I got my first 1000 subscribers by building an audience on Reddit
Hey all,
Today I wanted to share how I grew my newsletter to 1000 subscribers in 2 months through Reddit.
Last August I decided that I wanted to learn how to grow an email list. At the time, I basically had 0 followers on any socials (that didn't really change by now :D). I like challenges, so I challenged myself to get to 1000 subscribers asap (took me ~2 months) without doing easy :P things like ProductHunt launches.
I thought launching on PH or other PR stuff brings the spike-y growth we love seeing so much, but it doesn't generate traffic sustainably. Also, not having an audience before launching on PH makes a successful launch unlikely. So I wanted to find a sustainable way of generating traffic and building my audience first. Reddit turned out to be really helpful with this.
So here's what I did:
1. Write content that scratches my own itch
We all heard it so often, but it's true. I think if you solve a problem that you yourself have, it's likely that you'll find people (on Reddit) that want that same problem solved. For me, this was finding business ideas worth pursuing.
So I did a lot of research on potential ideas and shared my findings in the newsletter and in relevant online communities (mainly subreddits). This brings me to the next point:
2. Post in the right communities
Subreddits can be tough at times, and some of them are highly moderated. Things to look out for in subreddits (or any only community):
- some level of moderation but not too high (if there's no moderation it often ends up being a link dump. too much moderation, and you likely won't be allowed to post your links).
- link-sharing allowed.
- relevant to your topic (in my case entrepreneur communities, business idea subreddits, etc.).
- large enough communities (at least 30-40k members, ideally >100-200k). I wanted to get to 1k quickly, so I needed exposure in larger communities. You can probably build tighter relationships in smaller communities, and there's tremendous benefit in this. But for my objective of getting to 1k asap (which in retrospect I find a bit silly tbh), we needed large communities.
Side note: read the rules of the subreddit, and check how much they are enforced. Often times the official rules state "NO SELF-PROMO OR LINK SHARING" but when you go through the posts, you often see self-promo with links that were really popular in the subreddit. So always double-check.
3. Few words on self-promotion
You don't want to become the person who always posts self-promos. Find a good cadence, so that people are still happy reading your stuff and don't get annoyed by it. And try to make sure to add non-self-promo content in between. Doesn't need to be in your main subreddits, it can be anywhere on the platform.
The thing is, Redditors often-times are a bit bitter against people who only self-promote. And when they sense you might be one of them, they'll go check out your profile. On your profile, they'll see your most recent posts. And if they find you're only on Reddit for self-promo, they might publicly call you out for this (not a nice experience :P).
4. Find out what content works there
Things like "Hey, here's my product/newsletter, please sign up" just don't work, at least not for me. So I always made sure to provide value first, by providing valuable content (i.e. that scratches my own itch). Then I'd plug a link to my site at the end of the post. That would oftentimes bring me ~100 subs per post.
Find out what works in your specific subreddit by studying posts that got tons of upvotes in the past (go to the "top posts" section and filter for last week, month, or year). If a certain type of content "went viral" in this subreddit once, it likely will again. Don't just copy though. Add your own spin to it.
5. Find the right times
Reddit is very US-centric. What I found out working for me, as a European, is to post in the afternoon CET time. There are tools like this one that show you what times are good for each subreddit. I got a bit nerdy about this :D Here's what I did:
I tried to post shortly before the big traffic from the States would come in. This way, there's usually less competition (i.e. high performing posts), so it's easier for you to get to the "hot posts" section (see next point). I always tried to get there asap, so that when people in the states woke up, they'd see my post right away.
6. Get to "hot posts" quickly
The way Reddit works is like this: when you post, your post ends up in the category "new posts" where basically nobody sees you. You want to get to "hot posts" which are the ones that you see on the front page. The way you do this is by getting upvotes rapidly (3-4 upvotes in 15-30 minutes usually does the trick, even in subreddits with 1m+ members).
So you gotta find a way to get those upvotes. But don't cheat! Reddit has processes in place that notice when you create multiple accounts and upvote your own content, and they might ban you if they catch you ;)
Once your post is on the front page of that subreddit, you've done your job. From there on, anything can happen: an explosion in traffic, medium traffic, or nothing at all. This isn't up to you anymore. Anyways, you should make sure to stick around in the comments and engage with the people commenting on your post.
That's basically how I got to 1k email subs in 2 months without PH, PR, or a previous audience of my own. I'm also really happy with the engagement on my list (consistently 40% open rate and 5-10% click rate).
This is the newsletter, feel free to check it out. I'd also be happy to connect on Twitter. I tweet about my learnings from growing my newsletter and building other products!
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions/remarks.
P.S.: I still didn't launch the newsletter on PH ;) I launched with a side project and the experience was underwhelming
Can you tell us how many subreddits did you post on and how big is the audience?
