Banned on Substack, Reddit and Etsy in month one — for offering free promotion
- 5
- New subscribers
- 92%
- Imported subscribers kept
- Not disclosed
- Budget
- 30 days
- Duration
Alexander Belyanin launched tinyfound, a newsletter of founders' first-customer stories, and spent month one offering people free write-ups of their own stories. The result: 5 new subscribers, banned four times on Reddit, banned on Substack, temporarily on Etsy — and Gmail started marking his emails as spam.
01The problem
Grow a new newsletter without an ad budget.
02The experiment
He imported 300 subscribers from an old newsletter on a different topic (25 left). To grow, he reached out to strangers on Reddit, Substack and Etsy, leaving on-topic comments without links and offering people a free, finished write-up of their own story with links back to them.
Of about 15 people who asked to be interviewed, 6 became stories.
03Results
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| New subscribersin month one | 5 |
| Reddit bansplus Substack and a temporary Etsy ban | 4 |
| Imported subscribers kept275 of 300 | 92% |
| Open ratestated as “around 40%” | Not disclosed |
| Spend | Not disclosed |
“Not disclosed” means the source doesn't say. We never estimate or fill in missing numbers.
04What worked — and what didn't
What worked
- Sourcing people to feature — people asked to be interviewed
- Keeping an imported list: only 25 of 300 left
- One person sharing a story moved more than all the cold outreach
What didn't work
- Reddit comments with no links: banned four times
- Banned on Substack and temporarily on Etsy
- Gmail started marking his emails as spam
05Lessons
Platforms aren't your friends, and reaching strangers to offer them something good now looks like spam to every filter.
“Only 5 new subscribers all month.”
06Source & evidence
- View original
Originally shared on Indie Hackers · Aug 5, 2026
Banned on Substack, Reddit, and Etsy in my first month for offering people free promotion
Public source. Extracted from publicly available content by the founder.
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