Trying out Reddit Ads to verify our idea - how much traffic will it bring for 5$ per day?
by JoshIn order to verify our idea and attempt to see whether there is actually a market and audience for our product, we want try Reddit Ads :)
The insights we want to get are:
- Are people actually interested in the product? Do they sign up for our beta phase on https://excelly-ai.io/beta.html ?
- What features do they want or not want?
- How much traffic can it bring us for 5$ a day and is reddit a viable traction channel for our product?
I just set it up today and the campaign took around 1 or 2 hours to be approved.
Here is how that looks:
- The campaign https://imgur.com/a/EBUOTnr
- The options we chose for it https://imgur.com/a/35kKYjm
I'll let this run for a week and keep posting some numbers and insights here so make sure to follow for updates ;)
Best,
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I'm running paid Reddit ads to grow my newsletter This Week In React (weekly curation for senior React devs).
Can't tell the results for your product but here's my stats for the last 30 days:
Some note:
- Make sure to set up proper conversion tracking
- Make sure you target the good subreddits
- Ideally split your ad groups by mobile/desktop, results can be quite different (min 5€ per AG so more money to spend)
- Make sure to define a list of countries or your visitors will all come from a few like Nepal Philippines or India.
- The Reddit dashboard stats are usually quite wrong and in practice, you have more conversions that it reports (particularly in my case, targeted devs are using ad blocker plugins preventing Reddit pixel to work reliably)
Let me know if you have questions
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Also: Definitely subscribed to your newsletter as I am also using React on a daily basis ;)
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🙌 thanks for subscribing
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not sure about traffic conversions, but $0.21 for a click is great price compared to Google ads
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For comparison here are my Google Ads.
I am not yet so good at Google ads but targeting a few top keywords like "react newsletter" gives decent results.
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Hi Sébastien, thanks for sharing these notes and also your stats for comparison!
This is really helpful for me, as I am quite new to Reddit Ads.One major point I definitely have to set up as soon as possible is conversion tracking. Not sure how that will work yet (we're using FormBold for the signups but consider switching to something like mailchimp for the signups), but I am sure I will figure that out this week :)
Thanks again! Best, Josh
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I'm using Google Tag Manager for conversion tracking, and record the conversion event on the double opt-in confirmation page, once the subscriber confirms their email.
The stats are not so reliable (not just for Reddit, but for all platforms) because of ad blockers.
The good news is that if you are technical there's a way to report conversions through an API of most ad platforms. Reddit: https://ads-api.reddit.com/docs/#tag/Conversions/paths/~1api~1v2.0~1conversions~1events~1{account_id}/post
(haven't set this up yet but will do soon)
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Good luck! I don't know about ads but for reference, I was lucky that my post became hot for a day and had ~600k views on reddit, that converted to ~25k unique users on my site.
https://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/10q9y56/find_duplicate_words_in_your_writings_and/-
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Thanks for sharing! I just checked out your tool, really nice idea! Are you planning on commercializing it or running ads, or to build an audience with it?
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How do you see the views on Reddit?
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If you post you can see the insights: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/tjoiax/changelog_post_insights_relevance_experiments_and/
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@finnhvman which timezone you do posting on reddit?
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I tried paid reddit ads and found that it worked much better to just post myself on relevant subreddits
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Hey Josh, I am really interested to hear how this goes. I've been toying with the idea Reddit ads for my saas https://userdoc.fyi
Look forward to hearing the results.
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Can't wait to see results. I've been planning on using Google search ads for my AI tool Evoke (which is an AI API for stable diffusion, and also for devs), so I'm curious to see how well Reddit works.
I find that controversy marketing could work. There's been an AI tool going around Reddit (Leonardo AI) that just keeps the comments on.
Since there's a general negative view around AI art and image generation, it seems to have amassed a fair amount of comments. And I think this was intentional on part of the creator.
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Hi Richard,
I'll definitely keep you updated here how it works :)I have also thought about Google search ads and will definitely look into that also.
From what I have seen so far, it has more requirements than Reddit Ads and you need more capital to start, right?-
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Yep. But Google ads I'd assume have better conversions if you're using search ads since they're more targeted to people looking to solve their problems.
