Reddit is a popular social news website with user-submitted links that may be voted up or down by their users. Websites voted up to the frontpage usually receive a great deal of traffic and can easily see over 10,000 visitors within the span of a day.
A portion of these visitors is likely to become your feed subscribers or they might even convert well on recommended affiliate links.
Being on the front page of Reddit may also cause your website to go viral on other social websites like Digg, StumbleUpon or del.icio.us, sending you ever more links, traffic and potential audience.
It’s no wonder why social media marketers, bloggers and online entrepreneurs envision getting to the front page of Reddit as an important part of their product, site and brand promotional strategy.
Like the illustrious Digg, Reddit is capable of generating a great deal of exposure for any website that is voted up to its frontpage.
Reddit and the Lure of Sheer Traffic
I’ve been a big fan of Reddit for quite a long time and it is the only social website that I read everyday without fail. I’ve seen thousands of websites rise to the frontpage of Reddit and fall away when their time is due.
I’ve seen crappy websites submitted and duly ignored in the ‘new’ section as Redditers vote it down without even caring to leave a comment.
I’ve came across Reddit users being called out for repeatedly submitting material on the same topic. I’ve written a comprehensive guide to Reddit a few months ago and also talked about how marketers use Reddit to generate web traffic.
Many have written about ways to game social websites like Reddit or Digg for viral traffic and some of their suggested methods do work, while some may not. A website’s success depends on a variety of factors, including luck (or karma, as Redditers might say) and there doesn’t seem to be a surefire way that works 100% of the time for Reddit.
A Detailed Case Study of a Reddit User
Two weeks ago I came across a link on Reddit’s frontpage that was rather interesting, particularly because the link pointed to a Reddit user’s profile instead of an external page. I’ve taken a screenshot so you can read the title of the submission yourself.
Herein lies the secret to hitting Reddit’s frontpage and profiting from it. According to the comments left, this particular Reddit user has been doing three main things:
1.He created multiple blogs on Blogspot and used them for Reddit.
2.He hijacked sources, stole content from other sites and put them on his blogs.
3.He submitted these articles to Reddit in order to make money from them.
Intrigued as I was, I decided to methodically examine the user’s profile to study the degree of success he has achieved so far.
Four Ways to Make Money from Reddit (and other social websites)
After doing some research, I’ve decided to summarize this particular user’s tactics in the form of four parts, according to his specific submissions and websites.
Bear in mind that I do not support these methods because I don’t agree with their ethics. I do however think this case study allows me to bring out some points you can take away to legitimately promote your own online businesses or website.
1. Use Multiple Domains/Websites to Increase Frontpage Potential
A look at the Reddit user’s profile shows that he created multiple websites and wrote articles on it to be submitted to Reddit. He alternated his submissions by using a different domain for each submission.
This makes it less likely for others to accuse him of submitting his own content repeatedly, although a look at his profile will certaintly reveal that that is the case.
Here are the websites he submitted over the last 3 weeks:
■Technowirenews.blogspot.com
■universearch.blogspot.com
■wierdoddities.blogspot.com
■marchecoursier.blogspot.com
■technobusiness.blogspot.com
■coolpicturesworld.blogspot.com
■funkystories.blogspot.com
■strikerdiary.blogspot.com
Note that they are all blogspot blogs and each of them were structured in exactly the same way while using the same type of ad networks. A look at the page source reveals that all the blogs were running the same publisher ids for the ads, hence showing that the blogs possibly belonged to the same person.
Multiple domains and websites can increase your chances of getting to any social website’s homepage. In this case, this Reddit user is spreading out his content sources in the hope that each specific website will take turn to go viral.
Some social media marketers, webmasters and SEOs take this one step further by setting up a bait and switch manoever, whereby they will create a domain and website specifically for a linkbait.
After the linkbait has hit the frontpage, the entire domain will be 301 redirected to the intended master website, which collects all the natural links from the social website and other sources to the linkbait domain.
2. Stuff Your Website with as Many Ads as Possible
All of the user’s blogspot blogs utilized a large number of ad networks, in particular Chitika, Kontera, Auction Ads and Adsense.
The format used for all of them is roughly the same: an Adsense Rectangle (the most lucrative ad unit) is placed above and below the post, Kontera is used for inline text links while Auction Ads and Chitika units sit prominently in the sidebar.
