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Are you seeing success with Reddit?
Posted by JDh888 • 5/28/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: karma, reddit, robert, stevenson
So as follow up to Robert Stevenson's reddit discussion i don't know about the rest of you but I had a hard time getting my karma up. I guess as he says it takes time.
Robert's take:
"For the uninitiated with reddit.com, it's important to have "karma" when posting, so if you post something good with low karma it probably won't get any hits. Reddit.com claims that the secret to gaining karma is a secret, but it's pretty easy to figure out that if you only submit your own posts, you'll get nowhere fast.
When folks on reddit see a new post from someone with low karma, they usually delete it right away - they can be ruthless. It's like initiation into a club.
If you want to use reddit on your own, just find material you like and submit it for someone else. You will slowly gain enough karma to submit your own stuff.
I really can't submit more than a few posts a day to reddit. If this list gets long and you don't want to wait for me to get to your post, maybe you can trade submissions with someone else on the thread.
One final thing funny pics, vids, and writing seem to get the best traffic. Be sure you title is provocative.
I can't guarantee success, but I've been realize surprised by how well my submissions are doing."
Has anyone else had the same success as Robert?
I actually had them accept my first reddit today: "Are you a sock person or a shirt person"
reddit.com/user/jdh888/
(add me and i'll add you!)
which is better than having it disappear right after submission.
Anyone wishing to spread some good karma by giving it a boost ... please do so ... and would be happy to return the favor. If you've got a hot post i'll submit for you as well - just specify the link. And i'll do it 3 or 4 a day over a few days.
If you have any success stories please share.
(ah, and thanks to Robert for spreading his good karma around)
User Comments
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Yup thanks to robert
thanks to blog catalog for having great bloggers who are willing to share than have it for themselves!
I love BC.
I would like you to submit this post for me please JD earthlyexplorations.blogspot.com/2008/04/dont-single-out-pinays.html
If you also have some post you would like submit tell me so thanks in ad vance!-
submitted
hope it sticks
although as i was submitting noticed there wasn't a good fitting category so i just listed as reddit. -
Earthlingorgeous, I redditted it (I still don't know what to call that!) -
Thanks guys. BTW at the bottom of the category list, there are more than 100 additional categories. It's often easier to get points on these smaller categories, but the traffic will be smaller as well. It's up to you. It's also acceptable to submit in a different category if the first submission doesn't work out. -
ah thx robert
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Hi Lucy! Thanks I am also clueless about it but well it looks promising
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Hi,
I found it too much work with very little gain using social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg. There are already huge networks of members who are gaming these sites for their own advantage. While the webmasters are trying to make the site more democratic, a small fish like myself, really cannot get much out of it, considering the amount of effort it requires. There has been a lot written about this, on the forums.
Good luck with your efforts!
Rich-
maybe you are right
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I'm surprised to hear you say that, Rich. I've found that very little investment is required to do well on those sites. For instance, between my work and personal sites I've had 6-8 articles/posts on the front page of Digg, and the couple of hours of investment in each was well compensated by tens of thousands of new visitors each time. -
Hi,
Very nice. Can you tell me which of your articles saw the tens of thousands of visitors and over which time frame? Thanks.
Rich -
I'll have to look in the BC archives, but at the launch of her e-zine web site, she got so much traffic, it crashed the servers... We all witnessed it.
Pretty cool. -
Hi,
I would appreciate it, if you can provide more information. What I am primarily interested in is the long-term effects. Does it increase repeat readership? Does it increase SERP or PR? etc.
I know that recently, the social bookmarking sites, have become much better at eliminating gaming, so it has become much more difficult to build a network and hide it, as the system is gamed. So recent examples would be very interesting. Thanks for your help.
Rich -
Rich, I'm at work now, so I can't answer in detail--only quick comments here and there. I will come back to this on my own time, but as Jenn suggested, if you search the archives there's been much discussion of my Digg experiments and Kevin's (PointlessBanter) with specifics about what we did, traffic, etc.
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Thanks. The more specifics the better. I have the resources and motivation to pursue strategies that have long-term value. I already get hundreds of thousands of visitors each year to my site. The primary issue I am attempting to address, is how to keep them coming back. If there is a particular strategy that works, I definitely would like to investigate it.
I will try to find the references that you referred to.
Thanks again for your help,
Rich -
Well, keeping them coming back, I believe, has more to do with knowing your audience and creating the fresh content that KEEPS them coming back... how you respond to their comments, whether there's a sense of community or controversy on the blog... Retention is largely content-driven.
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Leveraging social media is getting them in the door. Your content is what keeps them there.