Did you get moderated at some point or not? Did you ask the mods to post before to check you will not get banned?
I had about 3-4 subreddits where I'd post. Do you mean the audience on those subreddits? They had anything between 30-40k to 1m+ members.
"Did you get moderated at some point or not?"
Do you mean if some of my posts got removed? Yes, for sure. I never got banned from a sub, though. I often hear people saying that r/startups is very strongly moderated and people often get banned for posting anything closely related to self promo. So I stayed miles away from that (not only because of the moderation, I also didn't really enjoy the posts and discussions).
"Did you ask the mods to post before to check you will not get banned?"
No, I never asked the mods for permission. But I always checked out the community and see what type of posts are floating around there to get a feeling of what's okay and what's not.
Can you list them? :D
Thanks for sharing.
How much traffic does Reddit send to your newsletter?
I haven't been in growth mode for a while now, so I don't have up-to-date data here.
But I just had a look at the stats from a few months ago and: a very good post would send around 1.5-2k visitors a day, and a normal post 500-1k. But I'm sure there's a lot more room here! I don't think we nearly got as much traffic as one could generate on Reddit.
Monthly, I'd have something like 3-8k page visitors, 80% of which would come from Reddit.
Thank you, that is exactly what I was looking for!
Great post man, I didn't think about Reddit as a good marketing channel, but it could have good potential and following your advice would be easier, I'm bootstrapping my first SaaS and I don't know a thing about marketing so it was really helpful, thank you!
PD: I followed you on Twitter :)
Cool!! What's your SaaS? You can also let me know on Twitter, would love to learn more!
Actually the SaaS I'm building is for solving my own problem: growing on Twitter from 0 followers to an audience.
I realized that almost every indie-hacker has his own audience on Twitter or somewhere, and I think that's critical to succeed in this field, so I decided to build a tool to help me do that :) I'm @nomad_ok on Twitter, I'm launching my SaaS' beta today, so I'll contact you there!
Really useful post, thanks. I've struggled with the self promotion part! Going to hive some of you advice a try
Awesome, let me know how it goes! Happy to help if you struggle. Best way to reach me is in my Twitter DMs
Anyone had success building a brand via shitposting? I ask because I am really good at shitposting.
Looking for a way that customers visit my service and get critics. This is really a good start.
Hi!
Useful post) Right now, working with Reddit takes up half my time. We don't even have high hopes for Facebook - the conversion rate there is much lower. With your expert view, check out my account - I would be grateful for constructive criticism!
https://www.reddit.com/user/inqoob-Constructor
I would be very grateful!
I have no understanding/experience of Facebook, so can't comment on that. I also got nothing to add to the profile in itself. Profile-Info on Reddit isn't worth much imo.
But I have some thoughts on your most recent posts:
Thank you for your time. Yes, it's hard to figure out the first time, but I'll try my best.
Sure, hope it helps!
One more thing regarding titles: when your post is mainly about asking for something, then instead of writing a title "we need xyz," write "How would you do xyz?" This makes the reader feel important as you value their opinion and make them look like experts (again, they get something from you: social status). People seem to like that.
Thanks for sharing!
I've also tried (and actually I'm still trying) to build an audience for BotMeNot on Reddit. I've found a couple of communities, but none of them are as large as 100k members. What I'm working on is relatively niche, so I don't see it as appropriate to spam the links to it everywhere.
I am seeing some results, but it seems like it takes a lot of time and effort (which is to be expected I guess).
Congratulations on your success!
True, your product is a bit niche, here's what I would do (in case you don't do already):
Hope this helps a bit.
Thanks, helps a lot actually!
Oh! This is a great one! I've been looking for a helpful post such as this to get started with Reddit also. Thank you for sharing!
Happy to hear that it's helpful.
Thanks for the post Matthias!
Reddit is definitely not the social platform that I know most about, although it's quite known that it can be a huge growth factor — lots of tips here that I'm eager to try 😎
Yes, it seems as if Reddit is a bit of an outlier. But if you understand the culture of Reddit and the specific Subreddits that are relevant to you, it can be really helpful. Especially if you don't have a following elsewhere.
I'm convinced that providing good content and building trust is key to translate readers into customers. Thanks for the post!
really loved your posts on community validated. especially niche canva for gamers which i think is waiting to be solved :)
Oh yea? Would love to chat, working on a project in the space (not this specific one though). DM me on Twitter, would love to hear your thoughts: https://mobile.twitter.com/MatthiasGabrie6
I am trying to build a community in a subreddit that I have created back in January. Till now, I have 420 members who have joined, but members publish posts rarely; I'd say 1-2 posts per week; it's all coming from me while trying to provide them with some helpful content that I cross-post over similar subreddits, it's true that I make some upvotes/comments but far away from considering it as an active subreddit, any advice?
