Affiliate Marketing On Reddit: (All You Need To Know!)

Affiliate marketing is buzzing right now on Reddit. Everyone wants to get into it. Leverage it to grow their revenue. 

Well, easier said than done, right? 

Reddit is a popular social media site. Above all, it serves as a hub for numerous forums. Registered members can add text posts, photographs, and links to the site, which are then voted up or down by other members. 

You may get a lot of free traffic on your affiliate products, even on your own website, if you want to. 

However, you must understand how to use Reddit effectively. In this chapter, I’ll walk you through the various dimensions of affiliate marketing on Reddit. I will explore everything you need to know.

These tactics will substantially assist you in changing your affiliate marketing adventure, whether you are a total beginner or simply need some money-making ideas to try out. 

Let’s dive into the tactics for making money with affiliate marketing on Reddit. 

Keep reading. I’m just getting to the good stuff.

Can You Do Affiliate Marketing On Reddit?

Like many of you, I was wondering whether it is possible to do affiliate marketing on Reddit. Here’s what I found out from my research:

Reddit does not allow direct affiliate links to be posted. Direct affiliate links on Reddit may result in account suspension. They consider it spamming and according to their official anti-spam policy, they will issue you a warning first and move on to ban your account if you continue to do it. 

That doesn’t rule out the possibility of using Reddit for affiliate marketing. It simply means you’ll have to be more inventive in directing Reddit visitors to your affiliate offers. You can promote affiliate links but do not spam.

One of the ways in which you can do this is by first, actively participating in the Reddit community. Share information that is helpful and be regular in doing so. 

After a while, you can link your own website. Direct the traffic there and carry on your business.

Why Choose Reddit For Affiliate Marketing?

Reddit was founded in 2005 by University of Virginia students Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman with the goal of serving as a virtual bulletin board for various groups. It swiftly became the “first page of the internet,” bringing breaking news and relevant debates on a wide range of topics.

The r/ tag represents each community, which is referred to as a “subreddit.”

It is currently the 6th most popular website in the United States and the 19th most popular website worldwide. Its users are extremely engaged and enthusiastic. This is something you can make use of. My recommendation is to develop a niche website and post articles on it regarding your affiliate products.

If you post regularly on Reddit and your content is something that captures the readers then you can organically transfer this traffic by promoting your affiliate links. The key like I said before is not to spam but to promote. Be careful about Reddit’s anti-spam policy. 

Yes, that’s right, you cannot directly give out affiliate links but promote them. Otherwise, your account will get blocked. All your efforts to interact with the community members on Reddit will be for nothing in this case. 

Yet, Reddit’s popularity is something that can drastically help you. I would recommend you to not let Reddit’s community regulations and anti-spam policy scare you away from what may be one of your company’s most effective marketing channels.

Instead of merely manipulating the platform to drive clicks on an offer, you must employ more traditional and tried-and-true affiliate strategies. 

Build an audience, cultivate it, sell to it, then cultivate it some more. At least, that’s how affiliate marketing should work. 

Building a long-term, holistic approach that you can tap into over time should always be the goal of Reddit affiliate marketing. If you construct it correctly, it could pay you for years to come.

How To Start Affiliate Marketing On Reddit?

Now that I have laid it out for you that while direct affiliate linking is not feasible on Reddit, you can still leverage the popularity of Reddit to carry on with affiliate marketing.

I’ve conducted thorough research on this and I have found the perfect 6 strategies that will pave the path for you to begin with affiliate marketing on Reddit.

So, to concise it all in simple ways, here’s what you basically need to do:

  1. Submit a link
  2. Submit a post
  3. Comment on other people’s work
  4. Send a direct, personalized message to people
  5. Transfer the traffic to your niche website
  6. Use a Reddit Ad

1. Submitting A Link

Now, you don’t want to just randomly post an affiliate link for a wide target audience. It won’t do anything for you and it won’t get you any clicks. 

Instead, you need to narrow it down. Your target audience should be ideally someone who will be extremely interested in the product that you are linking.

For this, you will first need to understand the type of audience that the product will attract. Niche down. 

Imagine you are setting up the affiliate link for yoga mats. Your target audience will be gym freaks and people who are health conscious or trying to lose weight. 

Once you are able to identify what products will interest what kind of audience, you will make your life simpler.

Trust me, you don’t want to make the mistake of randomly submitting an affiliate link. It will come off as spam. Keep in mind Reddit’s policy, it’s anti-spam as I have previously established. 

Pro Tip To Execute This Strategy – When submitting a link post, make it seem like any other post on Reddit. Keep it conversational. You want to organically attract your target audience.

Also, when someone comments on your post, make sure you reply back. This will compel them to dig further and hopefully, click on your link. The key is to market the products without making them seem like you’re marketing. 

2. Submitting a Post

submitting posts on reddit for affiliate products promotions

You can go to one of the subreddits and make a text post. This is another great way of carrying on with affiliate marketing on Reddit.

The only difference from the first method is that there’s no field for submitting a post here. So what you can do instead is to post the link somewhere in the text.

