Happy Friday!
I write this email from a restaurant called Cafe Brazil at 2:32AM, as I await my steak breakfast quesadilla. I slept from 10 - 12:30 and then woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I drove to the office.
This actually works out nicely, as my morning is slammed with calls so I was afraid I wouldn’t have time to write a good newsletter today. Problem solved. I’m not about to skip a week after 15 straight weeks.
Last week I asked you all which topic I should write about today, and the people spoke…barely!
How’s that for neck and neck polling? I guess this means you all are interested in all of them! So let’s start with #1: How to Go Viral on Reddit
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I just spent the last 8 minutes pondering what meme I could create to best encapsulate how I’d visually describe Reddit, and below is the product of those 8 minutes:
Reddit is just built different. It’s a different breed.
When I post something positive on Twitter, I get positive replies. If I post something negative or controversial, I’ll get negative replies. This is expected. This is real life.
Reddit doesn’t care what you post. Reddit is pissed at the world and wants you to know it. Reddit won’t turn down the music. Reddit experiments with drugs and alcohol to mask their daddy issues. Reddit dropped out of school and will never regret it. Reddit probably has a neck tattoo of a dreamcatcher.
All I’m saying is when you go to Reddit as a creator, you just have to know what you’re working with. Put on your big boy pants and a suit of armor while you’re at it, because, as Michael Scott says, “It’s gon’ be zappity.”
Ok, haha, we get it. But let’s get tactical today. I waxed poetic last week, so back to brass tacks today.
Step 1: Create an account and get some karma.
I’m not talking about the Taylor Swift song, I’m talking about Reddit’s reputation metric. Brand new accounts have 0 karma, and in order to post you need to build some first.
But how?
Start joining a bunch of subreddits relevant to what you’re trying to do and start commenting on trending posts. I have a hack for you. This clever little website will show you related subreddits to any search term. It’s so freaking helpful. Use that to join 10-20 subreddits that seem to be active.
You’ll know how active and engaged they are based on their members : online ratio, as shown below. You can also tell by how many people have posted today (more on that later).
Once you’re in some, start commenting on new posts that seem to be growing in popularity. I’ll cover below on how to comment more strategically, but for now, just comment something helpful.
It’s no different than commenting on Twitter. You need to comment things that will be upvoted. It has to be funny, educational or helpful to be upvoted.
Most subreddits will let you comment with 0 karma, but some won’t. The rules are more strict for posting than commenting. These comments will earn you karma when upvoted.
There’s comment karma and post karma. Some subreddits allow for 0 karma comment posting but not original posts, and vice versa.
If you want to skip the line, you can buy a reddit account for a few bucks at a somewhat shady site like accsmarket.com, but buyer beware.
Step 2: Learn the subcultures of the subreddits.
Reddit itself has a toxic culture, but individual subreddits all have a life of their own. Some are even more toxic, like r/antiwork. Some are hilarious, like the one that mocks how restaurants serve food. All of them have a life of their own.
For example, the entrepreneur and startup subreddits thrive on bragging. The posts that perform the best are usually people telling their startup success stories.
But it gets even more granular than that.
Well, I went to go type ~300 words describing exactly how you can know how to make a post go viral, but I thought I’d show you instead. Here’s an unedited 4 min Loom video of me breaking down the most viral r/entrepreneur posts, as well as another random one.
If you’d rather not spend 4 minutes watching the TL;DR is this:
Sort posts by “Top Posts” from the last year and look for patterns in the headlines that you can replicate. In the r/entrepreneur subreddit, the top posts always detail startup stories and include a timeframe and amount of money made. For example:
“How I made $45,000 in 37 minutes by selling used tires to the elderly.”
Every subreddit is different, so learn what works in the ones you’re targeting.
Step 3: Start posting and see what works.
I use the word viral very loosely in this email. When I say viral I mean viral for you. Viral for that subreddit. Viral enough to move the needle on whatever it is you’re selling or launching.
I made two posts in the BTC mining subreddit 2 years ago that only got 50 - 150 upvotes each, but that brought in over $600,000 of revenue. And many of those customers are still buying from us today, over 2 years later!
Did I do anything special? NO! I just told my story, and then I told the story of what happened after the story. That’s it. Telling your story works in any medium, any time, anywhere. Period.
My buddy Spencer told his story about starting a trash biz and it landed him on My First Million!
How to succeed:
Do interesting things.
Talk about them everywhere.
Here’s the post that launched our AI podcast.
I have dozens more posts across several other accounts that have garnered millions of views, subscribers and revenue. We launched Texas Snax with a post, but I can’t find it.
Pat Wells turned Starter Story into a 7 figure business, all built on Reddit.
Bearable is a healthcare app that grew to 100k users in its first 6 months, all from Reddit chronic illness subreddits.
Grailed is an 8 figure fashion brand that launched via r/mensfashionadvice
Going viral on Reddit is more replicable than any other platform. Harness that.
Ok, now let me rattle off everything that didn’t fit cleanly into those 3 steps above.
More Critical Reddit tips
Use Subreddit Stats to find subreddits that are trending and/or growing fast.
DO NOT link to your “thing” or add a call to action until your post is already starting to go viral. Write the post, reply to every comment, have no call to action, and then as the concurrent viewer count grows and grows and the upvote % stays above 90%, THEN edit the post and drop the call to action at the bottom of the post, like this:
EDIT: Hey guys, I am blown away by the response. Thank you! Follow along with my journey at my newsletter here: (URL)
Either have thick skin or delete the post. Be prepared for haters. I posted my partnership failure story to Twitter and it got 1.3m views and hundreds of positive, supportive comments and DMs. I copy/pasted the same thing to Reddit and was ripped to shreds in the comments. Same story, different medium. I deleted it minutes later. Why? Because negativity is soul crushing.
It’s good to have multiple accounts, so get going on that. The algorithm likes immediate action on your post, so don’t be afraid to upvote and comment on your own stuff in the first few minutes to get things going. It works.
Conclusion
Welp, I hope you learned something today! Don’t sleep on Reddit. To recap:
Get some karma on your new account.
Learn what types of posts do well in the subreddits you’re targeting
Start posting, engaging, and adding a call to action once it has steam (after an hour or two).
One could do very well finding a niche like candlemaking where you could sell a B2B product and completely owning that as a distribution channel. Most of those subreddits aren’t being monetized by anyone. So what’s stopping you?
What Am I Working on Lately?
More of the same. I backed off of the Texas Snax stuff now that the holidays are over. The bootcamp is next week so there’s been a lot of planning going into that.
One of my 2024 goals is to spend most of every Thursday writing, and I’m 0/1 so far. We’ll try again next week.
I think it’d be awesome to be the Guy Fieri or Anthony Bordain for unique small businesses. How cool would it be to ask business owners about their margins, unexpected marketing channels and growth hacks, and then post it?
I don’t mean asking generic stuff what their origin story is, or for high level facts about their business, I mean all the nitty gritty stuff that they only share with friends.
Sure, many would be hesitant to share, but not all of them, especially if it meant they’d get more business from the exposure. If I knew a golf simulator biz had 85% margins would it prevent me from going there as a customer? Heck no!
I think I’ll try doing some of that this year. That would be fun and make for great content. If you have or know of a biz that I could learn about, hit reply and let me know!
Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great weekend.
Chris Koerner
chrisjkoerner.com