Reddit is the self-styled “front page of the internet”. But is it a good idea to promote your Fiverr gig on Reddit? Is it even possible when the odds, mods, and admin are all dead-set against anything showing the smallest bit of promotional ankle?
Reddit is a huge site that’s perfectly set up for promoting your services and products to people in specific niches. Or it would be, if Reddit didn’t loathe Fiverr, actively hate on anything promotional, and generally make it hard to be a marketer.
Even the ads aren’t effective!
Still, people do have success promoting their services on Reddit. You can follow in their footsteps – but only if you know why Reddit is like it is, where to post promotional content, and how to deal with the platform’s overall anti-commercial edge.
That’s exactly what I’m going to show you in this article. Full disclousure: I’m one of the moderators of r/Fiverr. It’s a non-commercial subreddit, which means you cannot share your gig or Fiverr profile on there.
It’s because of the spam problem – not you. We’ll get to that later, and I’ll help you to find subreddits where you can promote your Fiverr gig without Reddit moderators ruining your day.
Why You Should Promote Your Fiverr Gig on Reddit
If you have used Google lately, you know that its search results are terrible, giving way too many top positions to big websites at the expense of smaller domains which often have more detailed information.
Reddit, like Quora, is a site that currently dominates the search results. Even before this, you might have been one of the millions who tacked “reddit” onto the end of a search query to avoid lazy SEO and AI articles that never answer the question.
In February 2023, Google made a $60m deal with Reddit. The deal means that Google will use Reddit’s posts to train its AI models. Since then, people have noticed that Google snippets are increasingly going to Reddit posts, even if the content isn’t that good – or just completely wrong. In other words, Reddit’s power is growing in search results.
Reddit has subreddits (communities) of people for just about every niche you can think of. It’s very easy to create an account and get to work. If that wasn’t enough reason to promote your Fiverr gig on Reddit, try trust: 82% of gen Z trust service or product reviews that they find on the platform, maing Reddit is a great place to promote your services.
There’s just a few problems that make Reddit one of the worst social media networks to promote on. That’s not a bad thing: if you can hack it, it can be very rewarding. Otherwise, if you’re looking for easy promo, go elsewhere (or decide if AI is a good option).
Don’t Promote Your Gig on the Fiverr Subreddits
Reddit has two main Fiverr subreddits, r/Fiverr and r/FiverrGigs.
These may seem like good places to promote your gig, but they are not, for a combination of reasons:
- r/Fiverr permanently bans people who link their gig as spammers
- r/FiverrGigs is essentially a directory of gigs with no real interaction
- Reddit (the site) shadowbans all links to Fiverr gigs across the site
- Redditors (site users) strongly dislike being “advertised to”
That’s a very discouraging set of facts, isn’t it?
The two main Fiverr subreddits are mostly populated with sellers (and a good resource if you have issues with Fiverr), but what about the rest of the site?
You’ll need to be careful and provide a lot of value – ideally with a high karma account. A December 2023 Transparency Report from Reddit revealed that a staggering 67.7% of all content removal on Reddit is related to spam. 72.2% of removals were done by AutoModerator (a moderation bot). That means the majority of “spam content” on Reddit may never be seen – and that includes posts wrongly flagged as spam.
I can vouch for this – AutoModerator does most of the moderation on r/Fiverr, with the humans only coming in to clean up afterwards. If your post was removed from r/Fiverr, 9 times out of 10, AutoModerator caught it.
Create a Dedicated Account to Promote Gigs
Even if you already have an account, start a new one. Your username should match your Fiverr profile username. If that username is taken, then try adding your service at the end. For example: “benjamesonlogos”. No need to get complicated. You should also make sure that your bio makes good use of keywords and links to your website and Fiverr profile.
Don’t use ones of Reddit’s suggested usernames, since these are abused by spammers and redditors will assume you’re a spammer. Fiverr has a bad reputation on Reddit, so keep the platform on your bio only (or just skip it) You’ll need a website to market effectively on many social media platforms and having a professional website is good practice anyway!
The Best Way to Boost Your Karma on Reddit
If you’re starting with a new account, you’ll have no karma. Your karma on Reddit acts as your reputation, which you collect with upvotes and lose with downvotes. This karma would not matter at all, except that many subreddits have minimum karma requirements, often with account age minimums. On r/Fiverr, you must have 10 karma and an account that is at least 10 days old.
This is definitely restrictive. It’s intended to stop spammers, but it does make life difficult for people with new accounts who just want to ask a question. There are a few ways to increase karma fast:
- Karmawhoring: Submit posts and comments that are quick, easy, and fast to create and appeal to everyone. Most redditors (and some mods) look down on “karmawhores”
- Begging for karma: Some subreddits, like r/FreeKarma4U, let you beg for karma and essentially create karma-swapping posts where everyone upvotes each other
- Buying karma: Purchase an aged Reddit account with karma pre-loaded, or buy upvotes. This is a violation of Reddit’s Terms of Service
- Posting good content: Creating good content and making thoughtful, interesting, and useful comments is the best way to gain karma – and the legit way
Redditors can be very analytical and go through your post history to detect inconsistencies. It’s really just best to start a new account and do things the “correct” way to avoid a neckbeard sleuth exposing your darkest secret: that you’re marketing on a huge internet website for financial gain! ?
To increase your karma naturally, just join some subreddits with no karma requirements and start posting. Focus on subreddits related to your industry and niche, since you want to become a known person – someone that people recognize and trust.
Keep Your Account On-Topic
As someone who uses Reddit every day and sees a lot of spam, I’ve noticed that many people use one Reddit account for everything. I don’t have a problem with that – but I do wonder about people who are promoting their business on the same account that they are typing very thirsty comments on porn subreddits. Worse, sharing very personal images, often with bad lighting and angles designed to make things look “bigger”.
