by Fargy
Welcome to my adventures in Reddit. I was banned and spam filtered and endured the ridicule and bad karma of Redditors.
But that was fine, I learned a little.
Let me show you a little of what Reddit can do, and what it might be useful for. I doubt that all will find it useful, because Reddit needs a little maintenance to keep it ticking over.
If we look below at the chart of my wizzley readers Sept-Oct 2013, we see a big spike just after 23 Sept., this was the day I decided to use Reddit to boost traffic to my Wizzley pages.
I put a link to one of my articles in r/gaming, it has a few thousand readers on simultaneously.
After the spike you will notice a long flat period.
This was because I was spam filtered and shadow banned by various autobots of Reddit.
At the end you will notice my readers start to pick up again, that's when I'd worked out a strategy and tried it out.
If these figures look tempting to you, read on and I'll write up my tips.
The two mountain ranges are when I linked articles to Reddit, the flat spaces are where I was reworking my technique.
Second time around I'm using r/runescape subreddit and it has between 100-200 users on at once, so figures will be smaller than the big early spike caused by r/gaming readers with their 3000-4000 readers online.
 My Wizzley stats first month, Oct 2013 |
I put the pie chart here to show how many readers Reddit can possibly supply.
I usually link my new articles to Facebook and post it on Twitter.
Then I will carefully post a link on Reddit.
Reddit is good bang for buck but you have to be careful. Reddit is not good for long discussions, it is best used for short discussions about things, rather than ideas.
Reddit calls itself the newspaper of the internet and I tend to agree, it's 24/7 news with a 24 hour attention span.
You will get more readers though, even if they don't click ads much it's always nice to have more readers.
 Pie chart of my Wizzley readers first month, Oct 2013 |
Getting started. Go to subreddits like;
http://www.reddit.com/r/FreeKarma/
http://www.reddit.com/r/VoteItUp/
These are great place to learn how everything works.
For example what a self post is.
Then.
Find subreddits you like posting in.
Find one that best suits what you write about.
You will need to enjoy posting there, otherwise forget Reddit.
Read the subreddit rules, usually on the right hand side of the subreddit page.
If no links are allowed then the subreddit won't be for you.
As a general rule you need to post, or comment on other posts, 10 times to 1 self-promotion post.
This is easy to keep track of, click on your Reddit username and count your comments.
This is the main stumbling block, it's why I got shadow-banned. This ban is one where you cannot see if you are banned or not. But you are. It's to stop spammers, they think their spammy ads are still working but they aren't.
So...
Find a subreddit that suits you.
Post 10 times, or more.
Post 1 of your Wizzley article links.
Post 10 more times before putting up another one of your links.
Go to the following link...
http://www.reddit.com/r/CHART_BOT/
Then type in a text post, it can say anything...
I usually type a title of "Bot me baby" and then the same in the text box.
Then you wait a bit, dum di dum, and you will get a reply (red envelope icon top right of screen)
With something like this...
CHART_BOT 1 point 1 second ago
Statistics generated from Fargrist's last 549 comments and 59 submissions:
| Subreddit | Submissions (karma) | Comments (karma) |
|---|---|---|
| /r/runescape | 23 (-33) | 422 (61) |
| /r/2007scape | 9 (32) | 71 (67) |
| /r/truegaming | 3 (-14) | 22 (4) |
| /r/AskReddit | 2 (11) | 17 (22) |
| /r/Games | 7 (-11) | 10 (9) |
| /r/CHART_BOT | 9 (11) | 4 (4) |
| /r/gaming | 5 (5) | 3 (3) |
| /r/ShadowBan | 1 (1) | 0 |
Requests can be made at /r/CHART_BOT
Go to the following link...
http://shadowbancheck.appspot.com/
Type in your Reddit name...
If you get "Valid User" as a result you are okay.
If not then you need to find an admin.
You can try here,
or the moderators on each subreddit...
You may notice that I get a lot of negative karma.
Don't worry about karma too much. It can slow your posting down by increasing the time between posts, I'm at 9 minutes between posts, but that doesn't bother me.
I used a name (Fargrist) that is known on Runescape, and that's the subreddit (r/runescape) where the bulk of my negative karma came from, I tend to really like thrashing ideas out, and that gets you downvotes.
Most people should be fine. Negative karma can hide posts if you do not change your default settings to show all posts no matter what karma.
I think the default is to hide posts with -4 karma or lower. Which shows how a small group can control a subreddit.
To change defaults go to Preferences up the top right of screen, near your username. It's easy to do from there. I removed any karma limitation, so I see everything posted.
Apart from that good luck!
As you can see extra readers are possible, take your time and become familiar with Reddit is my best hard-won advice. :)
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Comments
Yep, that's my experience too. They seem dry of cash and withered of humour. Where do you target your articles?
The trouble with reddit users is they never buy anything. I gave up on them a long time ago.
@Fargy - LOL. You're funny! But also a really nice guy! :) The advice in this article will be heeded.
FBI the Funky Bureau of Investigation.
Reddit has been described as full of Redditards. An unkind description perhaps. I would prefer more profitable sites, both from a financial and intellectual perspective.
But for now, I think of it as a gym. I get to toughen this emotional princess up in the art of writing.
I was pretty sure the comments weren't going to be construed as positive. Government, politics and religion is always a touchy topic. But I also knew my comments were truthful. :)
On another truth note, I'm not that impressed with Reddit. Navigating the site is kinda funky. But they are way better than RedGage. At least it doesn't take forever for links to be added and visible.
( "Funky"? Don't ask me what it means. When I started working at a certain federal agency, everybody used that word to describe everything! So I just picked up on it and started using it too! :) )
I never delete anything, every post helps get that 10 minimum up. And it's not unusual to get negative scores, but posting to try to gain positive posts is not going to be truthful to what you want to say.
So damn the torpedoes I say.
I clicked a few upvotes. :)
Created my Reddit profile today. http://www.reddit.com/user/cmoneyspin...
Shared 4 links. Responded to 3 questions, but deleted 2 of my answers. I was just "testing the waters". Seems like they got sharks there. (O.o) I'll just have to learn to maneuver through the waves instead of making waves. :)
I think they unbanned me because admins got sick of me posting to them.
It's been fun.
One of my earlier accounts got ghost-banned in exactly the same way, for the same reason! My current, long-lasting one isn't though. Reddit is great for traffic, but not so great for paying traffic. I didn't know about the chart bot though. Nice one!
My pleasure! :)