Using Reddit to drive traffic

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   krisaclarkposted 11 years ago

   Is anybody else using Reddit as a source of traffic to your Hubs, or own websites?
   
   I have always known about Reddit but just signed up for an account, and posted a link to on of my websites. Now I am far from a marketing guru and a mediocre writer at best, but I just posted that link on Reddit about 24 hours ago, and since I have received close to 800 views, and every time I hit refresh there is a few more unique views. Remember, this is on a website of mine that I am working on, it only has three posts so far, and isn't very well ranked in search engines yet, before yesterday, I had between 30 and 40 views total over the past couple months.

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      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Promoting your own work is a great way to get banned from Reddit.

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         krisaclarkposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         They actually encourage self-promotion on most of the subreddits, as long as you regularly interact with other people and not just use it for your own benefit.

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         JKennyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I agree, I personally wouldn't touch reddit with a barge pole. I've used social network sites in the past, but to be honest, its best to just write quality stuff and then leave it in the hands of Google, because that's where most of the views are going to come from.

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      aa liteposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      reddit has been likened to the internet equivalent of a college dorm room (or something like that).  Seriously it has many subcommunities that feel very strongly about it, they particularly appreciate funny pictures, rather than lengthy content.
      
      A few months ago I posted a few of my pages there, and yes I got hundreds of views in a day, but then it died out.  To keep that traffic up i would have to post my links every day.  Plus find "cool" stuff that they liked to post everyday as well to dilute my own links, which would pretty much end up being a full time job.  Anyway I gave up (but managed not to get banned!)
      
      The other negative thing about reddit traffic is that they spend seconds on the page, bounce back straight away.  If Google uses these signs as a measure of quality, it might actually hurt your site in the long term.  They absolutely don't convert to sales or Adsense clicks. 
      
      Plus I think it's a bit rude to try and use an online community for our online earning purposes.  I seriously doubt that any of us produce the kind of stuff that would be appreciated by them.

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         angryelfposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Bounce rate is a HUGE factor in the rank of a page in search results. If people bounce, then it's either A) bad content or B) untargeted traffic. Google likes to assume A. If readers stay or continue to another page, it shows Google that there MUST be something good there. No one stays on a webpage or continues through the pages if it's not good stuff; Google knows this

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I got a lot of traffic for a couple of days from Reddit, but now they hate HubPages. It wouldn't even let me post a link to someone else's hub, and I wasn't banned, I can still post other stuff. It might work better for your blog or website, they don't seem to mind that.

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2. 68

   PaulGoodman67posted 11 years ago

   Reddit gives you a brief spike at best, but it's fun while it lasts. 

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3. 0

   DigbyAdamsposted 11 years ago

   I would be very careful of using any of these to promote hubs or your own work. Google judges the quality of links just not number. These types of sites can become bad neighborhoods very quickly. Google isn't stupid. They know that most of the links on places like this are done by website owners or people the website owners have paid.

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      angryelfposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Not necessarily Content can go viral on any platform, and may not on others. You can pay to have content spread virally on virtually any site as well. Now, Google recognizes patterns and linked occurrences; this is when it becomes bad news. IP addresses as well. Google is not stupid, but it cannot necessarily base the quality of a site on a link; anyone can copy a link and post it anywhere. Now, if the link is blasted with blog comment spam.... that's a different story. People don't use this for links much anymore, unless they are trying to sandbox someone else's site.

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4. 0

   Beth37posted 11 years ago

   I don't (as usual) know anything about reddit. I found it interesting that "religion" wasn't mentioned as a topic on the top line, but Atheism was... unusual.

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      Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Reddit is a place where young people post links.  Page after page of links with voting on the favorites up or down.  They don't care about Google, they hate people who post their own stuff.  I was banned after posting three links.
      
      Reddit traffic is largely worthless.  Yes, possible to get hundreds or thousands of fleeting visits but not much hope of any real engagement, and even less hope of actually selling something.
      
      I believe I now have a permanent memorial on the r/asshole section where someone has pointed me out as a fine example of a low-rent spammer.  It's a fair cop.

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         Beth37posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Was that a dig, Mark Ewbie? lol
         What site have you *not been banned from?

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         1. 61

            Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            No, it wasn't a dig at anyone.  I am happy with my ban, I wasn't at the time but it makes perfect sense.  Posting your own stuff across the internet, in my opinion, does nothing - either for you or the people who have to skip past it.
            
            No one can judge the quality of their own work or the value it might contribute.  Especially if it consists of a picture of a stickman I suppose.
            
            As for sites I have not been banned from.  Well this one for a start.  Not even a forum ban.

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               Beth37posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               So far...

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                  Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I'm OK as long as I don't care. It's when I start to care and get annoyed and then it all goes wrong.  Fortunately the main priority on here is to earn a few cents.  Keeps the focus.

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                     Beth37posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     Soon I will have my first payout (soon being a relative term.) And then I will be as nonchalant as you.

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                        Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                        Hey Beth, I am anything but.  I am driven.  Money is far more important than making some statement on forums.

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                           Beth37posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                           LOL... I see that in you. But then you are a male and possibly the head of your household, meaning money is very important to you. I on the other hand like to sing songs in the forest and play with butterflies. Im not really money-minded.
                           
                           Edit: This is a joke, I haven't played with a butterfly since I was 5.

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                              Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                              Head?  HEAD?  Oh lol.  I am firmly at the bottom after the lowest-ranked dog.  But yeah, finance is what I do and I need something to take up some coming slack in a while.  I still have some hopes of making a decent amount of money at this.  Probably misguided but worth a crack as we Brits say.

