Nice project. $249 seems a bit high, but I guess it's like the Fairphone, they can't save as much as the large manufacturers do.
Lemmyverse.net show both communities: https://lemmyverse.net/communities?query=watchreddit
It probably didn't show up in the first place it only has 66 subscribers, and probably none on SJW.
About your second point, you indeed have to promote your community, using !newcommunities@lemmy.world, or related communities. This works quite well usually.
I will add that in your case, people knew about your community as you posted in other communities, but as discussed then, people seemed happy with the existing Reddit-focused communities.
Mastodon's main dev isn't really open. Have a look at the "Ego" part of this article: https://cassolotl.medium.com/i-left-mastodon-yesterday-4c5796b0f548
Misskey forks, whatever their names are today, seem more interesting
Isn't that dangerous to discose the bug while the largest version is still 18.5 ? https://fedidb.org/software/lemmy/versions
I skimmed through it, it's actually a decent article.