Keep your business account focused on business! If you enjoy porn, political arguments, or religious debate, keep it on another account. The last thing you want is a redditor noticing that you love barely-legal hentai when you’re trying to show the world what a great programmer you are.
They will notice.
You should also delete any karmawhoring, as moderators and regular redditors notice this and will use this against you. One final thing: don’t get sucked into arguments. I’m terrible at this, but it’s really not worth it. It doesn’t matter how awesome your zinger of a snapback is, you’re still stuck in an internet argument. That’s never a good look for a professional.
The Best Way to Promote Your Gig On Reddit
Now you have a high-karma, respectable account loaded with insightful comments in relevant subreddits, you’re ready to go! What now?
Not much. Just keep doing that.
Reddit has plenty of hiring subreddits. These are perfect for pitching your services, not so much your Fiverr gig. A good place to start is r/ForHire, a general subreddit where you can pitch your services and find potential leads. There are many more subreddits for specific services, like r/HireAWriter.
These can be great places to promote your services, but not so much your Fiverr gig (remember, Reddit shadowbans Fiverr links!). The quality of jobs can vary, but it’s worth keeping an eye on these subs just in case.
Outside of these specific subreddits where promotion is welcomed and actively rewarded, you should avoid being promotional unless it is heavily disguised with some value-loaded content, such as a case study on how your X affected Y. Some subreddits are more open to marketing, so try to find these in your industry or niche and become a go-to person in them.
One thing to remember as you slog through this is that Reddit gets great search positions on Google, which means buyers will see your content, even if you’re not actually promoting it. When you’re thinking of content, think in terms of keywords and buyer problems.
One of the reasons you’re trying not to annoy other redditors is a simple one: if a potential buyer sees your Reddit post on Google and comes to read it, you don’t want the comments to be full of angry redditors destroying everything you wrote!
Inevitably, someone will find your promotional post to be too promotional for them. They may complain about it. If you did a good job, nobody else will care and may even tell them to simmer down. So, always focus on value and make the promotional stuff more of a casual afterthought.
Everyone knows it isn’t, but value is value.
Automating Reddit Promotions
One tool that has helps people to promote on Reddit is ReplyGuy. This is an AI tool that monitors social media for mentions of your brand (or keywords) and automatically replies for you. It’s an easy way to find people who need help and quickly create the useful content that social media loves to eat up.
You can start with 2 replies a month for free to see if ReplyGuy works for you. This is a new AI that also helps out with Twitter (X) and has plans to grow to other social networks. The best thing about this tool is that it writes naturally – there’s no “top notch” content here.
So, this is another option. Just be warned that Reddit considers this type of content – automated AI for promotion – to be the same as spam or content manipulation.
This is an easy way to inject yourself into conversations where you can be useful, so the best way to use this tool is with your regular posting strategy; otherwise, you’ll be detected simply because of your posting patterns.
I recommend keeping your promotional efforts to just 20% of your overall posts to avoid this, whether you use AI to help you or not.
Use Reddit AMAs to Promote Your Gig (Subtly)
Of all the promotional strategies on Reddit, the most effective one is an AMA (Ask Me Anything) or an AMAA (Ask Me Almost Anything). In these posts, you typically share your expertise and some interesting facts – then wait for the questions to come in.
Done right, AMAs can be amazingly effective for marketing. Done wrong? Well, just ask Woody Harrelson about Rampart. That was 12 years ago – and redditors still make fun of it.
It’s a tough crowd. r/IAmA is the main AMA subreddit, but there are many more. A lot of subreddits also allow you to make them – check with the mods first, especially if you want to promote your gig or services during the AMA.
You can use your Fiverr gig link on Reddit in your AMA, but only if a moderator approves it. This is because Reddit has a shadowban on all all posts with Fiverr links. Only moderators can approve posts. I still recommend linking to your website then your Fiverr gig, as redditors tend to dismiss Fiverr.
Skip Reddit Ads
Reddit ads are basically sponsored posts. They look like normal posts, except they are marked as an ad. The comments are almost always turned off, since leaving them on invites redditors to spam the post with irrelevant and irreverent content.
Redditors can also abuse your campaign with fake clicks. While it’s possible to make good use of Reddit ads by targeting small subreddits with targeted ads that actually solve their issues, I overall don’t recommend Reddit Ads as a good way to promote your Fiverr gigs – you’re better off using Meta (Facebook and Instagram) instead.
It’s Challenging to Promote Your Fiverr Gig on Reddit
Of all the social media networks I’ve discussed so far, this is probably the worst for promoting Fiverr gigs. If you can hack the challenges, then you can get great results. Otherwise:
- Reddit admin hates Fiverr links
- Reddit mods hate Fiverr links
- Redditors hate Fiverr links
Reddit, in general, hates promotion, which means you will need to find a trojan horse that can slip your promotion past the many rules and people who are actively guarding against promotion – meanwhile, the subreddits that support promotion are effectively spam subreddits.
All you can really do is showcase your expertise and become a regular in subreddits so that when you do subtly promote your gig, it isn’t instantly met with disapproval. Even then, moderators may still permanently ban you, as they do on Reddit.
If you’re prepared to focus on a strategy that focuses on natural conversation and almost no promotion outside of AMAs, then Reddit could be the right choice for you. You can also try using ReplyGuy to set Reddit on autopilot so you can make this a more passive form of Fiverr gig promotion.
Otherwise, there are other platforms which are a lot more welcoming and rewarding. And remember – don’t promote your gig on r/Fiverr! Go to r/FiverrGigs instead, although don’t expect great results. Effective gig promotion is about targeting your audience!
