Last week, I ran an experiment: post on every platform I could find, every single day, for 7 days straight. No paid ads. No growth hacks. Just free tools, free platforms, and relentless consistency.
Here's what happened — and what I'd do differently.
The Setup
I'm a solo SaaS builder with 3 free tools:
- SellerMind Fee Calculator — for Etsy sellers who want to know their real profit
- PodCrisp Title Generator — AI-powered podcast title ideas
- SaaSLaunch SEO Checker — instant SEO pre-flight check for landing pages
The goal: get these tools in front of the right people using only free channels.
The Channels I Hit
Dev.to (7 articles in 7 days)
This was my highest-performing channel. Every article stayed live, no removals, no shadowbans. The community here is genuinely curious about indie projects.
What worked: Technical deep-dives ("How I built X on Cloudflare Workers") outperformed generic tool announcements by a wide margin. People want to learn, not just be sold to.
Best performer: "Why Most Etsy Shops Lose Money" — because it led with the problem, not the product.
Reddit (multiple subreddits)
r/SideProject, r/EtsySellers, r/ecommerce, r/entrepreneur, r/SEO, r/webdev, r/podcasting, r/digital_marketing, r/smallbusiness
What happened: Mixed. Some posts survived, others got removed for being "too promotional." The key lesson: Reddit communities have very different tolerance levels.
What worked: Posts framed as "I built this to solve my own problem" survived. Posts that read like ads got nuked within hours.
Hacker News
Show HN posts and comment-based engagement. The HN crowd respects technical depth and hates self-promotion. Best approach: answer questions in Ask HN threads and casually mention your tool when relevant.
What I'd Do Differently
1. Lead with value, always
The posts that got removed were the ones that led with "I built a thing!" The ones that survived started with "Here's a problem I kept running into..."
2. Match the community's language
r/EtsySellers cares about profit margins. r/webdev cares about tech stack. r/podcasting cares about discoverability. Same tool, completely different pitch.
3. Don't cross-post the same content
Every platform got a unique angle. Dev.to got technical articles. Reddit got casual "I built this" stories. HN got technical discussions. Never copy-paste.
4. Free tools are the best marketing
Nobody shares an ad. But people share free tools. A calculator, a generator, a checker — these are inherently shareable because they help someone right now.
The Compounding Effect
Here's the thing nobody tells you about content marketing: it compounds. Day 1 feels like shouting into the void. Day 7, you have 7 pieces of content working for you simultaneously. Each one drives a trickle of traffic. By week 2, those trickles become a stream.
The SEO Checker article on Dev.to will still be live next month. The Etsy pricing article will still be there in 6 months. This isn't about today's traffic — it's about building a permanent asset library.
What's Next
This week, I'm continuing the experiment with:
- More subreddit coverage
- Technical blog posts on each product
- Community engagement (replying to every comment, helping people)
- Cross-linking between Dev.to articles
The Bottom Line
If you're a solo builder with free tools, you have zero excuse not to do this. No ad budget required. Just write, post, engage, repeat.
The only cost is your time — and the willingness to look a little foolish posting every day.
Worth it? Day 1 felt weird. Day 7 feels normal. I'll let you know what day 30 looks like.
All tools mentioned are free, no account required:
Full disclosure: I'm the developer of SellerMind / PodCrisp / SaaSLaunch / Parcelglance. I built this tool because I needed it myself.
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