Building up social media profiles is a great way to build traffic and really push stuff. If you invest half an hour to an hour a day you can build accounts and really control traffic for yourself and others. -
Totally agree. So, was there a follow-up plan to keep people coming back? Was it successful? Is it possible to retain visitors such as these, and what is the best way to do it? Was it worth the investment?
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So, was there a follow-up plan to keep people coming back?
1- continually produce good content
2- if you have a lot of social media traffic one day and gain subscribers you need to follow it up with an equally strong post.
3- make it easy for people to subscribe to your content
4- when you are on these social media sites tie everything together, you are building a brand that is tied to your blog
Was it successful?
Social networking and social media is what I have used to build my blog audience. Without a doubt it has been successful. Whenever you do well with social media you gain readers, back links, and traffic...
Is it possible to retain visitors such as these, and what is the best way to do it?
It is going to fluctuate. I made the front page of Digg last week and gained over 300 subscribers and I lost a lot of them by announcing a new theme to my blog and not posting anything worth reading for four days. I didn't follow up with a good post. However I still have a lot of new readers that I gained from it.
If you are continually participating you can continue to build on your audience. It takes effort but I firmly believe it is clearly worth it.
Also these people are active on social media so they will vote for posts that they like of mine. -
Thanks a lot for the info. Can you point me to your site/blog in question? Thanks.
Rich -
pointlessbanter.net
I also used it on buzznetworker.com when i was writing it and got that into the top 200K on alexa.com
Now I use these techniques for companies I work for and on the side for small businesses. -
Thanks a lot for the link.
I looked at the Alexa graph. I know that Alexa can be far from reality. Does the Alexa trends accurately reflect your actual website statistics? What I am looking for is an definitive upward trend, which would indicate visitor retention. Are you considering using Quantcast? I find it more accurate, since it measures actual visitors, assuming the visitors have javascript turned on.
Thanks for the info.
Rich -
Alexa isn't all that accurate but let me just say that when I moved off of myspace last year I was at like 20K page views a month. I have built and I am over the 100K mark per month now.
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Thanks for the additional info. Can you translate that into visitor count? BTW, kewl blog. I can see why it might become popular.
Rich -
My visitors have grown with my page views. The charts in my stats programs mirror the same increases (except obviously page views is higher up on the chart)
and thanks for the kind words about my blog -
Thanks.
Rich -
Same here. I quit those sites long ago. The ones at the top control it. If you didn't get in the chain when the site first opened, you are at the bottom of the ladder. It is almost impossible to be at the top now. -
Yes. For all the energy I was putting into it, I felt it wasn't yielding me anything. But if I can figure out a way to leverage these kind of sites, and get the kind of visitors that I need in order to build value into my site, I certainly will pursue it.
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You don't need to be at the top of the chain. Who gives a crap if you are a top digger. You need to know how to leverage them. It is totally different.
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Yes, I agree. Leveraging is the key. But also, I am concerned about building value, since I am attempting to monetize my site. So, I have to be concerned with many dimensions, beyond getting visitors. Retention, age group, nature of content, ability to monetize, etc. As highly visited as the social bookmarking sites are, it is not clear whether they are building value. Even MySpace and Facebook are facing challenges in monetizing their base - since their base rarely is interested in ads, products, and other sources of income. Building a business around a website is a very tricky business - but clever ideas certainly help.
Cya around,
Rich -
kevin's hit nail on the head
it's all about content -
Retention is pointless to talk about if you don't have people going there.
You can have the greatest band in the world but if you don't play a few songs out of your garage nobody is going to discover you. I am not trying to sell you on social media and how to use it. Frankly I don't care if you do or not.
Besides on a personal level I use it professionally at my place of employment as well on a consulting basis. If you know how to target people and use the right networks you can accomplish a lot.
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I have done well with reddit lately.
I make sure to submit plenty of other content besides my own which is important (like you said)-
thx, will do
i like to hear good news stories
so will perservere
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I had a little traffic the other day from it due to Robert's experiment. I'm happy with whatever I get, though.
Put a comment for you on Reddit for your post. I will now forever be looking suspiciously at my socks. -
thx
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I did really well with Reddit at first, but I submitted too many posts/articles from a small group of sources (not all my own, but not a large enough pool, apparently) and got blacklisted pretty quickly.
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I think I have been blacklisted on there as well... damn it
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jdh88
Ok posted comments on those that I could add to and upped your arrows.
Earthling
I submitted yours OK
Here is one of mine
wendysreel.com/2008/05/28/static-cling-is-a-wonderful-thing/
Feel free to pop my page as well to leave a comment-
Hi Wendy thanks Will do yours
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Must agree w/ the few of you on here... I don't see much success w/ Reddit at all... not sure what I'm doing wrong. -
Jeff
I think we are all on the learning curve here.
