Reverse Engineering Money S01E07 - How To Use Reddit For Traffic, Sales and SEO

The goal of the series is to learn new ways to build and manage digital businesses.
You will learn how other people structure their online empires and how you can do it as well.
Instead of lurking around and waiting for a magic money making guide, we shall take measures into our own hands. If you missed episode 06, click here.

Disclaimer: All research, content, facts and figures are obtained without the intention of causing any harm to any business whatsoever. All information is obtained through legal and public ways using services such as Google and/or other websites.
---------

Once in a while I see threads and blog posts about Reddit and how super popular it is.
I also hear that it's quite hard to earn any traffic / sales / money from Reddit.
I would like to investigate this matter myself and find out who IS making money from Reddit and how they are doing it. This is part 1 of the Reddit chronicles.

Part 1
One day I was looking at the "jobs & freelancing" topics on Reddit (just out of curiosity) and then I saw this:


This guy " https://www.reddit.com/user/ColorfulJohn " is promoting his website/blog by including it directly in his reply.
I visited his blog, and this is what it looks like:



It looks like this person is trying to be a "website design" expert, a guru, or something similar.
The blog itself is poor content wise, there are no long articles, just short summaries and guides.

But on the right (sidebar) you notice banners, which indicate he/she is promoting books/guides.
If you click on them you are often times redirected to Amazon, also notice that the link is an affiliate link.
Looks like we've busted this website's method already: Reddit traffic + Amazon Affiliate program

When I visit their Reddit profile, it looked like this:


You immediately notice (marked in red rectangles) that they are promoting their blog on almost every single Reddit reply, what an overkill right !?
Apart from this fact, once in a while they also promote their own "subreddit" page:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fraphic/

screenshot:

It looks like a graveyard with only 3 posts, so there is not much going on.

Final discussion
This person definitely did something with Reddit, but it's hard to tell he/she was successful at it.
This account has been active for more than 2 months, promoting their blog and on average each reply has gotten them 2-3 points. This could've gotten them 10-50 sales from Amazon's affiliate program, but probably no more than that. I am no Reddit expert so this remains a speculative estimate.

It also looks like he/she is slowly giving up because the last post was more than 9 days ago (or they are on vacation taking time off).

Either way, I am not quite satisfied with this find so I went looking for another business on Reddit...

Part 2: BJJ

The "Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ)" niche, who would've thought there was any money to be made online with martial arts material?
Well these guys did it amazingly well.

I found this reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/bjj/comments/6kiiub/4th_of_july_deals_thread/
Screenshot:


They are promoting some apps (for android & apple), and when you visit their website it looks like this:


They offer one video for free and all the other ones cost $3.99 or $19.99
this is quite a lot for a damn app with some videos, but it definitely looks worth it to people who love martial arts and are interested in learning BJJ from their phone/tablet.

If you think about it, it does not take much to make such an app (given the fact that you are a black belt BJJ master) then you have a nice side income to work on

There is an entire BJJ subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/bjj/
These guys are definitely making money with their apps and BJJ products, they have been on Reddit for more than 2 years! That's what I call dedication.

This was a nice find, but I'm sure we can do better...

Part 3
Warning (+18)
I think this one is inappropriate to be posted on a public forum, so ....
it's up to you to figure out what they are trying to sell
screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/453rzpd.png

and then this... simply unbelievable what Reddit has to offer
screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/QDxzkku.png
notice: Amazon Affiliate program


Part 4

I'm not sure how long this account will survive, but I feel like they are about to be banned soon.
https://www.reddit.com/user/becalis/

Screenshot:


When you visit their website, you'll see this they are promoting some kind of service where you can upload a PDF workout plan and then a "Messenger" (probably Facebook messenger app) will keep you motivated or something:


I'm not sure how they are making money (I didn't bother signing up).
They do not mention any paid/premium plans on their website, so either they are completely free right now or they have a subscription plan once you start using their service(s).


I'll stay active on Reddit for some time, if I stumble upon anything worthwhile I will add it in the comments below feel free to add your findings as well.

I have found some scammer on Reddit, and there are THOUSANDS of such accounts.
It appears some are just bots managing many accounts.

Here is one of them:


Sometimes they promote direct links to the files, sometimes they promote vimeo/youtube/facebook links which in the end promote the download links.
I have not downloaded any of these (I don't want the risk of getting infected with some malware).
But it's quite possible they are working with CPA and/or PPI programs to make money -- or they have made their own scareware and ask for BTC ransom (ransomware).

Always great at analyzing things big thumb keep it up

wolverine1 said:

Always great at analyzing things big thumb keep it up

Click to expand...

Thanks mate

is this yours email?


If this is yours i'm going to delete my post.

artomka said:

is this yours email?
If this is yours i'm going to delete my post.

Click to expand...

Yes mate it was my newsletter

healzer!
This is extremely interesting! I love these kind of case studies as well as your thoughts on what they are doing right and wrong.
I have been delving into reddit more lately because I am fed up with FB and insta, so thank you!