My latest post on Reddit got 300k+ views and 1000 upvotes. Here are 8 things that helped me go viral
1. Effort ≠ results
I’ve spent hours on posts that got 0 attention. I wrote my most viral post in 10 minutes while having morning coffee. You never know what will take off. Don't overthink it, just start writing and posting.
2. Don't be afraid to help competitors
Some people say building in public I only give my competitors an advantage. That's is partly true. At least 2 people reached out and said they built a similar product after my posts.
But first, this is great - the more the merrier, and the market is big enough for everybody.
Second, your real edge is not the tech you are using. It's the attention to the product you can generate. And social media is the only way to achieve it if you don't have millions for marketing.
3. Reddit hate is brutal
If your post has even a faint smell of promotion - people will hate you on Reddit. And when they do, they hate firecely. Expect a lot of angry DMs and downvotes.
4. Share your REAL struggles
The only way to avoid this and still get views, is being real. Share scary and cringy stuff. If you feel like you’re gonna burn from shame after posting - it means you are posting the right thing.
5. Post on the right subs
Not all Reddit subs are equal. Most ban promotion posts. I always post on r/SideProject or r/SaaS. They are friendly to builders and your story will more likely resonate there.
6. Adjacent audiences rock
Some say builder subs are useless, because only your competitors hang out there. This is not true.
After my viral post on r/SaaS, I got a lot of leads for Yadaphone. Turned out many people on r/Saas and r/SideProject are freelancers, business owners and digital nomads. They all needed a cheap overseas call solution and I got a ton of new paying customers.
7. Not posting a link works
Avoid including a link to your product in Reddit posts. First, it’s the quickest way to get banned for promotion. Second, if people like your product, they will google it, and it’s a huge boost for SEO. Just share the name of the product in the post or wait until somebody asks for the link in the comments (somebody always does).
8. Non-native English is an advantage
This is a bonus for all non-native speakers out there. I used to push all my texts through ChatGPT to fix style and mistakes. And it only got me downvoted because people thought my texts were AI-generated.
Now I just write and post stuff as is. Making mistakes shows you are human, and Reddit values that over your perfect English
P.S. avoid the em dash — at all costs, this is a clear sign you used AI (even if you didn’t).
If your are curious about my viral post in r/SaaS, you can read it here. By the way, please upvote if you like it!
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1kakpmh/my_nonai_app_made_8000_usd_in_2_months_heres_how/
Replies
Product Hunt Dark Screen
Hi, I am here to tell you i was one of the upvoter there,
By the way i want to share my short story that may help some beginner.
Once, i started writing on Reddit, my posts keep getting downvotes, then i stopped for 2 years will negative Karma, then just 1 month back, i started writing still getting downvotes and posts getting removed. Then i gave myself a challenge to post everyday, does not matter it gets removed or downvotes. Then after just 2 days, i started getting upvotes.
And now, i am at 32 Post Karma and 12 Comment Karmas.
I am just starting but i wanted to share if it can help someone who is thinking to not post just seeing those demotivating downvotes.
Yadaphone
@aryansharma17 yo bro that's a really useful one! a lot of people (myself inclided) struggle with downvotes, it's very tough mentally. Shoot some of your fav reddit posts here!
Product Hunt Dark Screen
@denis_iurchak sure
https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1kb7k9o/launched_my_product_on_product_hunt_ended_up_4th/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1k83cd0/i_got_tired_of_producthunt_burning_my_eyes_at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Yadaphone
@aryansharma17 nice man, that's some solid work
Thanks for sharing- did the post virality translate into anything for @Yadaphone ? Or is it hard to tell because you can't post and track links?
Yadaphone
@steveb it is indeed a challenge to track the results of Reddit posts. Mostly because if people on Reddit notice refs or UTMs in your links, they will destroy you 😅 in Yadaphone I track it using those methods:
onboarding surveys
just asking the users where they came from using follow-up emails
using indirects signs (eg users came from google during a traffic spike from Reddit)
All in all, during the 3 days the post was out, on average we got 60 new users a day, while without it, it was about 30 new users were coming on a day. So the impact can be safely estimated as x2
@steveb @denis_iurchak it's smart to consider the overall user growth trend and see if it corelates with your activities on socials.
congrats, Denis. very inspiring
Product Hunt
Such a cool writeup, thank you for sharing. Not posting a link to your own product and keeping grammatical errors to sounds human are awesome tips. Super counter intuitive.
Yadaphone
@mikekerzhner thanks a lot man! you learn a lot of things when you start posting on Reddit, because the price of error there is huge. Every time I promoted a bit too openly I either got banned or earned enemies for life haha Reddit is very real 😅
minimalist phone: creating folders
These tips are gold. Reddit is like a gold mine, but not many people have figured out how to approach it (because in 95% of cases, their posts are removed or banned). 😅 One of my goals is to be more active on that platform. Thanks for sharing.
Yadaphone
@busmark_w_nika so true! None other platform can give you hundreds of thousands of views just for text content when you have no audience. Keep us posted how your Reddit path goes!
minimalist phone: creating folders
@denis_iurchak I keep my eyes on you. 👀
Headliner
Perfect note on effort equating to attention. AI certainly makes it easier to create posts at scale, but doesn't always signal great quality or output — somethings just need to be done by a human!
Curious though why the em dash was called out? I know AI has put it in content more and more, much like the 🚀, however, it is proper writing. (I will die on my alt+0151 hill!)
Yadaphone
@elissa_craig thank you! Yes, AI puts the em dash in texts a lot and most users don't even know how to input it. It's also become a meme on X, after Pieter Levels muting long dashes from his feed
Thanks for the tips, i am sure this will help me a lot
Yadaphone
@mutalibb you got it man!
So to summarize, share stories only?
Yadaphone
@admiralrohan stories or if you want to promote a product directly, free products/tools. I think there is also a huge angle for cooperation between free products with audience on Reddit and monetizable products without it
Thank you! When you say “just write and post” and that being a non-native English speaker is actually an advantage, it really encourages me.
Yadaphone
@feifei_ai thank you man! yeah, i think it's better not to be afraid and just do the thing. Anyways action is rewarded disproportionately, even taking into account the risk of mistakes and failure :)
@denis_iurchak am I new guy in Reditt and planning to build my micro saas. As you said I added link in the post and i now only understood the reason for getting restricted to my post.
So what is my expectation in reditt is i want to create a waitlist for my saas product will you please guide me the dos and don't like one of the point as you said link should not be added.
That will more more more helpful.