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Quite curious on how this will turn out.
I have clearly done something wrong with my ads so far. Maybe wrong targeting. It’s been quite expensive and has gotten few impressions.
Would very much want to see how it goes for you and get to do this better on the future.
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Hi, thanks for sharing! I also think there might be more potential because we so far have spent 10$ and got 38 clicks, but I am also not quite sure how to interpret that and what reference values would be.
Here is a screenshot for comparison: https://imgur.com/a/hhDXLTq
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Hi again :)
Narrowed down my reddit audience to a few communities & countries (to the point where it said audience is too narrow :D) and chose the "Automatic ad creation" which combined multiple headlines and images to create ad variations.
It's getting a lot of clicks for a low CPC so far :)
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That looks a lot better! The quality of clicks might have been good, but it felt expensive to me. I got a lot better results from a twitter campaign targeting followers. I have spent 3$ total for the below (granted - account had some age).
That feels like a pretty good deal to me.
I'll try tweaking my reddit audience and see if I get a better result. As the others have mentioned, the community there can be rather engaged and there are opportunities to get genuine feedback whereas on twitter you'll get a lot less of that.
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Interesting results, thanks for sharing! Are you happy with the targeted audience? Reach results (and conversions) look quite good 👍
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It's a bit hit and miss with the audience. Even though I have specifically targeted down to interests and hashtags, I feel many of the followers have nothing to do with my settings. It might be because of organic reach though, not sure.
Reddit for sure feels like better quality from my experiments so far.
Also, Twitter felt a lot worse when making campaigns for impressions or clicks. For some reason followers bring more of both for a very low cost.-
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Thanks for sharing your experience regarding Reddit vs Twitter for ads. I also tried a very small ads campaign on Twitter, my feeling was the same: poor reach, organic following works better.
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Looking forward to the results!
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Unrelated to your Reddit Ads, but you may want to improve the URL structure a bit if you want to grow through SEO.
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Thanks for noticing! I definitely had some problems with the blog, because the tech stack is quite different from the one of the landing page. I appreciate such reports, will definitely fix this this week! :)
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I think it’s a great idea to validate your idea using Reddit ads. What if you are actually trying to sell your product? What platform would you use to advertise?
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Good question. Ideally, until we start selling, we would already have a basis of people interested in our product and continuously giving us feedback for it :)
Otherwise, I am not sure if our traction channel will actually change at that point - I think not but I definitely have to think (and probably experiment) about that!-
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Hey Josh. Thanks for the reply. Yes, I agree with you on the fact that you need an audience base that wants your product before you actually launch it. So that your product has an actual value in the market space. :)
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Hey Josh, I just also submitted my product to reddit ads for the same purpose :) I am hoping you've also got $100 credit for the first campaign - yaay! Good luck with your idea.
I saw very similar product on microacquire.com couple of days ago and the asking price was pretty good - 520k.
I found the link:https:
//app.acquire.com/startup/umRMysVNLjZc2obUo6548MUKDNQ2/JxBEEQiS9hIqMfsZn0jb-
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Hi, this is really interesting for us, thanks for sharing!!
Also, indeed the 100$ Reddit Ads credit is awesome ;)
Best!
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I too am interested in how this goes for you. I have advertised on google adwords quite a bit, and had great results. Wondering about reddit.
As an aside, if I were you, I might consider adjusting the copy on your landing page. It was not clear to me in the headline, what your app does, and why it is valuable.
The alpha founders info should really be a subheadline under this.
I think that will decrease bounces and increase signups, based on my experience.
Remember: you have 3 seconds.
Go
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Hi David,
thanks for your feedback! I totally agree that the copy on our landing page has vast space for improvement, so we're very open for feedback on this. Could you elaborate on the "alpha founders info" part?-
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Your current Copy:
Heading: Excelly-AI.io is currently in closed beta.
- At first, I thought the site was 'closed' after reading this.
Subheading: Sign up here to be one of our first users and get access to exclusive beta features! We will keep you updated and notify you once we launch. [Promise. - remove? ]
Email address
Bottom Left corner box: Transform plain text into powerful Excel formulas effortlessly inside Slack!
