How To Do Reddit Right
14 votes, 4.21 avg. tacos (83% full)

In this post I’m going to give you a look at how you can use Reddit to drive consistent traffic to your money sites, even small Amazon niche sites, but more importantly, I’m going to highlight how and why traffic should be the last thing on your mind when using Reddit.

I’ll take you through how to:

  1. How to use Reddit for smaller Amazon affiliate sites
  2. Get free content and done-for-you research
  3. An endless supply of topic ideas
  4. How to learn a foreign topic in a flash
  5. How to drive traffic the right way (without manipulating Reddit with asking for up-votes etc)
  6. How Reddit offers so much more than traffic spikes and visitors

If you are aiming to build a true Authority Site, or even turn a smaller site into an authoritative niche site, Reddit can be a fantastic tool for you.

“I Really Should Try Reddit”

Reddit has been on my “to do” list for pretty much the best part of 3 years. Sound familiar?

Its just always been one of those things that I was going to get to but never found the time (or never made the time).

I was encouraged by Perrin’s interview on NichePursuits.com with Dhanish Semar where Dhanish spoke about Reddit being a key traffic source and a large reason why he was able to surpass 1 million monthly page views to his site. While you’re over at NichePursuits, you can also read how Perrin and Spencer launched a software product, Vylo, using Reddit traffic and got 6000 subscribers as a result.

UPDATE: Spencer just put out another post about driving traffic with Reddit, that you can check out here. It’s a good one!

{I’m sure there’s other Reddit guides out there, feel free to drop a link to any that you know of in the comments}. Anyway, this post is not meant to be a Reddit article round-up, so let’s get to the meat.

Why Should You Bother Using Reddit?

Clearly, Reddit can be a great traffic source and that’s been documented over and over and over again.

We’ve done a little bit of work with posting to Reddit and driving traffic since mid-late last year, but nothing structured and what I would deem as a core traffic strategy.

However, one of our Internship graduates that we have a partner money site with (Amir) let me know that he had been doing a bit with Reddit and had actually build a nice flow of traffic to an Amazon affiliate site, plus got some fantastic information and feedback.

The cool thing about this particular site is that it’s just a standard Amazon site. It focuses on a particular piece of sporting equipment and although he’s adding a blog to the site and consistently adding new non-SEOd content, for all intents and purposes, it’s just a “slightly bigger than normal niche site”.

We’ve all got sites that fall into this category and the good news is that you can get traction with Reddit even if your site is not a massive Authority Site.

Here’s a look at his traffic:

reddit traffic

So 1247 sessions in under 3 months from Reddit, and that works out to be about 20% of the overall traffic.

Keep in mind this site is still very much in the growth stage and also 10 visits per day on average doesn’t sound like much over 3 months, it’s consistent and growing and all he’s done to get that traffic is share three articles to Reddit + hang around in the comments of those posts he made to Reddit.

Saif was able to pickup a niche-relevant natural link in addition (something Spencer referenced in his latest article also), so that’s a handy bonus and social shares on the article are undoubtedly helpful overall also.

Incorporating Reddit Into Our Money Site Strategy

In our December Internship intake we decided to give Reddit a decent test to learn some new tricks and refine some parameters for baking it into our authority site strategy.

The more I looked into Reddit and used it, the more I realized that the true value of Reddit for Authority Site builders is NOT the instant gratification you get from the traffic. There’s more to it than traffic.

3 Reasons (Aside from Traffic) To Use Reddit Today

1. Reddit Provides The Most Honest Feedback You’ll Get Anywhere

That traffic result is good and everyone loves getting natural links, but what is probably more beneficial is you have a longer term view for your site is honest FEEDBACK on your content. Here’s what Amir has found.

As an added bonus to sharing on Reddit is that the members there are very raw and vocal when you mess up on an article. They are like a super editor, fact checking your post. Which is great since if you want your post to get natural links, then they need to be on the up and up and factually correct. Also, I always implement the feedback I get from Redditors and fix the articles based on their input. I then comment back and upvote their criticism to give back the Karma

Let me be clear on this… Be prepared for HONEST feedback. Redditors just let fly with feedback. It actually makes for fantastic reading if you are killing time haha. Here’s a few screenshots to illustrate the point:

reddit feedback 1

 

reddit feedback 2

Redditors can sniff out self promotion from a mile away. They even have a bot that automatically picks it up!

reddit mods

The fantastic thing about how brutal Redditors are with their feedback is that it makes you raise the bar on your content quality. And even when you post something that you thought was great quality that gets fried by the community, you’ve then got some great feedback and action points to work on.

Not all the people will tell you straight up that your article is shit, sometimes they’ll tell you it’s shit, but in a nice way :-):

good feedback

You’ll probably get multiple points of feedback:

more good reddit

Speaking of action points and feedback, use Reddit for that!

2. Getting To Know Your Topic

As SEOs, we are often creating sites around topics that are based on keyword research which means we are often flying a little blind when it comes to producing a valuable piece of content.

Yes, true authority sites should have users in mind with content, but let’s be real > The money that can be made from keyword research and SEOd articles is too much to ignore.

A fantastic use for Reddit is actually engaging the community to give you the information you require for an article. You may even be able to research an entire article through a single question posed in a submission to Reddit.

Check out how this money site owner is using Reddit:

how to tie knots Q

^ This question was posted by the owner of a site on how to tie fishing knots. Here’s part of the string of fantastic responses, which would pretty much be enough to put an article together:

tie knots

 

Can you see how if you were only loosely familiar with a topic, simply replicating the above would both cut down your research time plus give you actual information from people very familiar with the topic?

