Promoting a Web Game in 2026: QR Posters vs. Reddit

A comparison of old-fashioned printed QR posters in Boston against digital Reddit outreach for webgame user acquisition.

It’s 2026 and you’ve vibe coded a website. How do I know this? Because at this point, everybody and their grandmother has vibe coded a website. Thank you Claude Code for your service.

Many of us are now having the sobering realization that reaching 1,000 daily users requires far more than just the ability to code. It turns out marketing and user acquisition is half the battle. Actually, in this era of oversaturated production, it’s probably like 95% of the battle.

So, how do you promote your site efficiently? To answer this question, I did something few vibe coders ever attempt to do: step outside.

That’s right, I tried a good ol’ fashioned IRL marketing campaign—printed posters with a QR code. Did it work? Not really! But I learned some lessons along the way that I’ll share so you don’t make the same mistakes.

We’ll compare the efficacy of using printed posters with QR codes against digital outreach through Reddit posts and comments. In my case, a two-week experiment showed that Reddit was way more effective than posters. It drove about 4x the page views for 1/8th the time commitment.

QR Poster Campaign

I printed 20 posters to hang around the Boston area. I fit four posters per standard piece of paper and started small by printing five sheets. The total cost was about $10 for printing and supplies. I aimed to hang them at light posts, utility boxes, and public transit stops. To organize the effort, I created a marketing route webpage that planned the path, gave navigation advice, placement tips, and timing estimates.

Hanging the posters took longer than I expected, and halfway through the process, I realized my approach was flawed—both in terms of the route I planned, and the specific hanging locations I chose. I adjusted on the fly, opting to hang several around Boston Common in rapid succession where there was high foot traffic instead of branching out on the second half of the walk.

I initially planned to go to a few other parks and museums for the last six posters, but I realized broad coverage of the city really isn’t as important as selecting locations with high foot traffic and dwell time. For that, the Common was better. I should also note it was the day of Scotland’s World Cup match in Boston, which pushed the Common’s foot traffic well above normal levels. In other words, this was a pretty ideal time to get some eyes on the posters.

The total time invested to create the posters, print them at a shop, plan a route, and hang them up was about eight hours.

Poster Results

When all was said and done and about a week had gone by, my results were a bit disappointing. I couldn't track scans exactly because I was using a static QR code, and I didn’t have it land on a unique page where I could track specific stats. Looking at my Cloudflare Analytics dashboard, I estimate it drove somewhere between 30 and 100 site visits as of this writing.

After checking back along my route, I know that several of the posters have been taken down or covered up, so I don’t expect much more scanning to occur from here on. Some posters remain, but they’re mostly the ones in suboptimal locations that people aren’t vying for.

Lessons Learned

• Density Over Spread: Pick two or three high-traffic areas to focus on per day. It’s better to hang a cluster of posters in a few targeted spots rather than scattering one or two per block across a vast footprint of the city.
• Tracking: If you aren't using a dynamic QR code with tracking, link to a unique landing page or use UTM parameters to measure results.
• Format: Using a quick-and-easy sticker will save a lot of time and help you avoid drawing unwanted attention. City workers or police would have seen me taping up posters at some of my preferred spots, so I had to opt for worse locations. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed stickers that are hard to remove enjoy a much longer lifespan.
• Placement Strategy: I don't have concrete proof, but I suspect that when picking placements, dwell time is paramount over foot traffic and visibility. I'd rather have one person staring at the poster for several minutes than 100 quickly walking past it on a random pole—people rarely stop to read or scan those.
• Location Paradox: The better the spot, the more likely it will be removed or covered quickly. I can’t even suggest always going for ideal spots like bus terminals because their shelf life is so low. You probably want a balance of high-dwell time spots, like public transit stops, and some slightly out-of-the-way spots that have a shot at staying up longer. That way, locals can view them repeatedly until they finally get curious and give it a scan.

Reddit Campaign

I made two comments and three threads across a few different subreddits. These posts took me about an hour to create in total.

• r/WebGames (thread): 502 views
• r/vibecoding (comment): 1300 views
• r/ArtHistory (thread): 5000 views
• r/puzzles (comment): 8 views
• r/SideProject (thread): 216 views

Reddit Results

As far as actual site traffic goes, I used Cloudflare Analytics to check the relevant timeframe and look at visits by source. Tracking the Reddit referrals, I estimate these posts garnered 300 to 500 site views over the course of a week. I suspect more than half were driven by my single thread on r/ArtHistory. That crowd is pretty much my exact target demographic.

Conclusion

So, even with a generous estimate for the posters’ impact, the result is:

Ultimately, the Reddit outreach was about a 32x more effective use of time. Admittedly, I could have approached the poster hanging much differently, and there are probably plenty of efficiency gains to be had with a refined strategy.

Even so, hanging QR posters doesn’t seem too promising for this type of game at this scale. I will probably give the posters another attempt this September when I can concentrate my efforts around college campuses. They’ll be much busier than they were in June when I tried this, so stay tuned for an update.

And while I’ve got you here, stick around and play ArtZoom! Share it with your art-loving friends! Help me qualify for that sweet sweet ad revenue so I can escape the impending permanent underclass!