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                                 Beth37posted 11 years agoin reply to this

                                 If it ever gets too overwhelming, don't forget you can always stop and play with the butterflies.

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                                    Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                                    Yeah.

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5. 74

   TheKatsMeowposted 11 years ago

   My experience with reddit has me unsure if I ever want to use it again. As others have said, you can promote your own stuff, but you have to link to other stuff as well, so that people don't think you are spamming the site with your own stuff. So in that respect, it's a lot of work.

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      Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      That's where I think the social game falls down.  Too much effort to appear to be a genuine contributor.  Put the effort into quality content and fingers crossed someone else will link to it.

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         Bedbugabscondposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Plus we don't know if and how Zebra will play in to this. For all we know, too much self promotion on social media could cause us problems down the road.

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            Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            It sounds like Google will just ignore any social networking link, whereas in the past they counted them as good links to your work. I hope they don't slap people for using social networking. That would be the end of all the Pinterest traffic.

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            Jean Bakulaposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            My experience with Reddit was awful. I know they say the age range is 18-35, but they seem immature at best, meanspirited at the worst. They will swear at you, belittle your work, and be nasty. You may get a spike in traffic if  you post about 10 things that have nothing to do with your work, then sneak in one that does have to do with your work. They start bothering you right as soon as you try to post, they won't let you in, telling you that "you tried too many times" or "try again in 10 minutes." I think it's run by a group of 15 yr. olds. They can't tell you are going to promote your work at signin, yet they start with the nonsense already. If you find a friend who has a simliar interest and trust them, maybe you can get a dialogue going, and will be able to post links to your work once in a while. But it's temporary. I would advise you to stay away, but if you don't, be very careful.

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            1. 69

               Chris Quposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Jean, You're acting like there is something inherently wrong with the site because it is difficult for you to share your own work on there. In reality, it was never the site's purpose for you to "post about 10 things that have nothing to do with your work, then sneak in one that does."
               
               That's not what Reddit is about. Reddit is a community-based website for its users to share things that they, legitimately, believes other people on the community would like to see. If you signed up to share your own link because it shares a common topic, then you're doing it wrong. You don't know what people on that subreddit want to see, because you're not a part of their community. And if you're only signing up to share your own work, you are not the type of community member they wish to attract in the first place.
               
               There are places on the internet where you can share things the way you'd like to share them. Reddit isn't one of them. And that's not a "fault" of Reddit's design.

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6. 95

   siramaposted 11 years ago

   Search engine will take care of Quality Article. To get initial traffic we can look at the social networking sites. But, if you look at well written old hub (May be 1 or 2 year old) most of the traffic are from google. You know why? As a Author we concentrate on newly written hubs and forget about the old one. But, google still remembers the Old Quality Hibs

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7. 61

   Mark Ewbieposted 11 years ago

   I got banned...
   

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8. 59

   FatFreddysCatposted 11 years ago

   I use Reddit to pimp my Hubs very sparingly... Like, once every few months. I do drop by in between to post other stuff and comment on things occasionally. You can pick up a quick spike in traffic there but if you overdo it, you will get banned.

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9. 82

   tillsontitanposted 11 years ago

   My experiences are similar to KatsMeow.  I've been a member of Reddit for a long time.  Been suspended once or twice, even followed a few "reddits" but found it kind of senseless.  Once in a blue moon I'll list a hub just to see what happens.  I think the problem is anything that isn't sensational or ridiculous doesn't go very far on Reddit for very long.

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      Barbara Kayposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I got very little traffic when I posted a couple there and I mean very little.

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         tillsontitanposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Me too!

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10. 60

    TheRaptorClawposted 11 years ago

    I've actually used Reddit a couple of years ago off and on. However, I didn't use it for the purpose of posting links. My friends and I would take pictures and give them funny captions. Sometimes those pictures would be very funny and would get lots of views and laughs. Sometimes they were "meh." The point of my reply here is what happened when our pictures actually attracted a lot of attention. People would comment on them with links to different websites. People could rate the comments up or down and every single one that was posted on our pictures that got a lot of views always went way down. Some people would even cuss out the person who posted the link. People go to Reddit to see funny cat pictures and stuff like that, not links to other people's websites. There's all kinds of trolls on Reddit so the best thing to do is stay away from Reddit if you are just going to post links on it.

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11. 74

    Andy McGuireposted 11 years ago

    I initially thought posting my work on Reddit was a good idea, but redditors seems to be real dick-snausages about it, and the moderators get that way too really quick. What's wrong with self-promotion? How else can one gain recognition?
    Actually, that last question is serious, what IS the best way to attract readers, commenters, sharers who will spread the word, followers, etc? I really want to know how to gain even a small bit of celebrity for my stuff, which I think is getting better and better  and I want a bigger audience (I mostly do goofy comedic hubs.)

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    1. 61

       Mark Ewbieposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       Caution: Personal opinion.
       
       I try to do funny stuff too.  Been here getting on for three years.  Have tried Reddit (banned), Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter - "the share my own aren't I wonderful route".
       
       I think sharing your own stuff is a waste of time.
       
       Lots of funny people on the net.  Very few make any money.
       
       My current theory is just to do the best I can, and hope that someone with lots of followers finds it worth sharing.  Apart from that - I study keywords a bit.  People would rather read "How to" or "What does" - AND get a sensible answer than read the funniest ass-splitting material you think you ever created.
       
       It's a tough game.

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12. 79

    bat115posted 11 years ago

    I have never used reddit but I do get a lot of hits from there on my hubs. I guess someone there is talking about me.

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