How To Use Reddit For Affiliate Marketing

Is Reddit a good traffic source for affiliate marketing?

According to an article I read recently, there are roughly about 430 million Reddit users, in ‘Reddit Speak’ these users are called: “redditors”.

You’ll soon discover, by the way, that Reddit kind of has it’s own language.

Reddit is divided into categories or communities called “subreddits”, and there are (as of writing this blog post) over 154,000 of them.

It’s also the 6th most downloaded Social Media App in the world.

And guess what, more than half Reddits users are on Desktop computers.

We all know that people love to browse on their phone, but they actually spend money when they are on their desktop or laptop.

For affiliate marketers, this is GREAT.

So, it might be a place you may not want to ignore!

One of the biggest problems we face as affiliate marketers is traffic.

When I say traffic, what I mean is, the act of getting visitors in front of our offers.

The reason this is challenging, isn’t because of the traffic itself, but more to do with the platforms that we use for traffic change constantly.

Facebook changes every 3 freaking months.

What was allowed last week, might not be allowed this week.

Platforms terms and conditions change all the time.

What you can and cannot say in your ads change on an almost weekly basis and often times with no warning at all.

One day you log in to your account and you find your ads aren’t running for “violations” that definitely were not violations the previous week. (Facebook I’m looking at you.)

My rants about Facebook are for another blog post.

In this post I want to focus purely on Reddit.

I’ve been a Reddit user for YEARS.

Not as a marketer, but as a regular user.

Reddit have categories for just about any topic you can imagine, except Reddit don’t call them categories, they call them “Subreddits”.

Which brings me to my first point, Reddit has its own lingo and it’s own environment, it’s important that you understand this before moving into it.

By the way, if you’re brand new to affiliate marketing and you’re unsure of what niche is best for you, browsing Reddits massive universe of Subreddits is an awesome way of uncovering niche markets.

Once you’ve found a sub-reddit that matches what you want to promote as an affiliate, you might think it’s time to drop your links in…

WRONG.

That approach rarely ever goes well, it might work for a little while spaffing links all over Facebook and Twitter, but Reddit is an entirely different animal altogether.

And this is where 99% of Affiliates fail (and fail badly) when they attempt Reddit.

Because Reddits userbase is completely different…

Reddit is first and foremost a social networking site.

Speaking from direct experience as a Reddit user myself, the people who use Reddit are completely different to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok etc..

They’re much more sophisticated than any of those I just mentioned.

On top of this, Reddit has an up & down voting system, which means if you post something cool or useful, you’ll generally get up-voted and your reputation increases.

Post something spammy or useless, you’ll get downvoted to hell.

Your reputation or ‘Karma’ as it’s called on Reddit ends up in the toilet.

Things that get downvoted overwhelmingly, are usually promotional messages or self serving messages, Reddit users are no idiots, they’ll see through that stuff really quickly, if you don’t approach it right.

It’s about the long game.

If you need a quick fix, Reddit probably isn’t going to work for you.

So you have to approach it with a different game plan and mindset.

This means what you say, do and how you act has to be different to what you’d say, do and act on Facebook for example.

Same applies to Twitter.

If you take the time to understand the platform, you can get a TON of traffic from Reddit.

Here’s a strategy you can use to drive FREE Reddit traffic to your Affiliate offers or website…

(without looking like a toolbag or getting yourself heavily downvoted or even banned from the platform altogether…)

As a user of Reddit (on and off for over a decade) I’ve seen more than enough people chucked off the platform.

It happens and it happens often.

And it will happen to you if you don’t go about it the right way.

This strategy consists of 8 simple steps:

1. Understand who uses Reddit & the platform itself.
2. Choose a sub-reddit
3. Create your profile.
4. Mix in and just be cool.
5. Sign up to Joturl & create a CTA
6. Find useful, interesting & helpful content then share it.
7. Create an overlay popup
8. Post your links (sparingly).

It might seem to simplistic on the face of it, but if you take ACTION and implement this, you’ll have an almost untapped traffic source.

Reddit is mostly made up of regular users, it’s not considered the “cool cat” like Facebook and Twitter.

But it  millions of users, anyone subscribed to a Subreddit will be hyper interested in the subject matter, and guess what, hardly any affiliate marketers are using it.

The mindset of most Affiliate marketers, especially the ones that fail, want a ‘hard & fast’ method.

Most of them aren’t willing to approach Reddit the proper way, they can’t be bothered or they just don’t have the patience.

And think about it, every man and his freaking dog is on Facebook, they’ve all got their fishing rods in the same freaking pool.

