Jay Wessman
Well-Known Member
Sup ninjas?
So I'm always on the lookout for new traffic sources and put a lot of time into experimenting with lots of different sites to see how I can exploit and get traffic from each one. You'd be amazed out how many different free traffic sources there are available to you if you just take the time to go exploring.
Today I want to talk about one of these such sites that is really hot right now and I'm going to show you how you can use it to drive thousands of free targeted visitors to your websites with it. That site is called Reddit.
For those who have never heard of the site here is a quick lowdown...
Reddit is a website that's broken down into hundreds of different categories in which they call "sub-reddits". Want to talk about gaming? You head to Gaming sub-reddit at reddit.com/r/gaming. How about politics? Just head to the political sub-reddit at reddit.com/r/politics. There are sub-reddits for pretty much everything and in each of them people submit relevant content (in the form of web pages, videos, pictures etc) and if the reddit community like the content then they will "upvote" it and it will receive more attention.
If you've been building websites for a while then you might be familiar with a term that was known the webmaster community as the "digg effect". Digg.com is a website that's very similar in style to reddit that used to get a lot more traffic then it does now. It used to be the case that if you could submit your story and get get a lot of "upvotes" on Digg you could quickly get thousands and thousands of free visitors flowing to your website. This was known as the "digg effect".
These days though digg has fallen way behind and Reddit is the new digg.
So how do you get this "free traffic" from Reddit?
Obviously you can't just submit any old piece of junk to Reddit and then expect a tonne of traffic to flow in. You need to be smart and strategic about what you submit and how you submit it. The best way to get a sense of what sort of content will work on Reddit is to simply spend some time there browsing through the various submissions (warning: it's addictive). Just like with all social sites Reddit has it's own culture and understanding this culture is the key to making submissions that go crazy viral.
So what sort of culture does reddit have?
The reddit community likes to be entertained. They like tech stuff. They like cats. They like humour. They like interesting news stories. They like a lot of things. They don't like pages with gateways or hard sell pages and they're not going to upvote a junky ad-ridden article about "5 ways to get rock hard abs".
The easiest way to get a sense of what Reddit does like is to simply head to the Reddit home page to see what items have been voted to the front page. If an item makes it to the front page of reddit it means the content is extremely popular and it's something that you should consider modelling your content on:
Design your content with Reddit in mind.
Getting your content to go viral on reddit doesn't mean that you have to spend weeks producing some incredible viral video. Once you have a sense for what Reddit does and doesn't like you can quite easily recycle content from other parts of the web that you know Reddit will like.
For example if you have a website about gaming and then you find a YouTube video for a hot new game trailer or some other viral gaming video that hasn't already been submitted to Reddit you can simply embed it to a new page of your website and then post it to Reddit!
Or if you've got a political blog you might want to re-write a hot political news story and then throw it up on the Political sub-reddit... if you're the first to post a popular story then you can expect insane traffic.
Your submission title is extremely important.
When submitting content to Reddit you'll be asked to enter a title for your content. This can literally make or break your submission. Once again the key to writing a good title is understanding the Reddit culture. A title that works on another site might not necessarily do well on Reddit and vice versa.
Reddit loves titles with wit or humour. They also like titles that ignite curiosity and make people wonder "what your article is all about". They don't like hyped up titles that have obviously come from an internet marketer.
Once again though there really is no A + B = C type rule to writing a successful title. You simply need to immerse yourself into the website culture a little to get a sense of what works and what doesn't and then try to experiment! The more submissions that you make over time the better you'll get at writing killer titles that attract attention and make your content go viral.
Go under the radar.
As I've mentioned before Redditors aren't going to get excited over some marketer coming in and obviously just flogging his products and content - the best way to get success with Reddit is to go under the radar.
Don't only post content from your website - post interesting pages from other websites too and comment on other submissions here and there. This means when you do submit content from your own website you come across as just another redditor who stumbled across something genuinely cool and not someone who is trying to sell stuff to people.
Redditors can easily see your past submissions and if they all come from the same website they wont be very impressed.
Add a Reddit button your website.
A good way to increase the number of "upvotes" that your content gets is to make it easy for Redditors to upvote your content. You can find a whole bunch of Reddit buttons that you can add to your website here.
Practice makes perfect.
Maybe your first submission wont do incredibly well but chances are your second submission will do a bit better. Then your next submission will do even better again. The process of simply submitting stories to see what works and what doesn't is a ridiculously effective way to get a feel for what works and what doesn't.
And that my friends - is how you get free traffic from Reddit
Feel free to ask any questions you have!