A Reddit button goes beneath all blog posts in order to acquire some on-site votes. This ad placement is obstrusive and ugly because it was set up with the obvious aim to profit through ad revenue.
All the blogs were started in June 2007 and each of them have rather weak link profiles: it is likely that the blogs receive very little search engine traffic. The user doesn’t seem to be focusing on building an audience but rather, is more interested in making money through Reddit and secondary visitors alone.
3. Hijack Links and Content because People Don’t Know Better
The person who submitted the profile of this errant user also offered some examples of plagiarism (one of them including an article stolen from Copyblogger). I went through the guilty user’s submissions and easily spotted quite a few others that were taken from other websites.
I know this for sure because I do a fair bit of stumbling everyday and have come across these pictures on Flickr or other originating websites. All of his posts do not credit the original source as well: To the casual observer it probably seems as if they were unique content.
Some of his posts also include content lifted from news sources without any credit for them. This method of link jacking allows him to put out media/content he has come across elsewhere and claim it as his own.
Only hardcore social web users or news followers would know if the articles submitted were authentic or stolen. Most of the other users don’t know and don’t really care. They’ll vote, stumble and digg it all the way to the top just because it seems interesting to them.
This is actually one-up from the old practice of scrapping full content and republishing it on a blog for search engine traffic. Instead of doing that, this user hijacked content and submitted it to social websites to generate ad clicks.
4. Use Pictures and Short News Articles
Let’s take a look at the user’s frontpage stories. The following links are samples of some stories which have reached the frontpage over a period of 3 weeks:
■(PIC) Best Dog Suit Ever. By a Longshot
■What the heck is e-mail? (ad from 1977)
■Picture This: Space Station, Seen Clear From the Ground
■72 year old ex-Marine beats the crap out of 27 year old pickpocket
■The baby on Nirvana’s Nevermind album is 17 (Pic)
■[PHOTO] – Brilliant Shot of the New Expanded ISS
■Progress from egg to chick (in 20 pictures)
You can clearly note the formula for success here:
1.Use an intriguing picture you found somewhere and a reasonably OK title.
2.Quote, hijack or rewrite a news story. Don’t link to the source.
3.Submit it to a subreddit when applicable (in this case science.reddit.com)
If you’ve gotten a story on Reddit frontpage before, you might have noticed the nice increase in karma, which is some sort of a quality score used to measure your personal editorial power when it comes to submissions.
The karma gained after a successful frontpage story serves as leverage for future submissions and can possibly make it more likely for your other submitted articles to be voted up as well, although content is still the ultimate factor here.
1.Create a Digg Account
2.Choose a memorable name & a good picture (picture is vitally important, notice how the top user supernova17 has a bright image ). Make the name memorable. Bear in mind you’re not trying to deceive here but merely some extra persuasion which will help with initial diggs.
3.Start by digging stories from users in the “upcoming section” make sure & leave a nice comment on each.
4.Add friends & digg their stories regularly. Adding friends is key to making this work.
5.Check for people that have added you as a friend using the “See who befriended you” tab.
6.Start submitting stories from places like reddit & stumbleupon to get an idea of how many initial diggs you are going to get. If you’re getting less that 10 diggs from friends then you need to do more digging & building.
7.Try to comment first on stories you think will hit the front page, this increases your exposure & increases your chances of acquiring friends.
8.You’ll instantly get a feel for what’s working & what’s not working. Now it’s time to tweak things.
9.Don’t submit into the general category. Things scroll off too quickly & don’t linger enough to get that initial “boost.”
10.I added anyone that dugg my stories as a friend. If they check their “befriended” tab they’ll probably add me too. This works well with newer users who have less friends. Make them feel wanted :p
11.Create a huge list of resources to scour for stories. 50-100 is good, tech blogs, apple news all that sort of stuff you want right in your feed reader.
12.I Created google alerts so that I’m getting info on hot topics right to your email inbox.
13.Don’t post your own stories until you’re sure you can get that initial 10-20 diggs to get your story noticed. If you’re posting your own stories you need to make sure they’re professional, not spammy otherwise you’ll get buried & the blog will get banned.