That’s why using Reddit for Traffic is good news for you, because you won’t even have 10% of the competition on Facebook.

And if you follow this strategy I’m laying out right here and CONSISTENTLY stick at it, you WILL get more traffic and eyeballs on your Affiliate Marketing sites.

Step 1. Get to know Reddit’s users, the platform and the landscape

This is BIG…HUGE in fact.

Please, please, please take the time to do this.

I’m being serious.

As I’ve already mentioned, Reddit is a completely different beast to Facebook.

There is no similarity whatsoever.

Reddit has an old school look to it, although they did recently update it’s interface.

Even it’s new updated interface still looks old school compared to Facebook.

So the first thing you should do, is just familiarise yourself with it.

Click around. Get clicking a lot. 

See what’s there.

This might seem slow and boring, but trust me, if you’ve never used Reddit before in your life, and you want to use Reddit as a traffic source, you better make sure you understand how the platform works.

This is one of the biggest reasons newbies fail with paid traffic.

They see Guru ‘X’ rave about a traffic platform and they jump straight in, with no understanding of how the platform actually works.

If you want to be successful with paid traffic, especially Reddit, then I suggest you get at least a basic understanding and a reasonably good grip of how it works.

Understand who actually uses Reddit…

Reddits userbase are far more savvy than Facebook’s are.

In internet terms, they’re often well ahead of the curve.

You know when you see that “new” meme go viral on Facebook and everybody’s talking about it and sharing it all over the place?

I guarantee you I’ve seen that same meme already, weeks maybe even months before on Reddit, before it even hits facebook.

Reddits interface might look old school, but their users are not.

They’re savvy and they’re smart.

Each Subreddit has its own eco-system.

No single Subreddit is the same as another and each Subreddit has its own unique character of user.

Click around, take a look at different Subreddits and you’ll see what I mean.

Be strict with yourself though, as Reddit can be addictive.

Remember, we’re doing this for traffic to our business, so treat it as such.

We’re doing this for market research, not pleasure. 

Keep that objective in mind.

Step 2: Choose A Subreddit

Choosing a Subreddit is the same sort of thing as choosing a Facebook group.

When I mention “Subreddit” I mean Group or category.

It’s all the same thing and like everything else on Reddit, it has it’s own environment and names for things.

It’s simple and straightforward.

Think of things that interest you and choose a Subreddit based on that.

Tip: for best results, make sure you stay within the 'big 3 categories' I mention in this post here.

In short, the ‘BIG 3’ Categories are:

• Health
• Wealth
• Relationships

Those are known as ‘desperate or highly desirable markets‘ with lots of problems people need solutions to.

And within any of those categories are LOTS of products you can promote that cater to those problems that people will gladly pay for.

Also, those ‘big 3’ categories often have the most traffic.

A quick look at Reddit and immediately I can see several categories (Subreddits) that jump out at me, that cater to the ‘big 3’.

One that catches my eye is the Subreddit called “no sleep”.

If you happen to know a bit about this topic, this is a really easy one to dig into.

I’m very familiar with this, as my girlfriend suffers from something called “sleep apnea”.

That’s the medical term for people who have severe sleeping issues and struggle to sleep soundly, often awaking suddenly half way through the night gasping for breath.

So I’m going to go with this one.

Tip: You don't need to be an expert on whatever Subreddit you choose, but it's a good idea to choose something you are at least familiar with, enough to be conversational.

The key to Reddit is authenticity.

You can’t do what every other affiliate does on Facebook and copy / paste pieces of an article.

That won’t work on Reddit, they’ll see straight through you quicker than you can sneeze.

Choose An Affiliate Product To Promote

Next, we’re going to choose a product that you’ll eventually promote as an affiliate to these people naturally.

For this, I suggest you choose clickbank for your product.

I talk about clickbank in depth in other posts on my blog.

But for now, I’ll explain very quickly what clickbank is.

Clickbank is a massive hub or network of products that anyone can sign up to and promote as an affiliate.

Personally, I love clickbank and I still use clickbank to this day.

The reason I’m suggesting that you start here is because clickbank is very quick and easy to get started with.

A lot of other networks require approval and can be very difficult to be accepted, especially if you’re a beginner with very few sales (if any) under your belt.

With clickbank it’s very straight forward and easy to use and get set up relatively quickly.

You can be up and running within 20 minutes.

If you’ve never used clickbank before, here’s a quick video that will walk you through the process of getting started with clickbank and choosing a product.

