Reddit Lead Miner — buying-intent post finder

Feed it subreddits + keywords and get back a scored, ranked lead list of buying-intent posts: who asked, what they want, how hot the intent is (0–100), and a suggested ethical reply angle. Built for agencies, SaaS founders, and freelancers who currently hunt this by hand.

How it works

1. Fetches Reddit's public RSS feeds (/r/{sub}/new/.rss, plus hot/rising if enabled) for each subreddit — 25 newest posts per feed.
2. Keyword-matches locally against post titles + bodies (your keywords plus an optional built-in list of buying-intent phrases: "looking for", "recommend", "alternative to", "worth it", …).
3. Scores each match 0–100:
   • Keyword strength (45) — exact phrase in title scores highest; multiple distinct keywords stack.
   • Recency (30) — fresher intent is more actionable; decays over 72h.
   • Question signal (15) — posts phrased as questions score higher.
   • Author heuristic (10) — weak prior only (throwaway-pattern names score lower, [deleted] scores 0). No karma data is available via RSS.
4. Pushes leads to the dataset, highest score first, tagged hot (≥70), warm (40–69), or cold (<40), each with a suggested reply angle.

Sample input

{
  "subreddits": ["SaaS", "smallbusiness"],
  "keywords": ["CRM", "email marketing"],
  "useBuiltInIntentPhrases": true,
  "feeds": ["new"],
  "maxResults": 100,
  "minScore": 40,
  "requestDelayMs": 2000
}

Sample output (dataset item)

{
  "post_url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/comments/1wq2j2i/looking_for_b2b_suppliers_wholesalers/",
  "subreddit": "smallbusiness",
  "title": "Looking for B2B suppliers / wholesalers – Office Supplies",
  "snippet": "…",
  "author": "someuser",
  "published_at": "2026-09-26T03:12:00+00:00",
  "matched_keywords": ["looking for", "suggestions"],
  "matched_in": ["title", "body"],
  "intent_score": 73,
  "intent_tier": "hot",
  "score_breakdown": {"keyword_strength": 45, "recency": 21, "question_signal": 0, "author_heuristic": 7, "total": 73},
  "suggested_reply_angle": "Answer their criteria directly and specifically. Mention your product only if it genuinely fits…",
  "scraped_at": "2026-09-26T04:59:00+00:00"
}

Honest caveats

• No engagement data. RSS feeds don't carry upvote scores or comment counts, so "engagement velocity" can't be scored. Recency is the proxy for actionability.
• Newest posts only. Each feed surfaces ~25 posts. This is a fresh-intent radar, not a historical search engine. Run it on a schedule for coverage.
• Reddit's posture. Reddit has locked down its unauthenticated JSON API (login required as of Sept 2026). This actor uses only the public RSS feeds Reddit publishes for syndication, with polite delays and backoff. Reddit can change or block those feeds at any time; if that happens the actor degrades loudly (per-feed failure notes in run-stats) rather than silently.
• This tool finds leads; it doesn't contact anyone. It never posts, comments, DMs, or votes. Outreach is the buyer's job — read each subreddit's self-promo rules first. Spam gets accounts banned; the reply angles are written helpful-first for a reason.
• ToS. Automated collection, even of public feeds, lives in a gray zone. Use at your own judgment; prefer Apify Proxy if you run it at high frequency.

Pricing suggestion

Usage-based rental on the Apify store: ~$2 per 1,000 posts scanned (≈ $0.05–0.10 per finished lead list run at typical volumes). That undercuts the $49/mo SaaS alternatives (Prems AI) for anyone running fewer than ~25k posts/mo of scanning, while staying well above compute cost.

Local dev

python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
mkdir -p storage/key_value_stores/default
# put INPUT.json in storage/key_value_stores/default/
APIFY_LOCAL_STORAGE_DIR=./storage .venv/bin/python -m src.main

Deploy (not yet done)

SOURCE_FILES pattern per the apify skill: PUT version with sourceFiles, then POST /v2/acts/{actorId}/builds?version=X.Y. Version cap is 10 — prune old versions first. Store publication is a separate tap.