How I got my first client and got myself banned on WordPress.org in the same week.

one week ago I mass-dm'd people telling them about an AI plugin I built for WordPress.
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Zero replies. Fair.
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So I thought, what if I actually help people first?
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I started browsing WordPress.org support forums, finding questions I genuinely knew the answers to. WooCommerce template overrides, REST API issues, Elementor CSS quirks. Stuff I'd spent months deep in while building my plugin.
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I'd answer the question properly, and at the end I'd mention that I built a tool that handles some of this stuff through natural language.
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It worked. Sort of.
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Someone reached out, tried the plugin, liked it, and became my first paying subscriber. $19/month.
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I stared at that Freemius notification for like five minutes. If you've ever built something alone and someone hands you money for it, you know the feeling. It's not about $19. It's proof that the thing in your head is real to someone else too.
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Then two days later I got an email from WordPress.org.
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My account was banned. Turns out a mod flagged my posts as self-promotion, linked my new forum account to my main one, and disabled both. And the plugin submission I'd been preparing? Rejected before it was even reviewed.
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In one week I got the highest high and the lowest low of this entire project.
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Here's what I learned the hard way: WordPress.org forums are not a marketing channel. The mods are right to enforce that. I was genuinely helping people, but I was also promoting my product, and those two things don't mix on that platform.
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I thought I was being clever. I was being the exact person I'd find annoying if I was on the other side.
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So now I'm in this weird spot. I have a product that works, one customer who actually loves it, a full landing page, a payment system running. And zero presence on the platform where most WordPress users discover plugins.
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I've emailed their team to own up to it and ask if there's a path back. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
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In the meantime I'm not stopping. I spent too many late nights on this thing to let one mistake kill it.
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But I wanted to share this because every "how I grew my plugin" post is a highlight reel. Nobody talks about the part where you shoot yourself in the foot three steps into the race.
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If you've ever built something for WordPress or WooCommerce and hit a wall that was entirely your own fault, I'd love to hear how you got past it.