Reddit
is one of the best social bookmarking sites and very popular. By using it effectively you can get thousands of visitors in your blog. It also helps you increase your online earnings
Hey wait, are you leaving my post and submitting your post on Reddit now? Don’t do it. First read this article or it will be a great mistake just like I did when I started blogging.
One of my friends said me, “Use Reddit and you will get huge traffic.” I asked, “How.” He said, “Sign up there and submit your link and you will get huge traffic.” I was so happy. I did that. I started submitting my posts. But, I didn’t get much traffic. After few days, I was banned from Reddit. I was surprised. I thought that Reddit was not useful for me. But, after that, I found out the reason of my failure. In this article I will tell you about How to Use Reddit to Drive Huge Traffic to Your Blog and my mistakes.
Before describing about “ How to Use Reddit to Drive Huge Traffic to Your Blog”, you have to understand about few important things about Reddit
• Up-votes, Down-votes and Karma: Look at the left side of a submitted link in Reddit. You can see up and down arrow. Up arrow is for up- vote and down arrow is for down-vote. When someone likes your link, he or she can express it by up- vote. When someone is disturbed of your link, he or she may give you down-vote. Voting system is also available for comments. Next thing is Karma. Karma is a point. You get this point when you will get an up-vote for your submitted link or comment. But, you will lose Karma if you get down-vote. If total karma goes below a level, your account can be banned. It may happen, if you submit only your blog posts.
• Sub-reddits: Like other social bookmarking sites, you have to select a category to submit your link. But, benefit of Reddit is they have category for almost everything such as news, science, health, technology, iPhone, chrome etc. You may not find this feature to other sites. Reddit calls its category as subreddit.
• Stealth ban: Reddit has a unique way to ban spammers, its called stealth ban. In this way reddit ban a spammer silently. It means, the user can do all works normally, but it won’t be publicly visible. For example, after submitting your link, it will be shown “submitted”, but only you can see your link in that sub-reddit, others can’t see it. So, your all activities will become valueless. You can check it now. First login to your Reddit account and copy your profile URL. Now logout and paste your profile url into the address bar. If you are not banned, you can see everything is normal. But, if you are banned, it will show “page not found” and “the page you requested does not exist”
Sorry to keep you waiting. Now, it’s the time to say you about “ How to Use Reddit to Drive Huge Traffic to Your Blog”.
1. Sign up to Reddit: If you don’t create an account, you can’t use Reddit. So, first of all sign up to Reddit and
create an account.
2. Share contents from other websites: I know you are surprised. You are expecting some interesting or valuable tips in second point of my article like sharing your own contents and getting traffic. But, no, it’s the one of the most important or valuable steps. Without it your all work is going to be spoiled. It is one of the reasons for which I failed. After creating your account, for first few days forget about your own blog when you use Reddit. Submit interesting topics from other websites and try to get more and more up-votes and build Karma. Otherwise your account can get banned. You will not get up-votes or karma either. Submit your own links when your Karma is around 150. After you have started submitting your links, I
suggest you not to submit links only from your own blog. Reddit rules say to submit post from other sites.
3. Read the rules of sub-reddits and avoid spamming: Many users submit their links without knowing about the rules of sub-reddit. Reddit is highly concern about spamming. It has a spam filter which automatically filters out spam. But, don’t worry. You can prevent it. Before submitting, read the rules of sub-reddits where you want to submit your link because different sub- reddits have different rules. Also be sure that your link was submitted before by you or someone else or not. After submitting, to check whether your link is alive or not, click the “New” tab of that sub- reddit where you have submitted your link. If it is not there, it means, your link is caught by spam filters.
4. Get more up-votes and make front page of Reddit: To get huge traffic you need more up- votes. It helps to get your link on the front page of Reddit which is the number one goal of Reddit. For that you need to get first 10 up-votes for your link as quick as possible and it will rise to the top in that sub-reddit. Reddit will favor you more if you manage 100 up-votes in 1 hour. But, if it takes 10 hours, it won’t be effective. Reddit ranks newer stories higher than older stories. So, try to submit newer stories. If your link gets the highest number of up-votes in that sub-reddit, it will rise to the front page. Another thing is the first 10 up-votes have the same power as the next 100 up- votes which have the same power as the next 1,000. But, all these equation will not work if you get significant amount down-votes which will also affect the rank of your link. For example, getting 120 up-votes and 10 down-votes is better than getting 1000 up- votes and 900 down- votes.
But, how will you get more up-votes and more traffic, here is the ways-
a. Find interesting contents and submit it: Like I said before, find and share contents from other popular sites. If you submit your own links only, people won’t like you and think you a spammer. So, there is high chance that you would get down- votes. More down- votes means your account is more in trouble. Keep in mind that Reddit is created for sharing valuable information with people and which is going to help them. What I do is if I submit 5 links, 1 is from my own site. But what types of posts should you submit? Think that you are sharing information or interesting things (photos/videos) with people. Your aim is to make them happy. Share content that is funny, humorous or interesting. The best types may be videos, drawings or interviews. You can search google for this. You can share latest science/ technology news from popular sites.
b. Give an interesting title to your link: Reddit don’t allow you to put link summary like other social bookmarking sites. You can only give a title to your link. So, try to give a clear idea about your post. Also make the title attractive or surprising. For an example, you are sharing a link about facebook’s new feature hashtag. Your title should not be “Facebook’s new feature hashtag”. But, it can be “Facebook turns heat on twitter with hashtag”
c. Submit your link to a suitable sub-reddit: Before choosing a sub-reddit, you have to think about 2 matters. One is name of the sub-reddit and number of subscribers of the sub-reddit. Try to be more specific when you choose a sub- reddit. Find sub- reddit that is the best fit for your post. Suppose you want to submit a link about “Benefits of using Google chrome”. You should choose chrome subreddit for it, not technology/ internet. Then see number of subscribers of that sub-reddit. Traffic depends on the number. If you can’t choose a perfect sub- reddit, it won’t be effective.
d. Time for submitting your link: If you submit your link when people are not active, you can not expect many up- votes. Study says that, the best time for submitting your link on most social networks is before 5pm EST. Same timing is helpful for Reddit.
e. Let people know you are active: Try to give valuable and attractive comments to posts which have got high number of up-votes. It will help you to drive traffic to your submitted links. It’s simple. If they love your comments, they can be curious about your posts and they can go to your links and give it an up- vote. Thus they will know about you and may follow you and give you up-vote. But, don’t do it excessively. Do it sometimes.
5. Don’t be crazy to submit all-time: It is another important thing. Other social bookmarking sites may allow you to submit a lot of links everyday. But, Reddit won’t allow you to do so. One link is enough for a day.
6. Don't be frustrated: It will take time to get good result. Your 1st 20 post may get less amount of up-votes. But, don't be frustrated for that. Try to find out why you have failed. Keep trying and you will get success.
7. Follow other Reddit users: won’t give you up- votes or traffic, but it is very helpful. What you have to do is watch what other users are doing. Specially follow users whose links are on front page. Try to understand why they have got so many up- votes or what types of posts get more up- votes. Find out what’s the difference between your title and their titles. See how they comments on a post. This will give you more knowledge and you can understand what to do next.
Finally, I want to say that, though Reddit has strict rules, you can drive huge traffic to your blog by using it appropriately. Even it can make you happier than other social networking sites.
