My experience of how Reddit works (a review)

First of all, I should confess at the start of my Reddit review, that my initial reason for joining and using Reddit was to promote some of my own blog posts and articles – this is a no-no in Reddit terms, so many people might argue that I got what I deserved, as far as Reddit goes. However, I did also learn quite a bit about how Reddit works, Reddit culture, and posting on Reddit, which may well be of interest and use to other people.

I first found out about Reddit several months ago in the forums of the online earning and writer’s website, HubPages. Some of the writers on there were fans of the social media site and recommended it. Others were critical of the site. I thought that I would try it out for myself.

Reddit is a social news website, you post links to articles that you found interesting, or entertaining on there. People who like the link click on it. They can also write comments on Reddit regarding the link that you have posted. The links are ranked and more popular your link is, the higher it gets in the rankings. To some extent there can be a snowball effect, as the higher up the rankings a link gets, the more likely people are to click on it.

Not a great deal happened when I first posted stuff on Reddit. That was because I posted links using the default category of “reddit.com” and my links were getting lost in the general swill of other postings. Once I realized that I did better by using a Reddit subcategory, my viewing figures began to soar. I submitted a couple of humorous blog posts and got 3000 views for each of them over a 24 hours period. It was amazing just watching the viewing figures climb and climb, literally by the minute.

My honeymoon period didn’t last long. Okay, I was using Reddit to promote my own blog posts and articles, which is naughty and discouraged by Reddit, but I also quickly began to question how much benefit that I was reaping from using Reddit for promotional purposes, anyway. The majority of my Reddit viewers just seemed to scan my posts and articles without really reading them and the surges in views never lasted more than one or two days, after which my internet traffic just dropped back to previous levels and stayed there.

As I mentioned above, it is worth your time finding an appropriate Reddit subcategory to post your post or article, if you want people to find and click on your link. Generally speaking, I would avoid using the default setting of "reddit.com".

Your potential readership on Reddit only have your title to go on (there are not even brief descriptions of links in Reddit) and the titles that do best in my experiences are ones with controversial or witty titles - stuff that people can laugh at, or argue about. Dry, trite, or serious-sounding titles will often flounder. The Reddit audience tends to be young and seeking a short burst of entertainment, so "The Top 5 Vacuum Cleaners" or "How to save money on house insurance" generally won't get you anywhere. Some of the best articles that you will find online are evergreen, practical and sober, the best Reddit titles, however, are almost the total opposite - topical, trivial, and opinionated stuff will do best there.

As I mentioned above, the Reddit audience is generally fairly young and just interested in a little entertainment. If you are interested in deep comments and big discussions, then Reddit is probably not the place for you. There are some subcategories which are a little more serious, but they are the exception, not the rule. Some of the comments posted can often be flippant or critical too, so don’t get too upset or surprised if a Reddit reader attacks you, or something that you have posted.

Despite my postings getting rated highly on Reddit, after a while things tailed off. I started getting messages discouraging me from posting. I even got banned from one subcategory, probably because of self-promotion. I have pretty much stopped posting on Reddit nowadays, as most of the time I can only post in the reddit.com category and my links just get lost. I probably didn’t approach Reddit in the spirit that they wanted, it’s true, but if you do want to try using Reddit, my advice would be not to take it too seriously.