How to make it on to the front page of the Internet
This weekend, I posted a photo of my wood-carved globe on Reddit.
It received 23,000 upvotes, 600 comments and made it into the top 25 posts on r/all.
https://www.reddit.com/r/woodworking/comments/sfsl5a/i_finished_my_woodcarved_relief_globe_at_last/
Here's what helped:
- Having something truly unique and photogenic to show
- Using a simple, personal, non-promotional title ("I finished my wood-carved relief globe at last!" not "Beautiful wood-carved globes now available")
- Building up some Reddit karma through previous posts
- Replying positively to every comment (well, most of them, not the abusive ones)
- Being careful to avoid falling foul of the r/woodworking subreddit's rules
- When I inadvertently broke the rules, sending a mea culpa and an appeal to be reinstated to the moderators
I received over 40 inquiries about wood-carved maps and globes, which I expect will convert at about 25%, so maybe 10 orders, which'll keep me going for a while! Free leads from Reddit beats paid advertising elsewhere.
This despite being forbidden to post links to my website. Workarounds:
- Having a Reddit handle, goodwoodglobes, that's the same as my domain name, goodwoodglobes.com
- Having a unique name that's easily Googled
- Building my domain reputation, so that I come top of the search results for goodwoodglobes, by having had a well-SEO'd website there for some time
- Inspiring other Redditors to post pointers to my site without my asking them to
Reddit is a tough place to try to promote your products, because there's a lot of antagonism to self-promotion. Still, I think it's underrated by Indie Hackers.
Anyone else have Reddit success/failure stories?
Yes Reddit works for me as well.
Here is an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/algotrading/comments/rh141f/company_360_ios_app_for_finding_undervalued/
I got banned from a few subreddits but one of those posts can get me 200-600 downloads.
Excellent globe btw. 3d printed or hand carved?
Nice! 200 - 600 downloads from one post is impressive!
I guess I should have added to my list: finding the right subreddit is crucial: one where people actually want to hear what you have to say, and where the rules won’t get you banned.
And thanks: the globe is carved using a CNC router (like 3D printing, but it carves the material away instead of building it up). I guess I’m a software developer in the end: generating 3D models in software is something I can do; carving fine detail by hand, not so much!
Marketing aside, that globe is really impressive. Well done
Thanks! Not your typical IH product, but it was something I knew I could work on as a side project that’d have zero conflict with my software job!
These are great tips thanks for sharing.
Thanks! I always need to psych myself up to venture on to Reddit, but it's worth it!
Wow, nice work! I haven't had much success with reddit, so thanks for this writeup. Give me hope 😅
Great job! Reddit can be frustrating. First, commit on the post: "Links to personal sites are against rule 7."
Yes! That comment came from the moderators (which is why it’s at the top even though it came 12 hours or so after the post started to explode).
It’s a weird dynamic, with moderators and users in constant conflict. There are other comments from people trying to find my website and complaining that whenever someone posts a link to it, the moderators delete it.
I understand that moderators want to prevent their subreddit from being taken over by spammy promotions, but the consequences are sometimes perverse!
It's like can we use common sense. If the website link is obvious spam then ok but if the website is the "thing" that people are looking for who cares if it's your personal site. Makes no sense but somehow Reddit has managed to get all their users onboard to stay on Reddit at all cost.
This is really interesting!