3. Comment on other people’s post

commenting and recommending affiliate links on reddit

Like I said before, you need to niche down. Target a particular audience. Every product has a specific target audience that it’s meant to cater to. This is something you must leverage.

Now, there are various groups on Reddit. By targeting a particular group, you can interact with the members.

For instance, if someone is talking about how they love Bob Dylan’s music, then you can comment that you’re a fan too and then organically, lead the conversation somewhere else by writing about how you love to listen to Dylan’s music on the Airdopes of X brand. List out a cool feature and ask them to give it a shot since these Airdopes (or earphones) have the best noise cancellation feature. 

Simple enough, right? 

4. Directly Message People

promoting affiliate products on reddit via messaging

You can send private messages to people on Reddit. Say something like ‘I saw you post/comment on this topic X and I thought you will find this useful so I’m sharing this link with you.’

And there you have it. It’s that easy to get your link out there. You just have to be interactive. Make sure you maintain a conversational tone while doing this. You can contact as many people as you like. In fact, the more people you contact the better it is. 

The more you post, the more sales you will get. Personalize things to generate people’s curiosity. 

5. Transfer the traffic to your niche website

What you can do is build enough trust in your community that your integrity is unquestionable. Then, compose a blog article that will captivate your audience, that will blow people away.

Redditors adore data posts, emotive stories, and anything else that took time to create. Deliver one of those to your neighborhood, and people will eat out of your hand. 

While these postings can be useful on their own, if you want to include a link to your own product, make sure you get permission from the moderator first. It must be both natural and transparent. Offer the link and then explain what it is.

This avoids appearing as if you’re attempting to control the group. 

Never include an affiliate link inside a post like this unless the moderators specifically accept it – and you believe the community will allow it. 

Drive organic traffic to a landing page first, and then collect clicks. Even if your audience recognizes an affiliate offer when they see it, if you’re upfront about the process, they’ll be more likely to go with the flow.

6. Use a Reddit Ad

affiliate marketing on reddit with reddit ad (advertisement)jpg

Reddit Sponsored Advertising is famously difficult to make successful due to the site’s anti-commercialization stance.

People tend to skim over these posts without giving them a second consideration, resulting in a low affiliate commission and a high CPC. 

You’ll need two things to make Reddit advertisements work: the right niche and an ad that looks like a post. Make sure your ad is for the correct subreddit. Even though it will have the phrase “SPONSORED” right next to it, mask your copy to make it appear like comparable postings in that group. 

Make the copy so interesting that readers can’t help but reply or even disagree with it. 

Discounts, like most other sorts of commercial ads, work well. To encourage people to take action from your landing page, consider offering a voucher or a free trial.

Pros Of Using Reddit For Affiliate Marketing

There are several pros to using Reddit for affiliate marketing. Let me take you through some of the most prominent ones:

  • Being one of the most popular sites worldwide, Reddit receives a huge amount of traffic each day. Its audience is highly interactive. If you gain credibility on this platform, you have the potential of making a great amount of revenue by implementing the strategies that I have discussed in the earlier section.
  • Reddit has a lot of niche forums called subreddits. Whatever product you want to affiliate market can cater to a specific audience. By targeting a specific audience by making use of subreddits, you will find that your job has been made easier. Now, all you gotta do is promote your product.
  • Reddit allows you to drop private messages to the members. This will allow you to interact with people on a one-on-one basis. You can write personalized messages and generate their curiosity by sharing a link with them or by trying to direct them toward your niche website.

Cons Of Using Reddit For Affiliate Marketing 

The biggest con of using Reddit for affiliate marketing are:

  • Your account can get suspended if you post direct affiliate links. You will be issued a warning first or an auto bot will take down your post with the link. If you continue to post direct links then there are big chances that you will get permanently blocked.
  • Reddit has a strict and uncompromising policy. According to this, Reddit is anti-spam and anti-commercialization. If you get banned for posting direct affiliate links then your content will be removed as well, resulting in your affiliate marketing receiving no traction. In any case, Redditors are quite good at finding these types of affiliate posts, so it’s unlikely to succeed. They’ll report you to a moderator, and your post will be deleted almost immediately.

In Conclusion

Now that you have reached the end of the article, let’s conclude every single thing I’ve discussed so far. 

Reddit, a popular social media site that gets heavy traffic each day can be leveraged effectively to generate revenue through the mode of affiliate marketing. Like I said before, this is easier said than done because of Reddit’s policy.

You cannot simply post a direct affiliate link. This will result in your content getting flagged with the potential of blacklisting your account. The method to carry out affiliate marketing on Reddit is by indirectly promoting affiliate products. 

In this article, I have tried to give you the various strategies you can make use of to get on with affiliate marketing on Reddit.

I have broken this down into six strategies and listed out some pro tips as well for you to implement these strategies with ease. Next, I tried to cover all the pros and cons of using the platform Reddit for affiliate marketing. 

I hope you found all this information helpful. I tried to make it as comprehensive as possible. Please share this post and leave your thoughts in the comments section down below.

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