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How to promote your MVP on Reddit

You spend weeks or even months building your MVP. Thinking about how great your product is and all the features it has. One day, it's ready and you launch it.

Then.. nothing. No one knows about it. Reality sets in. You need to get people to try it out. But how?

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to promote your MVP on Reddit, with zero budget.

  1. Why Reddit
  2. Setup
  3. Choose a subreddit
  4. Read the rules carefully
  5. Meet the requirements
  6. Create a post (that gets noticed)
  7. Engage
  8. What to do when receiving hate
  9. Wrapping up

Why Reddit

Reddit is a great platform to get some initial traction and the first users for your product.

Reddit traffic over the years

For starters, it has a huge amount of traffic: around 1 billion unique visitors per month. It has become its own search engine, as people go on Reddit to get answers and recommendations.

Unlike other social media platforms, anyone can make a post and go viral. It doesn't require a large following.

Setup

Don't start posting with a fresh account. Ideally, you already have an older account with some karma.

If you don't, you'll have to do some preparation work. Here's how you can do it:

  • Upvote and downvote other people's posts
  • Comment on posts and engage with others on different subreddits

Don't make any self-promoting posts yet. This way, your account doesn't come off as spammy. Don't make people think you're only there to promote your product.

Now that you have some karma, let's move on to the next step.

Choose a subreddit

On Reddit, there is a subreddit for almost everything. Look around and find the ones that are most relevant to your product.

Alternatively, here's a list of some general subreddits to get you started:

Don't post to all of them in one go. Be smart about it and spread out your posts.

Read the rules carefully

Read the rules of the subreddit you want to post to. If you don't, there's a high chance your post will be removed and you will get permanently banned.

For example, r/entrepreneur requires min. 10 subreddit karma and r/InternetIsBeautiful doesn't allow products that have a sign-up.

Example of subreddit rules

Some subreddits don't allow any form of self-promotion. Skip them and move on to the next one.

Reddit is very sensitive in this regard, so double-check and make sure you don't break any rules.

Meet the requirements

Depending on the subreddit rules, you might have to change your approach before posting. I'll give two big subreddits as an example:

r/entrepreneur

Engage with other posts until you reach 10 karma on the subreddit. They don't allow posts that are purely self-promotional, so make sure you link to your product in a more subtle way. People that are interested will check it out anyway.

r/InternetIsBeautiful

Your product has a sign-up (probably). To avoid getting banned, add a query parameter to your URL (e.g. ?ref=internetisbeautiful) and hide the sign-up buttons and forms in the code.

Alternatively, you can create a free mini tool related to your product and post that. This is much better, but it takes significantly more time and effort.

Create a post (that gets noticed)

You don't want your post to get ignored, so spend some time on this step.

In the subreddit you want to post to, sort by Top > This month/This year/All time.

Sort by top

Study the most popular posts. Find common patterns and what works best. This will vary a lot for each subreddit. For example:

r/entrepreneur

Here, posts about entrepreneurship and your journey in general will be far more popular than a post about your product. Talk about what milestones you've achieved so far, how you got there, etc.

r/SideProject

On this subreddit, a quick video showing off your product performs the best. In the replies, write a bit about your product and attach a link.

You don't have to be creative or think outside the box. Figure out what the subreddit you're posting to stands for and what kind of people hang out in there.

Don't be lazy - write the post yourself and don't just use AI. It's too obvious and you will get downvoted into oblivion. The post should be authentic and personal, so please spend some time writing it.

Engage

People will start commenting on your post. If it really takes off, you'll start receiving DMs. Reply to everyone, but don't try to sell your product.

Have genuine conversations and if your product solves their pain point, it will naturally lead in that direction or they'll just buy it.

What to do when receiving hate

Reddit can be a wild place. There are plenty of great and supportive people, but also a lot of trolls.

No matter what you post, some people will find a way to insult you. This is especially true if your post goes viral. Don't take it to heart. They're just empty insults by people that have nothing better to do with their time.

On the other hand, listen to constructive criticism and apply it to better yourself and your product.

Wrapping up

If you've read this far, I hope you learned something new and useful. Apply these tips before you post on Reddit and I'm sure you will see some success.

Remember that it may take some trial and error. Stay patient, be genuine, and focus on building relationships rather than just promoting.

Good luck and happy posting!

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