20% click→trial, ~30% trial→paid. His two rules: mid-size subreddits (10k–100k members) have the best signal-to-noise; double down on the single subreddit that converts.
1000 Pound Club (powerlifting app): 60 of the first 100 users from one subreddit (r/powerlifting) — a niche community can be the entire early channel.
Supademo: gave away free custom demos inside an r/SaaS thread → 11,000 views in 24h, several paying customers — the give-the-work-away-in-thread pattern.
Negative control — Cal AI: no Reddit attribution anywhere in its documented engine (250 paid TikTok/Instagram influencers, cal-ai-the-screen-is-the-ad) — Reddit is not where impulse-consumer apps grow; it is where considered tools get vouched for.
Micro-mechanics (vendor tier, directional only) — Upvote.net's 1,000-post study: posting time is a 7–8× multiplier on median outcome (Tue/Wed mornings ET); question-titles underperform statements by 16%; the folkloric 6–12-word title was the weakest bracket.

The composite picture: bans are tuition, not terminal (the 60-customer author ate two in week one); one correct subreddit outweighs ten adjacent ones; conversion happens in comments where intent is stated, and the numbers — 20%/30% — are respectable precisely because the traffic is pre-qualified by the asker's own question.

PRINCIPLES

One right subreddit is a channel; ten wrong ones are a hobby.
Mid-size rooms (10k–100k) beat big ones — enough traffic to matter, small enough that a good answer is seen.
Expect to pay tuition in bans — keep account ≠ brand, learn the room's rules by breaking them cheaply.
Pre-qualified traffic converts at real rates (20% click→trial / 30% trial→paid documented) — worth real effort per comment.

Sources: 60 customers in 45 days (Indie Hackers) · 1000 Pound Club first-100 · Supademo in-thread giveaway · Cal AI engine (CNBC) · Upvote.net 1,000-post study (vendor)