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18 Comments

Reddit is still super underrated and I don't understand why

We always had so much luck using Reddit for early-stage growth, mention monitoring and even market/comp research so it's crazy to me how underrated it still is.

Guess there are 2 main reasons:

1. You have to find relevant subreddits, threads and comments and it takes a lot of work and time.

Fortunately, there are tools such as Surfkey.io (by @johancutych) that help you keep track of those through simple keyword alerts.

2. You need to find the grey area between blending in as another redditor and plugging your tool. And that grey area is slightly different for each subreddit.

It's not rocket science though. As long as you only engage in relevant conversations and actually try to be helpful, you can get away with plugging your solution where it makes sense. We barely get downvoted, deleted or banned.

posted to Icon for group Reddit Growth Mindset
Reddit Growth Mindset
on February 17, 2023
  1. 3

    Good info here. FB and other forums haven’t been fruitful for me trying to target Etsy sellers. Going to try Reddit.

  2. 2

    Hey! Good points.

    How much time would you say is " a lot"? How many hours per day/week aprox would you say make sense?

    I am a newbie and just starting out with the reddit strategy. And trying to figure out if I'm wasting time or if it is what it takes.

    1. 1

      There's only so much content on Reddit so it really depends on how big your problem space is and how many new posts a day there are.

      If you use Surfkey.io, you save a lot of time on finding relevant threads so you can mostly spend the time on reading/commenting.

      30-60 minutes a day just writing comments can make a massive difference.

      1. 2

        Thanks! I'll check out the tool

  3. 2

    I found small subreddits to be the most efficient

  4. 2

    Noticed this as well. Managed to get 200 unique visitors to my website today. Going to start to change my entire content plan to center around marketable reddit subs

    1. 2

      Nice, that's huge!

      I really recommend setting up Surfkey to never miss relevant convos on Reddit

      1. 1

        Thanks for the rec! I actually just logged back into Indiehacker after 9 months, how have I missed this :(( haha downloading now

  5. 2

    Reddit's UI/UX isn't easy to understand for most people. IMO that's their biggest disadvantage. On the other side, it has great engagement for some communities so it's a good place to read about people's problems and potentially create solutions for that.

    1. 1

      Good point. And yeah, it's a great place for research.

  6. 2

    Reddit got its bad reputation due to shadow banning users without warning. The mods are pure stupid (most of the time) - They just ban and dont respond at all.

    1. 2

      Yeah, some subreddits are hopeless but this is not the case on most of them.

  7. 2

    Thanks for the mention! We are dog feeding the tool and get 10-15 new users a day with 2-5 comments. It's really strong and repeatable.

  8. 1

    I'm one of these people missing on Reddit. I feel so confused when I get to the homepage and I end up navigating through lots of threads that had nothing interesting to me. I guess is just a matter of time to get used to it and find how useful it is. Do you have any recommendations for someone in my situation?

    1. 1

      The UI can be confusing at first, that's for sure.

      I've been using Reddit for 10 years and never went through the home page. I bookmarked a bunch of niche subreddits based on what I'm interested in and go directly to those.

      So for product building, I have bookmarked subreddits such as r/SaaS, r/sideproject, r/entrepreneur, etc, then I have some more personal ones like r/soccer, r/reddevils or r/fitness.

      So there's always something relevant for me as I'm only browsing through subreddits that interest me.

  9. 1

    As an avid Redditor, I agree that there's tons of potential there!

    That being said, plugging your tool/service/etc. is becoming increasingly more difficult. Users, myself included, are getting really sick of seeing that link at the end of a post/comment (more often than not).

    Personally, I think the key is to establish an account weeeellll in advance of when you'll be plugging your tool/service/etc. Like months, ideally. That way you can spend time building repour and providing real value before trying to benefit from those users.

    That's just my opinion though.

  10. -1

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