Once you’ve done that, head over to the clickbank marketplace and choose a product.

Remember, for this example I’ve chosen the “no sleep” Subreddit on Reddit, so I’m looking on clickbank for a product that caters to people who have trouble sleeping at night.

This is a great niche market because it’s a REAL problem that people desperately want solved.

For this, whilst in the Clickbank Marketplace (clickbank.com/marketplace), I’ll simply type in “sleep problems” or just simply “sleep” into the search bar and hit ‘enter’ to search:

Immediately on clickbank I can see an interesting product to promote to these people.

It’s a sleep Apnea product with an interesting angle.

And this is what the product website looks like:

It targets those who have difficulty sleeping and also those who might not be able to sleep due to their partner snoring.

It’s also coming from the curious angle of a throat exercise to cure sleeping issues.

This post isn’t a copywriting post, so I’m not going to get into that too much here, but I can tell you, this is the sort of product that would work extremely well to promote as an affiliate.

The commission’s aren’t too bad either, it pays nearly $40 PER front end sale and it has upsells and a recurring billing option.

This is great, because not only will you get the $40 in your pocket for the Initial sale, you’ll also get a chunk of any upsells the person buys and also a recurring monthly subscription income aswell, for as long as that person is a paying subscriber.

This is the holy grail of affiliate offers.

The type I discuss in my free Affiliate Marketing on Crack mini-course.

So now so far, we’ve chosen a Subreddit and a product that solves a problem that people in that Subreddit are desperate to solve.

It’s now time to take the next step.

Step 3: Set Up Your Profile On Reddit

This step is quite straight forward but it’s the ‘lynchpin’ that makes this Reddit traffic strategy work.

All you need to do is create your Reddit account and upload a picture to your profile.

Here’s how to do both of those:

Create your account.
Add a profile picture to Reddit.

That’s it.

But here’s the critical part…

The picture you use, will be the same picture you use for your CTA overlay you create with Joturl.

We’ll do that part later.

But for now, choose a picture to use as your Reddit profile picture, this will be how people recognise you.

You can choose either a picture of yourself or something else (I recommend a picture of yourself).

But whatever you choose to use, make sure it’s distinctive enough, that it can be immediately attributed to you as soon as somebody sees it.

It’s critical and I’ll explain why it’s so critical to this strategy later on this blog post.

But for now that’s it. 

Once you’ve done this, move on to the next step.

Step 4: Mix In and Be Cool

Given that Reddit is first and foremost a social media network, this should be obvious.

But it never stops amazing me how many get this bit wrong…

I can’t stress this enough, which is why I’m repeatedly saying it, Reddit is first and foremost a social network like Facebook and Twitter, with the exception it’s a completely different environment to those two.

This part of the strategy is critically important and it’s going to take patience, but if you do it right, Reddit will become almost ‘traffic of demand‘ for you.

This is where most people fail with Reddit for Traffic and get themselves booted off the platform, because they don’t take the time to do this.

They want to just jump straight in slinging their links everywhere, getting downvoted and accounts deactivated.

However…

If you get this right, Reddit is largely an untapped goldmine.

You must take the time to just mingle and get involved in your chosen Subreddit.

Reply to threads, interact with other users but don’t overdo it.

The aim here, is to become an accepted and valued member of the Subreddit.

I recommend posting at least 3 or 4 times per week and you do this for at least a month.

I actually did this for 3 months before I posted any links at all, but I realise that isn’t going to suit most people so 4 weeks is ok, 6 weeks is better.

So for the next month or so, your focus should just be contributing to the Subreddit, getting a feel for it and interacting, you’ll do this for at least 4 weeks before posting any links or anything promotional.

Commenting 3 or 4 times per week is fine, you can be more frequent than that if you want to, just don’t overdo it.

You don’t want to be seen as spamming because trust me, Reddit users are fickle and highly sceptical folk.

Take the time to do this because when it comes to posting links in the way that I show you later in this blog post, it will pay off, whether it’s getting traffic to your website or generating affiliate sales, it’ll pay off big time for you.

Step 5: Find Related, Useful Content to share

Next up, it’s time to find relevant and useful content to share.

I’m going to stick with our example Subreddit we chose earlier which was people who have issues sleeping.

Up to now, for this, I would have used a tool called buzzsumo, but I’ve now found something just as good for about half the price.

It’s called Social Animal and it’s a great alternative to buzzsumo which is a bit on the pricey side.

Here’s a quick price Comparison between the 2 tools:

Buzz Sumo Pricing on their cheapest plan: $99 per month. Their most expensive plan is $499 per month.