- This should be the real heading.
I might reword the Subheading a bit as well...
Sign up for pre-launch updates and get access to exclusive founding member beta features and rewards!
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I would also remove the newsletter signup in the footer as well. it looks confusing. Are there two lists? Have one signup only on the landing page.
While you are at it, if you decide to change the main heading, you may as well remove the bottom left box as that will be repetitive as well. And put Terms of service and all footer links together in one footer.
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Hi David,
thanks for the detailed feedback! I really appreciated because I myself am not the best at UI design als copywriting. I will definitely go through all of your points and post and update once I adapted the website (probably this Wednesday). Best!
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Super nice experiment Josh! Did they let you choose the ability to choose which subreddits would display your ad? Anyway, interested in reading your results mate 👍
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Thanks Saïd! Yes, Reddit lets you enter some subreddits for your audience and I think that's a really cool feature! Here's how it looks like: https://imgur.com/a/35kKYjm (under "Community audience").
It does not list every subreddit though.-
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Thanks mate, super insightful to know! Don't hesitate to post your final results, super interested in them 🤔
What could be a good post is benchmarking different ads/branding channels' value: Twitter vs. Linkedin vs. Reddit vs other for instance
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Very interesting experiment, Reddit as a community has very strong opinions, can't wait for the updates.
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Thanks! :) We actually got 20 clicks so far and one subscriber to our beta mailing list. Will post about it tomorrow
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A question. How many such ads will you be running? It's $5 for some traffic today which will increase day by day, undoubtedly. Do you just want signups or people to stick with you?
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For now, we just want to validate the idea, ideally get some signups and see if Reddit Ads works for us. Ideally we would get people to stick with our product (not sure if I understood your question correctly)
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What i intended to tell you was if you're just validating your idea don't create a recurring expense for it. Especially, Ads aren't a great way to know if you should go with your product or not. Find the lists of your potential audience, send them DMs where they are most active (I'm not talking about cold emailing) and talk to them. If you're trying out Reddit, which is definitely a great place, try tools around it. www.promotee.co is my Reddit SaaS. I'm not selling but this is a relevant place to mention it.
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Hi, I actually also saw your SaaS promotee, and it really looks helpful! I actually already signed up but did not find time yet to test it extensively.
I think you can indeed validate your product with ads, as long as the expense is limited (I only run ads for one week) :)
My plan here is to only run ads for a limited amount of time to see if the idea has potential customers, and if yes, they can give me feedback which feature they like and which they do not like.It's also described in "Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth", can definitely recommend it.
Best!
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Cool. This does makes sense! Good luck:)
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Hey Josh, thanks for sharing!
Reddit is one of the social networks I haven't tried ads. Interested to see the results.-
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Thanks! So after day one, we got 8k impressions, 20 clicks and one beta signup :) Will post about the details tomorrow and I am definitely thrilled to see what happens in the next few days
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Also on the $100 free credit to validate an idea, currently paying per click at $1 each (real estate focused, so no need to shamelessly plug here). Good luck!
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Well... ad testing aside, the #1 problem I see with your product is that - at this stage - it doesn't bring a lot of value compared to "you know who" (the talk of town).
Here's my Q&A with ChatGPT, using the example you provide above the fold.
Q:
Give me an Excel formula that calculates the sum of all values in column A, divided by the total amount of values in column BA:
The formula to calculate the average of column A divided by the total amount of values in column B would be:=SUM(A:A)/COUNT(B:B)
In this formula, SUM(A:A) calculates the sum of all values in column A, and COUNT(B:B) calculates the total number of values in column B.
Not even speaking about the fact that MSFT will soon integrate all those capabilities straight into their suite.
What are your plans to compete?
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My guess is that you will find it better to post yourself. I have definitely never clicked on a Reddit ad personally.
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I'm very satisfied in this software. Good Service and very helpful to me.
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I am building a tool to post on your behalf and make such ads like these seem "organic".
If you guys are interested - https://discord.gg/e9SgaaNT-
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
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