Eleven accounts, 19 months, zero permanent bans. 31% of total site traffic and the best-converting source I have, by a distance.
The rules I do not break
- Nine useful comments for every link. Not three. Nine
- One subreddit per account for the first 90 days. Account age means nothing without topical history
- Never link in a top-level comment on a post that is not mine
- Read the modmail rules and then read the last 50 removed posts in the sub, which tells you the real rules
- If a mod messages you, reply like a person and do what they say immediately
What the traffic does
Reddit: 41,800 sessions/mo, 4.1% email signup, 2.2% purchase
Search: 96,000 sessions/mo, 1.1% email signup, 0.8% purchase
So a third of the traffic and nearly three times the conversion rate. People arriving from a comment have already decided you are credible.
What it costs
About 90 minutes a day of real commenting that cannot be delegated, because a VA writing comments gets spotted in a week. This is the whole catch.
What got me temporarily banned twice
Both times: linking too soon in a new sub because the post was perfectly on topic and I got greedy.
Reddit traffic. Mostly by being useful, occasionally by not being.