I do marketing for a memory API for AI agents. For about five weeks I've been posting in developer communities: dev.to, Hacker News, Reddit, Velog, and Indie Hackers. I'm writing this down because some of the numbers surprised me, and I'd like to hear how you do it.
dev.to: what got comments
I've published 7 posts here so far. The announcement posts got almost nothing. "Glasshouse v0.1 Is Out" got 1 comment, my intro post got 1, and my first post about why I'm building a benchmark got 0.
The posts that got comments were different. A post about how I'm trying not to rig my own benchmark got 19. A question to developers got 8. A post asking what's wrong with my benchmark (15 stars, 0 runs) got 7. One narrow question about memory API features got 0.
My takeaway so far: people reply when I ask them something they can answer, or when I show them where I might be wrong. They don't reply to "I shipped something."
Hacker News: dead posts
Several of my posts and comments on my first accounts were marked dead. Two Show HNs I made in April got 1 and 2 points, with no comments. I don't know exactly why. I started a new account, and I'm commenting on other people's threads before I post anything with a link.
I posted 8 times in r/AI_Agents, mostly questions about how to trust a memory benchmark and what to add to mine. I said I work at Wontopos, and I left 25+ comments answering people under those threads. Most posts got 1 to 2 comments each, and the best one got 9.
What I take from it: Reddit rewards answering people directly more than posting.
Indie Hackers
New accounts can't create posts yet, so I'm commenting until that opens up.
Velog (Korean)
I've been writing a Korean series there. Each post gets between 11 and 57 views, and the first episode did best.
Questions for you
- Did your first posts get killed somewhere? What did you change?
- How long did Indie Hackers take to unlock posting for you?
- What got you your first real replies?
Top comments (4)
hn killed my first three comments too, no links in any of them, so i still don't really know what tripped it. mostly stopped going there. the replies i get come from comment sections where the author is still around, like here and indie hackers
Same pattern here: the replies come from comment sections where the author is still around. On HN I've read that brand-new accounts get extra scrutiny for a while regardless of content, so early comments can get flagged even when they're fine. It might not have been anything you wrote, just the account age.
The gap between "Glasshouse v0.1 is out" getting 1 comment and "how I'm trying not to rig my own benchmark" getting 19 says a lot. People respond to a problem they can weigh in on, not to news they can only congratulate. I've seen the same thing: posts that end on an honest open question pull far more replies than polished announcements.
Your dev.to numbers match mine almost exactly, and I came in from the opposite side: not a memory API but a data API, posting write-ups of what the API returns. Nine posts in two weeks, about 90 views total from the tag feeds. The two that got any comments were the ones with a number someone could argue with (a hit rate per list, a 31 % refusal share on a bad morning), and both threads were started by other builders, not buyers.
The thing that surprised me most: the tag feeds give almost nobody reach here, the readers sit in the editorial streams and the challenge threads, and a comment in the right thread did more than any post. So "ask them something they can answer" is right, and I would add "post where the answerers already are". Curious what Velog does differently, since a language-local community with fewer posters might be the one place announcements still work.