Reddit is a meta-community - a community of communities. The site itself contains a large number of so-called subreddits. Each one is an individual community with its own rules and moderation. Sizes range from a few members to multi-million user communities. This brings great opportunities and challenges. On the one hand there are numerous places to engage and potentially promote your project - all using one account. On the other hand, you still have to familiarize yourself with numerous rules and environments to avoid issues.
What You Need to Know Before Promoting Anything on Reddit
As with other communities, low-effort posts aren't popular. On Reddit this is especially the case. Simply dumping your link will, at best, get it ignored and down-voted. Maybe it will also get deleted by the moderators very quickly. In the worst-case scenario, you will be permanently banned from using a particular subreddit without any warning. Being aware of the individual rules is crucial to not running into issues. Always read the rules in the sidebar.
Usually, well-received posts are those which share an interesting or personal story or interesting data, insights or statistics. Depending on the community you can also submit charts. With this you should give an interpretation or conclusion - this gives a base for a conversation. Fake humbleness isn't regarded highly: skip bragging about your successes and rather share hard-learned lessons. Toward the end of your post you can include a link to your project or article, if relevant for the post.
How to Submit Your Project to Reddit
Start with identifying a potential Subreddit. This can be a niche subreddit relevant to your topics or a more generic one from the list below. Read a number of posts - switching between the "hot" and "new" can give you a feel for what is posted and what is popular with the users in this subreddit.
Prepare some share-worthy content as mentioned above. Make sure to write at least one or two paragraphs. You can save drafts if you want to continue working on it later. Very well-received posts are usually on-going stories with a mix of value and entertainment. An interesting example is this one.
While the ProductHunt crowd are fans of emojis and use them extensively, on Reddit it's the opposite: it's frowned upon adding 😼️ and 😵️ to your posts or comments. Make sure to consider this while writing your posts.
Examples of Successful Posts on Reddit
Below are some successful posts. These aren't necessarily the most-upvoted ones. It's often more about the type of post and frequency of posting:
- Pat from StarterStory is regularly sharing posts like this one - it's a great example of providing value to the community and mentioning your project along with it.
- "From Zero to Website-Launch": an older on-going story about a guy building an online business.
Interesting Subreddits for Startup Founders and Indiehackers
Here are some subreddits which might be of interest to you and your project (in alphabetical order):
- r/AlphaandBetausers - a great place to find early adopters. If you haven't got anyone testing your app or project, here you might find someone. Make sure to explain your goals properly.
- r/BrowserExtension - if you have built a browser extension you can share it here
- r/Business - not very indie-hacker-focused but still a place to consider, if your project or content fits in.
- r/Coupons - if you've already got an established business
- r/DotCom - a subreddit around internet businesses
- r/EntrepreneurRideAlong - this is the perfect subreddit to share your on-going startup story. Make sure to always back-reference your previous post
- r/Entrepreneur - great place to discuss the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur
- r/Entrepreneurship - similar audience to r/Entrepreneur, but smaller
- r/Growmybusiness - community to share insights to grow businesses
- r/HWstartups - for hardware-focused businesses and startups
- r/IMadeThis - place to showcase your product.
- r/IndieBiz - smaller subreddit for independent business owners
- r/IndieDevelopers - small subreddit for game developers
- r/IndieHackers - small subreddit for people bootstrapping their business. Not related to the community with the same name. Allows to showcase your project.
- r/LTDs - not about Limited companies, but about life-time deals. If you plan to offer one you might want to submit it here.
- r/LadyBusiness - for female entrepreneurs
- r/MySideProject - a small subreddit I've started to share side-projects
- r/NewProducts - a rather quiet subreddit to share new products and project
- r/ShamelessPlug - one of the few places on Reddit you can just "dump" your project link on
- r/ShamelessTechPlug - similar nature as above, just more focused on tech.
- r/SideProject - niche community for side-project builders.
- r/SmallBusiness - a community for small business owners.
- r/Socialpreneur - a place for social-minded entrepreneurs or projects with social goals
- r/Startups - the name says it all
- r/YoutubeForStartups - if you are producing startup-related videos you can share them here
As mentioned, please don't just dump your links all across these - it will be deleted before you are finished. Instead pick, join, read some posts and prepare a proper contribution.
Done!
If you liked this post it would be awesome if you could share it on Twitter, Facebook or a suitable subreddit. If you've got an idea for a great place to promote your startup or side-project I'm all ears. Get in touch please 💪️
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