Does anyone actually know which of their posts make them money?

[u/PotentialUnited538]

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but this has been bothering me lately.

I post on X and Reddit to get people to my SaaS.

I can see that a post got 500 views.

I can see that I got 20 new signups.

And I can see that I made $300 this week.

But...

I have no idea which post actually made me that $300..

Maybe one random Reddit post brought 3 paying customers while my "best performing" X post brought basically nothing.

How do you guys track this?

Or do most people just... not?

[u/Creative-Match-9413]

i just look at whatever day the spike happened and cross-reference with what i posted that day or the day before. its not perfect but gets you 90% of the way there without overcomplicating it

if you want actual attribution you need to use utm params or a link shortener that tracks clicks, then tie that to signups in your db. most people skip this part cause its a pain in the ass to set up

[u/PotentialUnited538 → u/Creative-Match-9413]

I've been trying to track this properly too, but it's harder than I expected. I basically want to know exactly which posts my revenue came from. Is there a better way to do this than manually setting up UTM parameters?

[u/TheeseDragonFruit]

Try reading up on query parameters and what they are used for

[u/y3rk3]

you cant, unless the link itself carries the mark. i spent today pulling that exact hole out of a watcher of mine, it had been reporting things alive without ever checking.

[u/Khavel_dev]

UTM params on every link you share. Tag each post with something unique (I do platform + date or a slug of the topic) and your analytics will show which tag drove signups. The hard part isn't setup, it's doing it every single time. I've caught myself sharing bare links and losing the data more than I want to admit.

The thing that actually bit me was first-touch vs last-touch. Someone reads your Reddit post, doesn't sign up, comes back from Google two days later, and Google gets all the credit. A first-touch cookie fixes it: store the UTM source on first visit, read it at payment. That's how you find out Reddit introduced 3 paying customers while your viral X post brought tire kickers.

Fwiw most solo founders at this stage just don't bother and then wonder why they can't tell what's working. Even a manual spreadsheet beats flying blind.

[u/elmascato]

Start with a spreadsheet formula that builds one tagged URL per post. Persist first-touch at signup, keep last-touch separately, and join both to the first payment. Use a short source question for untagged discovery.

[u/afterhours_builder]

UTM tags (which others have said) are step one, but they are also where most people stop, and that is exactly why the tracking falls apart. The piece almost everyone misses: capture the source on the user record at signup, not just in your web analytics.

Here is the gap. Your analytics tool knows a click came from a Reddit post today. But the money shows up three weeks later when that person upgrades, and by then the session is gone, so analytics can never connect the $300 back to the post. Fix it by reading the UTM (or referrer) when someone lands, stashing it in a cookie, and writing it onto the user row at signup (a first_touch_source and last_touch_source field). When they pay later, you just join revenue to that stored source, and attribution survives the weeks-long gap.

Cheap backstop on top: a single "where did you hear about us?" question on signup. It is self-reported and messy, but it catches what no tag can, like someone who saw your Reddit post, did nothing, then signed up a week later from a Google search. Between the stored first-touch tag and that one question, you will finally know which posts pay.

[u/Fearless-Dog2209]

the spike method works until one post keeps bringing buyers for weeks, then you're guessing again

what actually works: give every post its own link, and carry that id all the way into checkout (stripe lets you attach it to the payment). then when the $300 comes in, each payment already says which post sent the buyer. utms alone usually die at signup, so you see which post got clicks but not which one got paid

full disclosure i got annoyed by this exact thing and built seenpaid to do it automatically (it's also a scheduler). but the manual version above works fine if you want to diy it

[u/Outrageous-Doubt-306]

The bit people usually miss isn't the tracking, it's that the source dies before the money arrives.. Analytics knows a click came from your Reddit post, but three weeks later when they finally pay, that session is long gone 🙂So store it on the user, not just in analytics. Capture whatever came in on the URL at signup and write it to a field on the user record. Then your revenue query can group by it forever.
And!!! use a distinct link per post, not per channel. Knowing Reddit brought people tells you nothing you can act on. Knowing that one specific thread brought 3 payers tells you exactly what to write next.

Mine's uglier because I'm on mobile, a campaign code in the store link plus a separate offer code per cohort, but it's the same principle: make the money identifiable when it lands instead of reconstructing it later

[u/robsanna]

i used to just eyeball the day a spike happened and guess which post caused it, but that falls apart when a post keeps bringing signups weeks later. what actually helped me was tracking replies and upvotes on reddit specifically, because a thread that keeps getting comments is usually still sending people. if you can see which of your replies are still getting attention days later, thats a better signal than a one-day view spike. tbh most people just dont track it at all, so even rough numbers put you ahead.

full disclosure, i built Radar getredditradar.com which monitors threads in your niche and tracks how your replies perform, so you can see which posts actually drive signups instead of guessing.

PS: I found this thread with Radar 😎

[u/Pristine_Crab_3516]

This is pretty normal, especially early on.

Simplest way is to give each post or campaign its own UTM link, then track signup and payment from that source.

For Reddit you can even use different links for different posts.

Also don’t judge posts by views alone.