14.I now have a Digg account that will automatically get 15-30 Digg’s from my friends as soon as I submit a story, depending on what the story is about. For example they’ll probably not digg SEO or Affiliate Marketing related stories.
15.Have fun digging, remember it’s a game. It’s not difficult. You just need to network & build relationships then you’ll be rewarded
"What are some free methods to advertise my site" is a question that comes up frequently in the forums, yahoo answers, askville and virtually any web 2 site visited by Internet marketing newbies.
So lets just go through a few of the free methods that actually work
On website
Factors You should implement on your web pages
Great content.
Nothing really beats this. You must have genuinely useful and unique content. I recently reviewed the website of an affiliate marketing beginner which was on [no surprise] making money on line. [I don't know why newbies seem to go for the Internet marketing niche. How can you teach it when you have yet to make any money with it?] Anyway this poor blokes site was so dull and just did not speak to me. You need to avoid making this error.
Master your topic, and generate great content on your site. There is no boycotting this crucial step. You may be wondering how having great content can attract visitors. it's all about search engine optimization. The more unique and useful and relevant your content is the better you will do in the search engines.
On page search engine optimization.
Again really important if you are going to get anywhere in the search engines. We are not talking here about invisible text or keyword stuffing or such black hat methods. The focus now is on naturally generated content and latent semantic indexing [LSI]. Read basics of on page SEO for more on this.
Visitor Participation.
In the current era of web 2, Internet users expect to be able to "have there say" on the majority of websites. Comment boxes are a goldmine for any website or blog. Apart from satisfying your visitor's need to be heard and have an opinion, your comments box has two really useful functions
Ideas for new content. They tell you what they want to read about. Seems like good fodder for new posts
Increased content. Doing well in the search engines is very much about content. Content on your pages and the content of the sites pointing to you. By allowing visitors to comment on your articles or posts you are naturally updating your content. How is that for updating your site without having to lift a finger.
Frequent Updates.
Be it a blog or a traditional website, the search engines want the pages with top ranking to have updated content. You need to go into your sites and update your content from time to time. Edit articles, add new posts, edit a profile.
No longer is it enough to build the site and then forget about it, while it continually generates money, hand over fist for you. Just does not happen these days.
An option to ensure that your websites have frequently updated content is to put an RSS feed on it. Feeds are frequently updated so it will appear that your site's content is being updated if part of it's content is via an RSS feed
Off your web site.
These are things you do elsewhere on the net to help increase the visibility of your website. Unfortunately there is so much focus on this that on site factors tend to get neglected
Back links.
These are links that point form other websites to pages on your site. The idea is to get as many back links as possible from relevant websites to boost your website's position in the search engine results pages [SERPs]. Again the higher your site is in the SERPs, the better your chances of getting free traffic from the search engines
Social bookmarking sites.
Our post on social bookmarking and niche marketing websites goes into some detail on this. But the short version is build a network on bookmarking sites and then submit your URL to these sites. The bigger and more targeted your network, the better the results
Free Classifieds.
Not a favorite of mine. The free classified sites are just over run with really poor quality ads. So one wonders what sort of people use them. At the end of the day you want to promote your site to people who are ready to buy. There are a few free classified sites that are worth looking into. They are Gumtree [if you are targeting a UK audience], Craig's list [probably the largest of it's kind], and USfreeads.
Free directories.
Directory submission has become less popular lately than it used to be. Questions have been raised about it's SEO value especially with regards to google. Having said that directory submissions are still a free and easy way to get word out there about your website. If it's a blog you are trying to promote, there are free blog directories online, just perform a google search
Blog participation.
This is not the same as blog spamming. The relevant word here is participation. Blogs are great for interaction because the majority of them allow readers to leave comments.The comment box often requires you to enter your name and email address. Some go further by inviting you to enter your website's address. This could result in a link to your site. This comment boxes are great for helping you build a reputation for your website.
Find blogs in your niche that have a large following and frequently participate in discussions [I have participated in a 200 comment discussion on one blog post recently] on these blogs. Be sure to make your comments factual and useful. Let readers of your comments get the feeling that you are someone who knows what you are talking about, an authority on the topic. Your own sites will soon get a reasonable readership based on the comments you have left on other blogs.
There is a ton of other methods you can use to promote your websites free but the handful described above should get you well on your way
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