My thoughts are that to increase Karma you need to submit other peoples articles, add friends, comment on their submissions and up their arrows.
We in turn will do the same thing.
If I am wrong someone feel free to correct me
Wendy-
Hi Wendy,
I think it depends upon what goals we individually have. My primary goals are to increase traffic and retain visitors. Does this strategy really work? Can someone show me an example, on this forum, so that I can better understand the process? Thanks.
Rich
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He there JDh888,
I just added you as a mate, if you would like to add me back or if anyone would like to add me as a friend my profile url is
www.reddit.com/user/timonweller/-
will do
thx
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Rich
I agree with you. It tuly depends on goals.
I think we are looking to increase traffic and have returning visitors.
Not sure even how to go about showing you as I am still struggling with that myself.
To me it is all trial and error Unless of course someone has a real strategy for getting and keeping traffic.
Tim
Added you to my friends list
My username is wenfri
Go figure huh LOL
wEndy-
thx for comment
and i befriended you
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I think I may have to go back and give Reddit another try! -
Hi Jdh888,
I've been on reddit 4 days and now I have a Karma of 2. I don't know if that's good or not but it's moving in the right direction
How do I vote on urls listed on reddit? I haven't figure this out.
Can you vote for this one: "Ace of Base to U2 on New Music Video Site - Best Music Video Flash Player"
www.vnertia.com/mnap
I just posted yours.
Also, should I vote (press up arrow on my own posts)? I notice it goes from 1 to 0 when I did - so I stopped.) -
Here is new one if any one likes humour (humor)
wendysreel.com/2008/05/29/pocket-taser-stun-gun/
Chaas I voted on yours yesterday
Wendy -
How do you vote? When I see urls/stories the up / down arrow are grayed out.
Thanks,
Chas -
Just go ahead and click on them anyway It works for me
You musta been a bad boy Karma is back down to one. At least from my friends list it is.
Have you noticed that they make you wait 6 minutes in between comments. Pain in the what not -
OK
I had been staying away from this one just because of time issues, but you guys have got my curiousity up.
I added you jdh88 and timonweller as friends, feel free to add me back if you like.
Thanks,
nibbler -
I am assuming it is the same username nibbler??
Forget it I have you added
Mine is wenfri
reddit.com/user/wenfri/ -
Okay - I'll give that a try. Don't have a clue what I'm doing
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Ok stupid question of the day
Is it better to submit our own articles or should be visiting other poeples blogs and submitting theirs??
Where do we go from here. I see TT (thriftromanatic) is up Karma2
If someone would be so kind as to let us know what we are suppose to be doing-
I don't know a lot about Reddit because I got blacklisted before I could experiment much, but the way that happened was that I submitted a bunch of stories (maybe a couple of dozen, not hundreds) from a small group of sites (about 6)--they weren't even all mine. So I would definitely say the more variety, the more credibility.
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Thanks helps somewhat
Submitted this from earthling "We All Fail in Love Sometimes"
Working on submitting
"Save the world (and buy my car)" from JD
Is there a way to submitt articles to a specific topic say humour or realtions or art ?? -
I'm lost on reddit.
I posted several articles and my Karma went to 2. Then I voted (up arrowed) my own articles and all the points went the 0 and my karma dropped to 1.
I have no idea if you should vote on your own articles or not, but it didn't seem to help my karma :).-
It needs to be a mix of other folks' stuff and your stuff, I think. I've gotten 3 karma so far, but they seem to have liked one of my own articles a bit, and then the other peoples' articles I'd posted did pretty well.
I'm trying to be really picky about the stuff I post there. More than on StumbleUpon or other media. I understand they ban fairly easily.
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Gosh, all this is French to me. I started with Reddit and submitted most of my personal blogs and got a huge jump in traffic. Suddenly after 2 days, my new submissions did not appear and when I clicked new - it was not there. Then I started to google about karma and reddit... bah... still learning I guess.
David -
You gain karma on reddit when articles that you have submitted get a lot of upvotes. They have to be natural, though, or at least look like it--sending the voting link to a bunch of your friends won't work.
I disagree that you can't generate hits from reddit with low karma, but I do find that karma is one aspect that seems to influence how much traffic you get from a given submission.
If you submit too many articles/posts from the same few sites, they'll stop showing up and traffic will stop--you aren't notified when this happens, your submissions just don't appear on the "new" page anymore.
You can also increase hits to your submissions by commenting on other people's submissions--good comments make people click on your user name, which lets them see everything you've submitted. -
I get referral traffic from reddit. As long as you keep on updating and sharing your stories to your contacts.
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