March is over. Final count for my Korean data scrapers on Apify: 91 users, ~11,400 runs, and roughly $110-130 in revenue.
None of it came from Reddit.
Not for lack of trying.
The March Reddit Report Card
| Post | Subreddit | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Self-promo comment | r/webscraping | 144 views (the comment, not a post) |
| [OC] Melon chart viz | r/dataisbeautiful | Spam filter — removed |
| Korean music insight | r/Korea | Awaiting moderator approval |
| K-pop data discussion | r/kpop | Spam filter — removed |
| MCP server showcase | r/mcp | Spam filter — pending |
5 attempts. Current karma: 1.
The one "success" was a comment on r/webscraping's monthly self-promotion thread — not even a post.
Why This Happens
New Reddit accounts are in a sandbox. The platform doesn't trust you yet, and it shouldn't — it has to filter out bots and spammers at scale.
The rules aren't explicit, but through experimentation, here's what I found:
- Day 1-30: Most link posts get filtered, especially in niche subs. New accounts with no post history look identical to spam bots.
- Karma below 10: Even approved submissions surface way down in "new" — almost no organic discovery.
- Subreddit-specific trust: Larger subs (r/dataisbeautiful, r/kpop) have aggressive automod. Smaller subs (r/mcp, r/webscraping) are slightly more permissive.
The irony: the "build in public" crowd talks about Reddit constantly. They just don't mention that you need 6+ months of account history before it actually works.
What Actually Worked Instead
While Reddit gave me nothing, here's where the 91 users actually came from:
1. Apify Store organic search
Most of my users found me by searching inside Apify itself. When someone types "naver" or "korea" in the Apify Store search, my actors show up. No platform trust needed — just actor quality and description keywords.
2. Dev.to (marginally)
34 articles this month. 185+ views. Not massive, but the SEO compounds — my early tutorial posts from March 7 still get views three weeks later. Dev.to's RSS is indexed quickly and the URLs are clean.
3. Indie Hackers
One post, 3 likes, 7 comments, legitimate conversations. IH's community actively reads new posts. No follower count required to participate.
4. Repeat users
Several actors now have users who run them multiple times a day. naver-place-search has 22 users averaging 51 runs/user. Once someone finds you and it works, they stay.
The common thread: discoverability through the product itself, not through social proof.
The Platform Trust Hierarchy
After March, I'd rank marketing channels by how much they require pre-existing trust:
Low trust barrier High trust barrier
| |
Apify Store → Dev.to → IH → X → Reddit → Product Hunt
Apify Store gives you zero trust requirement — your actor can be brand new and still surface in search. Reddit requires months of account history before your voice exists.
Product Hunt is probably the hardest: you need existing followers to upvote, or you're invisible on launch day.
Tomorrow
April 1 is day 30 for this Reddit account.
The common advice is that 30 days + 10+ karma unlocks better submission rates. My current karma is 1, so I'm not quite there yet. But the 30-day threshold matters for automod rules in many subs.
This week I'll try again — probably r/webscraping with a genuine post (not self-promo), build karma from comments first, and work up to the subs that actually drive traffic.
The real lesson isn't "Reddit doesn't work." It's that Reddit works on a different timeline than everything else. While Apify Store and Dev.to gave me results in March, Reddit is a 60-90 day investment with no guaranteed return.
The Actual March Summary
11,400 runs. 91 users. $110-130 revenue. Zero Reddit traffic.
The scrapers found their users anyway. If I hadn't tried Reddit at all, the March numbers would look identical.
That's either reassuring or a little disturbing, depending on how you look at it.
This is part of an ongoing series documenting a Korean data API business built on Apify. Follow along at @sessionzero_ai.
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