Social animal’s pricing on their cheapest plan: $49 and their most expensive plan is also $499 per month.

Social Animal’s $49 per month plan is more than enough.

The good thing about Social Animal is it has all the features buzzsumo has aswell as a free trial

And for this we’ll be using the Search feature and also the social popularity feature.

What we want is to find the most popular content that loads of other people have already found useful.

Instead of scouring the internet manually, social animal will do this for you, at the click of a button.

So let’s dig in.

Once inside the social animal dashboard, at the time of writing this blog post, you’ll arrive at a screen that looks like this:

The picture isn’t very clear.

step 1: select “Articles”

Step 2: Type “sleep Apnea” into the search box and hit ‘enter’ (you can type anything you want in here eg: how to get bigger biceps – just make sure it’s related to your category)

After you hit ‘enter’, what social animal will do, is it will go and pull all the best and most popular articles into it’s tool so you can literally pick and choose which one you want to share.

I can immediately spot an interesting one:

As you can see, it’s been shared over 12,000 times and it’s related.

The title of the article is:

“Could Sleep Apnea Be The Cause of Your Daytime Sleepiness”

This article would be a great article to share on Reddit.

All you do now is copy the URL of the article and save it to notepad and once you’ve done that, you’re ready to move on to the next step…

Step 6: Sign Up to Joturl and Create Your CTA Overlay

This is where the rubber starts to hit the road.

We’re going to be using “call to action” overlays, that as the name suggests, overlays a call to action alert on 3rd party websites that contain useful content, that’ll you’ll then use to link back to YOUR OWN website or affiliate offer.

This is essentially the idea, how it will look:

As you can see, it has:

1. A logo – this will match your profile picture on Reddit we created earlier. It’s important that people can automatically recognize it’s something you recommend.
2. Some “call to action” text.
3. A button – this will take them to a website of your choice when they click it.

That’s it.

And for this we’re going to use a tool called Joturl.

There are other tools you can use for this, but this is the tool that I personally use and it’s only $7 per month.

The idea here is, you’re going to share useful content that other people have written and you’re going to use the call to action overlay, to drive people back to your website.

So in step 3, I showed you how to find a product to promote, and I chose a product that related very closely to the “no sleep” Subreddit for people who have trouble sleeping, also known as sleep apnea.

After, spending a few weeks mixing and interacting in step 4…

It’s now time to find some good content and create a call to action overlay to place on it.

This but is fairly easy and Joturl provide some good tutorials on how to do that:

Also read this aswell.

You’ll use the content you found with social animal in Step 5 to use with the overlay you create with Joturl.

Step 7: Eyeballs! Post Your Links (sparingly)

So far, you’ve:

• Familiarised yourself with the Reddit platform.

• You’ve chosen a Subreddit filled with people who all have a common problem.

• You’ve mixed in and provided value and established yourself as a useful and helpful person and built up a solid reputation.

• You’ve created a CTA overlay.

• You’ve found great content to share on Reddit.

And now it’s time for the next step…

EYEBALLS!

None of this matters if nobody clicks your links.

So you’ve now got to share the content you’ve found, with your CTA overlay built in, this is the mechanism which drives people from Reddit to your website.

However, post your links sparingly.

What you don’t want to do, is ruin all the preparation you’ve done up to this point, by running in and barfing 10 links an hour all over the Subreddit.

All this will do is achieve 2 things:

1. You’ll lose all the credibility you’ve built up to this point.
2. You’ll get kicked out of the Subreddit and possibly the entire Reddit platform itself (I’ve seen it happen…a lot).

So please, go careful here.

If you’ve followed everything I’ve laid out in this blog post, you only need to post links a few times per week to get decent traffic from Reddit to your website or your affiliate offers.

Just keep in mind the kind of environment you’re in.

This isn’t Facebook.

Recap.

So here’s a recap of this Reddit traffic strategy I’ve shared with you.

1. Find a group of people (Subreddit) that all have a common problem that you can solve with an affiliate product.

2) You’ll then build a solid reputation within that community and once you’ve done that, (3) share links to informative content with a Call to Action overlay featured in the content.

When somebody clicks the overlay button, they are sent to any website you choose.

If it’s an affiliate website, you’ll receive a commission if that person buys the product.

The power of this strategy is the fact it’s repeatable.

You can have as many Reddit accounts as you want, it’s not Facebook where you can only have one, this means you can ‘rinse & repeat’ this strategy for as many Subreddits and topics as you want.

That makes this traffic method very, very scalable.