Replies that don't sound like sales
A reply sounds like sales when it's about you. Here are the patterns that give you away and a simple shape that gets people to write back.
Replies that don't sound like sales spend their first sentence on the other person's problem. That's most of it. The reply that gets ignored usually opens with the product, has a link, and asks for something. The one that gets a response reads like a stranger who has been through the same thing and had a useful idea.
People on X are very good at spotting a pitch. They see dozens a day. You get about one line to show you're not one of them.
The patterns that make a reply sound like sales
- →A link in the first reply. Even a helpful link looks like spam from a stranger. Wait until they ask.
- →"Check out". It's the most common opener in pitch replies, so people skim past it on reflex.
- →"DM me". You're asking them to do work for you before you've given them anything.
- →Hype words. "Insane", "10x", "next level", "must have". Nobody talks like this about tools they actually use.
- →Talking about yourself first. "We built", "Our tool", "I made" as the opening words. Their problem should come before your product.
- →Too long. If your reply is longer than their post, it reads like a prepared script.
- →Exclamation marks. One can be fine. Two in a reply to a stranger reads like an ad.
spent my whole Sunday debugging why our cron jobs silently stopped. zero alerts. is there a way to know when a job just... doesn't run?
Check out Statuskit!! We built an insanely good monitoring tool for devs, 10x better than anything else out there. DM me for 50% off statuskit.dev
spent my whole Sunday debugging why our cron jobs silently stopped. zero alerts. is there a way to know when a job just... doesn't run?
The silent ones are the worst. What fixed it for me: each job pings a URL when it finishes, and you get alerted if the ping doesn't arrive on time. People call it a dead man's switch. Most monitoring tools have a free tier that does it.
A reply shape that works
- 1Show you read it. Pick up one specific detail from their post ("the silent ones", "Sunday", the tool they named).
- 2Give one useful thing. A fix, a setting, a question that helps them think. Just one.
- 3Optional, and only if it's the honest answer: a light offer with no link. "I built something for this, happy to share if useful."
Two to four sentences. On a phone, a reply that runs past the original post looks like a wall. If you can't fit the useful part into four sentences, you probably have two ideas, so pick the better one.
Paste a reply you sent last week into the checker below. It flags the patterns from the list as you type, so you can see which habits you fall into.
- ✓Fits in one post
- ✓More about them than you
- ✕Drop the link. Share it when they ask.
- ✕Cut the call to action. Help first.
- ✕Don't make them come to you. Answer in the reply.
- ✕Swap hype words for one concrete detail.
- ✕Calm down the punctuation.
When to mention your product
Mention it when they ask, or when your product is genuinely the direct answer to their question. When you do, say plainly that you built it. "Full disclosure, I made a tool for this" lands much better than pretending to be a happy user. People forgive self interest. They don't forgive being tricked.
Skip the mention when they're venting, when they already picked a tool and are just complaining about setup, or when the thread is a joke. A good reply with no product still does work: they see your name, some click your profile, and your bio says what you build.
Before and after
- →Before: "Check out our tool, it does exactly this." After: "Had this exact issue with webhooks timing out. Bumping the retry window to 5 minutes fixed most of it for us."
- →Before: "DM me and I'll show you how we solved it." After: "What's the stack? If it's Postgres, there's a setting that causes this a lot."
- →Before: "We built the best invoicing app for freelancers." After: "Chasing late invoices was the worst part of freelancing for me. Automatic reminders at 3 and 7 days got most people to pay without me writing anything."
Notice the afters are longer than the befores, but each one gives something away. That's the trade. It's also why this beats a cold email: you're answering someone who asked, instead of interrupting someone who didn't.
If writing 15 of these a day sounds like a lot, it is at first. KittyLeads drafts a reply in your tone for each person it finds, you can rewrite it as many times as you want, and you send it yourself from X. It never posts for you. There's more on how indie hackers use it day to day.
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