That's inspiring. Would you say building an audience on Reddit is easier than building one on Twitter? (considering I target software developers)
I think this is kind of a double-edged sword situation. The good thing about Reddit: you don't write into the void at the beginning. Everybody who scrolls through a subreddit will potentially see your post (especially if it's in the hot section). The downside of Reddit: You won't really acquire a following on the platform. So while you might generate traffic for single posts, I won't build an audience on the platform that will always get your content displayed.
This is what you get on Twitter. Twitter is about personalities, and when people follow you as a person, there's always the chance that they get your content displayed. It's much easier to build a personal brand on Twitter vs. Reddit (it's basically impossible on Reddit). On the other hand, it takes much more time on Twitter for people to actually see you. You'll start writing into the void at the beginning, and that can be discouraging.
Regarding your specific audience (devs), I think both platforms should work. If I were you, I'd start sharing content on both platforms from the beginning. I like what Victor has done, check it out.
Hope this helps
Reddit communities are mostly snubby, or maybe my content is just terrible :D
Really good advice here. We've been using Reddit to promote Logii.in and I have to say we got some sales. It does take a bit of long term work but I think it's worth it.
Great approach, thanks for the tips
These are awesome tips, thanks for sharing! I’ve been trying to do the same types of tactics with a micro-SaaS I’m building as a side project and keep getting a little traction before it gets removed from a moderator 😢
Definitely going to tweak my approach after reading your points, especially 2 and 3. Thanks again!
What's your micro-Saas? I want to launch some micro-Saas projects over the next months, would love to learn more about your experiences! Connect with me on Twitter if you're up for chatting
And which subreddits did you promote in?
It's called Notiolize with it's main value being an extension for seamless data visualization for your Notion databases. I got positive feedback from a proof-of-concept I made a little while back (https://github.com/Seth-McKilla/notiolize-poc) so have teamed up with two other really talented developers I regularly work with to help bring this side micro-SaaS to life 😊
I tried posting in r/Notion, r/Productivity, r/Notiontemplates, and r/notionlayours but have been getting them removed lol. However, I've been having much more success building interest through Discord servers. I've been building a mailing list and am working with a designer on fiverr to create a coming soon page with the ability to sign up as a beta tester. Going to have a limited space closed beta and offer free lifetime access to premium version: unlimited charts / visualizations and Discord server for direct communication with us, the developers, to vote on features / shape the direction of the platform.
Congratulations on your achievement!
You can take a look at our directory of communities to find more business / entrepreneurs communities to share at.
Thanks very much for sharing @MatthiasGabriel - a really insightful post! As someone who doesn’t utilise any social media I’ve been looking at alternative approaches to building up an audience. Of course eventually I may need to delve into the social medias - although I’m putting it off for as long as humanly possible.
I’ve signed up to the newsletter and read through some of the posts you have on your site. I love the idea of you posting the communities you used as research material - it definitely adds even more credibility to your point of what is wanted and what is less wanted.
You’ve raised a great point on when to post considering you’re from Europe as well - I feel (although this could be completely wrong) a lot of people put a lot of thought into when to submit to ProductHunt but less importance is placed on when engagement will be highest in other online communities (especially when your aim is to build an audience which stems from engagement in these social media posts).
Again, thanks for sharing your insights and congratulations on achieving your goal!
All the best!
Happy you found it useful, and happy to have you on board!
Yea, I think you could stay off social and still grow. You'd probably need to do SEO, paid ads, etc.
I love using reddit to validate my ideas, normally even before start building I go on reddit and see what solutions people are using to solve a specific problem I am interested in solving (I spoke more in details about it in this episode
One question, how do you get upvotes without cheating?
Yea, Reddit often informs a bit more than a simple Google search or similar.
Regarding upvotes: In my experience, timing matters. Find a time when there's not too much competition, e.g. before the major traffic from the US comes in. Also, you can share your post elsewhere (Twitter, HN, etc.) to drive traffic to it and get upvotes. Or you can share it with people who think could benefit from reading it. Afaik, none of this is against Reddit's terms. What you shouldn't do is bluntly ask people for upvotes, and/or create accounts yourself with which you upvote.
got it. any tip to find the right time?
The tool I linked to in the post
ups, my bad. will check it out. thank you
How do I find the sub reddits that allow some of this?
You read the rules, if there's nothing in it that's totally against self-promo, go ahead. If there's a rule against self-promo, see how much it is enforced. If you see people doing it without getting deleted/banned, go ahead. If you can't see anyone posting links for self-promo, see if people do it in the comments.
But ultimately you can also just try it :D
Any tips on getting to Hot Posts quickly?
See my reply to tiagorbf above
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.