A founder selling a $29 a month project management tool for small dev teams posted a month by month breakdown on r/EntrepreneurRideAlong: $0 to $22K MRR in eight months, 340 paying users, nothing spent on ads. He is blunt that the product is ordinary and the market is crowded. The growth came from distribution, where he says he spent 70 percent of his time.
Honest comparison posts that rank for long tail searches
The early months were quiet helpfulness: he picked three subreddits where his buyers hang out and answered workflow questions with no links and no product mentions, which got him to 28 users through DMs. The scalable part came next. In months four and five he wrote eight comparison posts, four to six hours each. Not "my tool vs competitor" hit pieces, but honest breakdowns of when each tool is the right choice, aimed at searches like "Jira vs X for small teams".
Those posts ranked for long tail keywords, got picked up by newsletters, and one run on Hacker News brought 3,000 visits in a day. MRR went $800, then $4,200, then $12,000, then $22,000. Ten months later the same posts are still his top traffic pages.
A weekly tip email instead of a newsletter
Alongside the SEO he ran one email every Friday: a single actionable tip about team workflows, with one product mention worked into the context. The list was only 800 subscribers, but it held a 40 percent open rate and converted steadily. His line on it: he would take 800 engaged readers over 50,000 dead followers.
Why it works
Comparison searches are made by people already deciding what to buy, so modest traffic converts. Writing honestly about when a rival wins builds the trust that makes your recommendation land. And unlike ads, the pages keep compounding after you stop pushing.
How to copy it
List every "X vs Y" search your buyers make. Write the genuinely fair answer, one post at a time, and expect four hours each. Start a one tip weekly email the same week, and judge it on opens and signups, not list size.
Credit: u/Upbeat_Quit7362 on Reddit