Hello, fellow GrowGetters! How are you doing?

I am not too good, unfortunately. Why?

Because my last growth experiment failed so badly, I actually didn't want to talk about it. BUT, it wouldn't be transparent if I didn't share the failures as well, so here you go (if you must):

Reddit. The place where the internet originates.

Reddit vs. Reality

Seriously, people on Reddit are so cool - it hurts. And they freakin hate newsletters & newsletter creators - how do I know? We ran this experiment before, and the results were underwhelming, to say the least. But I thought there must be a better way and went on an endeavor to get massacred...

So, why is Reddit so attractive? Well, it is the sixth most popular website in the US with 330m monthly active users, and you might actually have a chance to get exposure.

How? If enough people upvote your post, you could end up on the front page of a subreddit for eternity. That was the goal. How do you (in theory) get there?

Karma is a bitch

As you might have heard, you need karma points for people to take you seriously. You get karma by posting, commenting, and liking. As I used Reddit before, I already had a few Karma points. But I wanted more. So I went out to publish a "viral" post...

Look at your brother go

I posted about five different posts in different subreddits that were close to my niche. I made sure to post stuff that had nothing to do with my newsletter but could get great interaction. So there you have it, side hustles for your teenage kids are something people are really interested in. And I gathered around 100 Karma points.

So with my full arsenal of 127 Karma points, I was ready to get 1,000s of new subscribers.

Find subreddits in your niche.

First, you need to find the relevant subreddits. Unfortunately, Reddit is not suuper helpful for finding all the relevant subreddits. So, your friend found a power tool: anvaka. Seriously, it's magic. You type in the relevant subreddit, and it shows you all related subreddits. The relationship is determined by the metric "users who posted to this subreddit also post to...". Which makes sense.

Be active on relevant subreddits.

I tried to be as active and helpful as possible on these subreddits in the last few weeks. And I actually collected some new subscribers through this, so I was sure it would go crazy when I posted about GrowGetter.

The post

I looked up the most popular posts in the specific subreddit and tried to go a similar route; this is what I saw:

LinkedIn Growth tactics

And this is what I created:

Greatest Reddit post ever - so I thought.

Apparently, it is best to post at 9 a.m. Central time, so I made sure to post every day in a different subreddit similar to this subreddit's top post about my newsletter.

It bombed. Either I got no reaction at all, or whole subreddits got ready to lynch me...

Let's say the sidehustle fellas are not my biggest supporters?!

After a while, I was straight-up blocked from most subreddits interesting to me.

Results?

I think Redditors just really hate newsletters. GrowGetters is just too close to the standard newsletter snake's oil stuff. However, If you have an interesting niche and there are active subreddits within that niche, I think it's worth a shot. Let me know if you try it!

Where do I go from here? I think it might be interesting to advertise on Reddit?! Have you had any experience with this? Please let me know!

Next up: REFERRALS

After Reddit tore me a new one, I am turning to you my trusted and loved subscribers:

Step 1: Click "Share" or copy your referral link below

Step 2: Share GrowGetters.

How? Here is one example:

Hey! Do you read GrowGetters? It’s my best resource for growth hacking -- they run weekly growth experiments, it only takes 5 minutes to read, and it sure as hell will help you for your next project. Sign up here; it’s free:

Step 3: Get rewards.

Seriously, this is gold:

Trends agreed to give away a year's membership (worth $299) to the person with the most referrals (current leader has 12 referrals - so there is a chance...)

What is Trends? Among other things:

• Trends is the best community currently out there, current members include Codie Sanchez (started GrowGetters, now runs a 150k+ newsletter), Gagan Byani (Founder Udemy) & Jack Smith (Founder Vungle)
• Online Lectures: For example, Ethan Brooks (last interview) made a killer lecture about monetizing newsletters
• Ideas: They discover new trends (hence the name) through data analysis each week and share it with you.

I will close the count after two weeks, so be sure to get busy. (There are great prizes for number 2 and 3 as well)

As always, let's keep growing!

All the best,

Alex