Ramen Road #2: Trying out Marc Lou's Reddit Launch Strategy

Hey everyone!

Welcome back to Ramen Road, where we analyze, comment and experiment strategies to get traction in early-stage projects. Today we’re focusing on Marc Lou’s strategy to successfully launch on Reddit.

🥢 Slurp-worthy Strategy of the Week: Launching on Reddit

Marc Lou has made over $1M from his projects.

He is a legend and one of the most inspiring solopreneurs. He’s also hilarious so give him a follow if you haven’t done so.

I recently read one of his posts about how to launch on Reddit and how he got over 100,000 visitors to his website without spending a dime. Fascinating read and I decided to give it a try:

Marc’s Strategy

Here’s a breakdown on some key points:

1. Don’t break Reddit codes: Reddit has a huge user-base and their subreddits are their home, so don’t barge in. All subreddits have different rules which you can read, but some basic ones are:

   1. No spam or self-promotion: promote free projects, only post on ad-friendly channels or disguise your product into a free one.

   2. No emojis

   3. Be a part of the community: answer questions in your threads, make updates and give feedback. It shouldn’t just be a place where you take things from.

2. Choose your Subreddits: look for subreddits that fit your product (r/internetisbeautiful, r/sideproject, r/entrepreneur, r/saas).

3. Adapt your approach: make sure you follow guidelines.

   1. If ads aren't allowed, hide paid plans or collect emails

   2. Record a demo to grab attention when you think it can be useful. Video is better than text-based posts.

Ramen Road’s Launch

For my launch, I mainly focused on showcasing Ramen Road’s first newsletter issue. Stayed away from top subreddits like r/internetisbeautiful and didn’t record a demo because it didn’t fit with the newsletter.

Here are the results for each post:

1. r/Saas - How a SaaS Startup Hit 20.6M Google Impressions in Just One Year: 1.1K Views, 4 shares.

2. r/SideProject - I made a newsletter to help early-stage founders get traction like my self: 568 Views, 0 shares.

3. r/Entrepreneur - How tiny.host got more than 20M impressions on Google: SEO for early-stage startups: 4.4K Views, 8 shares, 1 comment

My learnings:

• Content-focused posts get better results: there’s a better incentive for the user to read it through and share it. It also meant that my first issue was helpful to some :)

• Very little discussion: there was only one comment which seems AI-generated. I was hoping on having some discussion to plug-in my newsletter link and it didn’t work out that way.

• Need better tracking: Ramen Road has gained subscribers during the past week, but I’m not sure which came from these posts. I should generate specific referral links to get a better understanding if they are working or not.

I’m going to be hanging around these subreddits to help and learn from other users, keep posting Ramen Road’s newsletter issues and build my authority for future posts.

🍥 Startup Showcase: Fresh Flavors in the Tech Scene

1. Basefront

   • Creator: Joel from Basefront (@J__Rosen)

   • Description: Airtable to Directory or Job Board in Minutes

   • Noteworthy: a directory is probably one of the best ways to get started when indie hacking and this is an awesome tool to do it fast.

2. ConfettiTherapy

   • Creator: Peter Mick (@ThePeterMick)

   • Description: Click a button, pop confetti

   • Noteworthy: Cannot stress enough how relaxing this is.

🥡 Takeaway Challenge

This week, try launching on Reddit using Marc Lou’s strategy:

1. Identify a subreddit that aligns with your target audience.

2. Craft a post that provides value to that community and hints at your product.

Share your experience with us – we'd love to hear how it goes.

Best of luck with your week!

Your chef,

Clemente from Ramen Road

P.S. Know a founder who needs some SEO strategies in their toolkit? Share this newsletter with them!