I made $50K in the last 12 months with zero paid ads. Here’s exactly where every signup came from

Solo founder, 19 months in, building a Reddit marketing tool called MediaFast. Last 12 months: $49.6K revenue, 334 payments, 36K visitors, $0 spent on ads.

I finally pulled the full year referrer report and some of it surprised me, so here's all of it.

Where the 36K visitors came from (last 365 days, visitors / payments)

X: 13,100 / 97

Direct: 12,200 / 112

Google: 5,200 / 38

IndieHackers: 2,400 / 20

TrustMRR: 840 / 5

ChatGPT: 674 / 1

Reddit: 480 / 0

Perplexity: 69 / 2

Product Hunt, BetaList, Uneed, TinyLaunch and ~10 other launch directories combined: ~700 / 2

The rest of the revenue is renewals and returning customers that don't get tied to a referrer.

What's behind those numbers

1. X is the biggest number but not the best one. 13K visitors, 97 payments, under 1% conversion. Almost all of it is build in public posts, revenue screenshots, and replying under bigger accounts. Cheap traffic, low intent. Still worth doing, but it's a volume game.

2. Direct converts best and most of it isn't really "direct". 12K visitors, 112 payments. When people click out of the Reddit app the referrer usually gets dropped, same with links shared in DMs. So the Reddit line sitting at 480 visitors and $0 is misleading. My honest read: a big chunk of Direct is people who saw the name in a Reddit comment and typed it in. A Reddit tool's best channel looks dead in analytics. Funny.

3. Google is 100% free tools. 5,200 visitors, 38 payments. I never wrote a "best Reddit marketing tools" listicle. I built 15 small free tools instead: shadowban checker, post generator, subreddit finder, account value calculator, upvote calculator, that kind of thing. Each one ranks for its own long tail query and sends a trickle. Trickles add up.

4. IndieHackers punches above its weight. 2,400 visitors, 20 payments. Almost 1% conversion, better than X. Long honest posts about numbers and mistakes, never launches.

5. Launch directories are a wasted Saturday. Submitted to 15ish of them. ~700 visitors total, 2 payments, Product Hunt included. I'd only do it again for the backlink.

6. AI search is real but tiny. ChatGPT and Perplexity together: ~750 visitors, 3 payments. Growing every month though, and Reddit threads are a big part of what they cite, which is a whole separate rabbit hole.

Things I got wrong

Early on I posted about the product everywhere. Got removed, shadowbanned, ignored. That's literally why the tool exists, I built it for myself first. The switch that changed everything was answering threads instead of posting. Show up where people already have the problem, and mention what you built only when it's genuinely the answer.

I spent way too long on the landing page. Nobody arrives at the landing page. They arrive at a free tool or from a comment and click through after.

I didn't set up proper attribution until way too late. Do it week 1. And ask "where did you hear about us" at signup, it catches everything analytics misses.

Numbers that keep me honest

96% of visitors are new. I don't have an audience, I have channels. Those are different things.

0.92% visitor to payment. Meh. The free tools drag it down but I'd rather have the traffic.

2,200+ commits, one person. Most of that time went into the product. If I started over, a lot more of it would go into the comments.

Happy to answer anything about the free tools approach or how to comment on Reddit without getting nuked.