FrameHunt

I’m a solo founder in Turkey building FrameHunt — a movie and TV tracker with watchlists, ratings, check-ins, and imports from TV Time, Trakt, and Letterboxd. iOS, Android, web, ~1.6M titles. I’ve been heads-down in VS Code for a long time. A few months ago I forced myself to do distribution.

TL;DR: ~$750 on paid ads, 0 replies to cold email, locked out of Reddit ads, $0 revenue. One lucky tweet brought ~150 signups. That’s it.

The only win was dumb timing (not a growth hack)

In July, TV Time announced they were shutting down. People had years of watch history stuck there and were panicking on X about where to move it.

I’d already hacked together a CSV importer and a silly “migrant” badge for people switching apps. I posted one tweet — not an ad, just: if you need somewhere to import your watch history, it’s here.

~275k impressions. ~150 signups.

On paper that’s a brutal 0.05% conversion. Compared to everything else I tried, it was a miracle.

The lesson wasn’t “I cracked X.” It was: have a real utility ready when a competitor strands users. I got lucky on timing. I wouldn’t count on that twice.

What happened to those 150? A few stuck around and actually imported their libraries. Most didn’t. I got signups, not a habit. Still figuring out whether that spike was distribution or just a one-week panic button.

Paid ads ate $750 and gave me ghosts

I split roughly $500 on X (website traffic, US/UK/CA) and ~$250 on Instagram locally in Turkey (store redirect link).

Both got clicks. Almost nobody stayed.

X: thousands of impressions, landing page visits, then bounce.
 Instagram: cheaper clicks, same story — install maybe, open once, gone.

Cold traffic with no reason to care about yet another tracker is just paying to get ignored faster. I’d need social proof, word of mouth, or a moment like TV Time before I touch ads again.

Reddit said no twice

Ads: Hours setting up a campaign. Payment screen: Turkey isn’t a supported billing country. Door closed. No workaround I found.

Organic: Posted in a couple film/TV subreddits. Immediate downvotes. “This reads like ChatGPT.”

English is my second language. I write carefully — maybe too carefully. On Reddit, overly clean grammar apparently equals bot. If you’re a non-native founder outside the US/EU, a lot of indie playbooks quietly skip how hostile or inaccessible these platforms can be.

Cold outreach (and my own laziness)

I emailed three big film/pop-culture accounts. Crickets. Not even “no thanks.”

The mistake wasn’t getting ignored. It was treating three emails like I’d “done outreach.” That’s not a channel. That’s three lottery tickets.

Stuff I tried that didn’t move the needle (yet)

• Product Hunt / launch posts — some traffic, no lasting lift

• ASO — ongoing, too early to judge

• SEO — SSR for bots, cleaner slugs; crawlers indexing, months until I know if it converts

• Community forum (community.framehunt.app, SSO) — clean room, almost empty. Building community before distribution feels backwards in hindsight

• YouTube — I run a separate satirical film channel with an audience that matches FrameHunt almost 1:1. Haven’t cracked the plug without the video dying in a cringe sponsor halt. Thinking: description link + “how I track what I review” B-roll, not a mid-roll ad read

  If I had $0 and had to start over

  1. Watch for competitor shutdowns / migration moments — ship the import tool before the tweet

  2. Skip paid ads until something organic proves people stay

  3. Actually do outreach — 3 emails is embarrassing; I’d aim for 30+ with a specific hook

  4. Use assets I already have (YouTube) instead of building new empty rooms (forum)

  5. Measure retention, not signups — 150 that bounce is a vanity metric

     FrameHunt: framehunt.app · imports: framehunt.app/import/tvtime

     If you’re bootstrapping from outside the US — what actually worked for you without burning cash? Genuinely curious. I clearly don’t have this figured out yet.