So I'm always on the lookout for new traffic sources and put a lot of time into experimenting with lots of different sites to see how I can exploit and get traffic from each one. You'd be amazed out how many different free traffic sources there are available to you if you just take the time to go exploring.
Today I want to talk about one of these such sites that is really hot right now and I'm going to show you how you can use it to drive thousands of free targeted visitors to your websites with it. That site is called Reddit.
For those who have never heard of the site here is a quick lowdown...
Reddit is a website that's broken down into hundreds of different categories in which they call "sub-reddits". Want to talk about gaming? You head to Gaming sub-reddit at reddit.com/r/gaming. How about politics? Just head to the political sub-reddit at reddit.com/r/politics. There are sub-reddits for pretty much everything and in each of them people submit relevant content (in the form of web pages, videos, pictures etc) and if the reddit community like the content then they will "upvote" it and it will receive more attention.
If you've been building websites for a while then you might be familiar with a term that was known the webmaster community as the "digg effect". Digg.com is a website that's very similar in style to reddit that used to get a lot more traffic then it does now. It used to be the case that if you could submit your story and get get a lot of "upvotes" on Digg you could quickly get thousands and thousands of free visitors flowing to your website. This was known as the "digg effect".
These days though digg has fallen way behind and Reddit is the new digg.
So how do you get this "free traffic" from Reddit?
Obviously you can't just submit any old piece of junk to Reddit and then expect a tonne of traffic to flow in. You need to be smart and strategic about what you submit and how you submit it. The best way to get a sense of what sort of content will work on Reddit is to simply spend some time there browsing through the various submissions (warning: it's addictive). Just like with all social sites Reddit has it's own culture and understanding this culture is the key to making submissions that go crazy viral.
So what sort of culture does reddit have?
The reddit community likes to be entertained. They like tech stuff. They like cats. They like humour. They like interesting news stories. They like a lot of things. They don't like pages with gateways or hard sell pages and they're not going to upvote a junky ad-ridden article about "5 ways to get rock hard abs".
The easiest way to get a sense of what Reddit does like is to simply head to the Reddit home page to see what items have been voted to the front page. If an item makes it to the front page of reddit it means the content is extremely popular and it's something that you should consider modelling your content on:
Design your content with Reddit in mind.
Getting your content to go viral on reddit doesn't mean that you have to spend weeks producing some incredible viral video. Once you have a sense for what Reddit does and doesn't like you can quite easily recycle content from other parts of the web that you know Reddit will like.
For example if you have a website about gaming and then you find a YouTube video for a hot new game trailer or some other viral gaming video that hasn't already been submitted to Reddit you can simply embed it to a new page of your website and then post it to Reddit!
Or if you've got a political blog you might want to re-write a hot political news story and then throw it up on the Political sub-reddit... if you're the first to post a popular story then you can expect insane traffic.
Your submission title is extremely important.
When submitting content to Reddit you'll be asked to enter a title for your content. This can literally make or break your submission. Once again the key to writing a good title is understanding the Reddit culture. A title that works on another site might not necessarily do well on Reddit and vice versa.
Reddit loves titles with wit or humour. They also like titles that ignite curiosity and make people wonder "what your article is all about". They don't like hyped up titles that have obviously come from an internet marketer.
Once again though there really is no A + B = C type rule to writing a successful title. You simply need to immerse yourself into the website culture a little to get a sense of what works and what doesn't and then try to experiment! The more submissions that you make over time the better you'll get at writing killer titles that attract attention and make your content go viral.
Go under the radar.
As I've mentioned before Redditors aren't going to get excited over some marketer coming in and obviously just flogging his products and content - the best way to get success with Reddit is to go under the radar.
Don't only post content from your website - post interesting pages from other websites too and comment on other submissions here and there. This means when you do submit content from your own website you come across as just another redditor who stumbled across something genuinely cool and not someone who is trying to sell stuff to people.
Redditors can easily see your past submissions and if they all come from the same website they wont be very impressed.
Add a Reddit button your website.
A good way to increase the number of "upvotes" that your content gets is to make it easy for Redditors to upvote your content. You can find a whole bunch of Reddit buttons that you can add to your website here.
Practice makes perfect.
Maybe your first submission wont do incredibly well but chances are your second submission will do a bit better. Then your next submission will do even better again. The process of simply submitting stories to see what works and what doesn't is a ridiculously effective way to get a feel for what works and what doesn't.
And that my friends - is how you get free traffic from Reddit
Feel free to ask any questions you have!