3. Find Topic Ideas & What’s Popular

This is seriously under-estimated. Got a site on fitness? Stuck for user-focused content ideas and questions readers might want answered? At the time of writing this, that’s the top 10 submissions showing on the fitness sub reddit.

research

There’s 7 out of 10 submissions there that are viable options for topics to cover on your site.

Go Pro with this: Hang around for a while and you’ll notice some common questions popping up repeatedly. Simply make a nice resourceful post on the topic and if you have genuinely contributed to that sub-Reddit, you’ll be able to occasionally drop a link to that resource into the comments. Then let the natural traffic to the submission do the rest!

Of course, you can look to manipulate Reddit and ask friends that are on Reddit to up-vote etc, but the absolute truth is that you really don’t need to do it.

Why Reddit Excites Me (Finally)

Like I said at the top, I’ve been slow on the uptake when it comes to utilizing Reddit but I’m excited to be integrating Reddit “promotion” into our money site strategy moving forward because heck, who doesn’t want;

  1. Honest feedback on content
  2. A fresh stream of post ideas
  3. An easy way to research any niche
  4. A traffic source aside from Google
  5. Natural links gained in the process.

If you have any additional thoughts, contributions or questions related to Reddit, let us know below!

Learn With Us

We’re taking applications for our upcoming February Internship, which provides you with an opportunity to learn ^this type of stuff well ahead of the crowd in a guided 30 day authority site building course.

If you’d like to be involved with the February Internship intake, or just find out what else you can learn, take a look at the course content!

Internship-ad-300x240-01212015-2

 

 

How To Do Reddit Right
14 votes, 4.21 avg. tacos (83% full)
  1. Hey Greg!
    Great tips, especially for new content ideas!
    In first I was surprised that you post article about Reddit right after Spencer and Perrin posted their. But this is different tips! Great job and 5 stars ;)

    Did you guys test how reddit traffic converts on amazon niche website? if total of traffic was 20% from reddit, how many people actually click on amazon links and bought product compare to organic traffic?

    • Thanks Yaro. Amir says conversions are ok. IMO traffic is traffic. Not all traffic will convert the same, but there will always be a way to monetize it.

  2. one more things i would like to add. lets call it point no. 6 in greg’s summary.

    6. You get sales.

    I tried both a money article and a helpful support article. each had plenty links to amazon products. one more than the other. redditors click them and you will inevitably get sales since if you use reddit, chances are you have an amazon account.

    i know this because 1-2 days after posting the article, i got sales in related items to the post as well as random stuff than had nothing to do with the niche. in retrospect i should have used a deferred tracking id to measure the income. but i did wan’t to over complicate things.

    also, not one reddit comment was related to the amazon links nor any comment on this being a niche site. all discussions were related to the usefulness/accuracy (or not) of the article.

    when posting be as descriptive yet objective as possible.

    i know greg is also working on a few outreach articles. these would be a perfect fit for reddit.

    one tip on timing your post would be 8-9am. it will get enough notice to get you some comments with enough time to edit the article for the 5-6pm crowd.

    lastly, here is a link to the latest analytics with my last attempts:

    http://i.imgur.com/HamkeIR.jpg

    the last pop, accounts for half of all reddit traffic to the site. the article was an expansion for an already socially popular article from a related niche website.

    so i re-wrote it and expanded on it (doubled the word count with useful info, more images, and better formatting). I am very happy with the results and can’t wait to go for more.

  3. Yeah I’d be interested to read more about monetizing Reddit traffic.

    One of my sites went viral recently and had over 250,000 visitors in 24 hours from Reddit. The conversion rate (Adsense monetized site) was horrendous, and the popup signup offer that normally converts appx 1% barely got above 0% conversion!

    • 250k visitors = Good result!

      I believe Reddit is naturally going to be a poor converted given that people clicking through are hardly in a buying mood, just casually browsing. But, like I say in the article, there’s more to Reddit than the traffic.

  4. Great advice..Maybe someone knows a good subreddit to share links to pet related articles? All that I’ve found was either pictures or text posts.

  5. Thanks for the article Greg, Reddit, used correctly is indeed quite a beast of a website! But, as pointed out, getting dofollow links on it to stick isn’t as easy as one may think!

  6. Awesome post, you can definitely drive a ton of traffic fast with Reddit – but the traffic doesn’t convert for everyone. People are in a browsing mode, and rarely result in conversions from what I’ve seen.

    • Yeah that’s the challenge with most social traffic. We’re doing some testing right now actually with our current Internship group on keeping the traffic on-site for longer.

  7. Guess its finally time to take a look into Reddit

    Noticed a spelling mistake

    It should read opportunity to learn ^this type

    “Learn With Us
    We’re taking applications for out upcoming February Internship, which provides you with an opportunity ti learn ^this type “

  8. Greg isn’t it true that often the things we hate most are just things we don’t understand?

    I’ve hated Reddit for years, but I couldn’t agree with you more. I simply didn’t understand it. Recently we’ve been using it to critique content such as video training modules, blog posts, downloads and more. Wow you can get some excellent feedback. Almost make you quit your IM job, but it’s priceless in a way only Reddit can be.

    Had a Reddit thread that was ranking #1 in Google for a couple days for “Why Reddit Sucks”. It was hilarious fun. Got the community fired up and had some serious laughs to go with it. Even had someone try to hack the popularity with a blog post in that time.

    Thanks for sharing your strategies. It’s so good to be reminded of truths we already know, but we so often overlook in our planning. Bookmarked and look forward to sharing.

  9. Your content is so good that I don’t want to share it on my social networks for fear of competitors using it! I’m a recent convert to Reddit and this is invaluable info – the way to collect blog post ideas is so simple but so clever! Thank you so much!

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