Welcome to The Newsletter Operator.

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In today’s email:

• How to get subscribers from Reddit (for free)

• The latest newsletter industry news

• And much more…

Let’s get into it.

Deep Dive

How To Get Newsletter Subscribers From Reddit (For Free)

Today’s deep dive is a guest post from Eric Lam.

Eric has added almost 5,000 subscribers to his newsletter organically from Reddit.

Here’s how:

Eric will take over writing from here…

I mainly use 2 strategies for driving traffic from Reddit.

The first is a commenting strategy, and the second is a posting strategy.

To set the foundation for how to be most effective, it’s important to note that Reddit is a community platform where people engage and discuss topics.

As a result, you cannot be a shill.

If you are caught even remotely shilling on Reddit you will get flagged.

Therefore I aim to provide substantial value to be able to drive traffic to my newsletter.

When done effectively you can easily drive 100+ free subscribers in one day.

I have grown my newsletter to over 5,500 subscribers over the last few months exclusively utilizing this Reddit growth strategy.

I just launched a second newsletter for fun last weekend that got 200 subscribers in 24 hours utilizing it.

Let’s get into how it works…

Strategy 1: Commenting

This is the best strategy on Reddit.

People underestimate it because it’s not obvious but it provides by far the best conversion rate out of any strategy I've ever tried.

Here’s how it works:

Look for a post in which someone is asking for help, and then you offer detailed advice while plugging your newsletter as a resource.

Here’s an example…

In this example, I wrote a comment in response to the top comment on this post.

The post was trending and #1 in the r/entrepreneur subreddit. I decided to latch on to the momentum and attention the post was getting by engaging in the conversation.

I saw that the top comment was something that I could relevantly respond to with my own take, and added to the conversation with immense detail.

I then plugged my newsletter at the end of the post in a non-shill way. Basically, as if I was recommending it to a friend, extremely passively.

My comment became the top upvoted comment that responded to the top upvoted comment (basically highly visible), and I got over 100 newsletter signups from this.

Piggybacking on the traction another post is getting is underrated and frankly, not many people are doing it in a thoughtful way.

Note from Matt McGarry:

Here’s another comment example from Eric I loved…

In this comment, Eric compares his product (free newsletter) to a competitor (paid subscription) and links to both.

It makes Eric’s newsletter look like an obvious choice. But it’s done in a way that doesn’t sound like a promotion.

Back to Eric:

On Reddit, you’re looking to optimize for visibility.

When people are reading a post on Reddit, they immediately scroll to the comments section after and typically will read 2 or 3.

By responding to the top comment you de-risk your time investment by latching onto the top post and appearing instantly for people to see.

I believe this is the best way to get subscribers on Reddit.

My rule of thumb is that your comment should be at least 100 words and you can only plug your newsletter once.

Strategy 2: Posting

This is the second best way to get traffic from Reddit.

It’s relatively easy but the reward isn’t as great because people are mainly interested in the story, they glance over the plug.

Here’s an example…

This is a post that I made on Reddit that went #1.

I can go #1 around 33% of the time and from my experience, the ROI is decent but not amazing.

For a #1 post in a subreddit like this, you can expect 50+ newsletter signups in 12-24 hours.

For the amount of effort it takes, and the uncertainty around the post getting traction, I prefer commenting.

But posting still works and it’s a way to diversify your acquisition strategy.

When crafting a post like this I input the article into ChatGPT-4 and ask:

“What happened, explain to me like I’m in 10th grade”

Usually from there, I will swap out some words to make the summary more authentic. Then I will subsequently ask ChatGPT:

• “What happened?”

• “What are the implications?”

• “What should we takeaway from this?”

Each of these responses will be its own section in the article.

Then I'll plug the newsletter as I did in the hyperlink in the screenshot above (where it says “right here”).

Basically, the idea is to cover the who, what, when, where, why, and how in the article so that you have all the bases covered and a conversation will start in the comments section.

Also, I'll look to include a captivating, conversational, practical title that will make people take notice and want to click the post.

Getting post clicks and comments helps the algorithm push your post to more people so it’s important to optimize for those outcomes.

Back to Matt McGarry:

Hope this helps!

Check out Eric's Twitter and newsletter on trending startup ideas.