Reddit can genuinely drive views to a YouTube video, but it works differently from every other social platform — and the default approach (post your link, hope for the best) reliably fails and often gets accounts banned. Here’s what actually works.
Understand What Reddit Is Hostile To
Reddit communities are built around discussion, not promotion, and they’re unusually good at spotting accounts that show up only to drop links. Most subreddits have explicit self-promotion rules — commonly a 1:9 ratio (one self-promotional post per nine genuine contributions), minimum account age, or minimum karma thresholds. Some ban links to your own content entirely.
Posting is free, incidentally — you may see claims otherwise, but there’s no charge for a normal Reddit post.
Find Genuinely Relevant Subreddits
A niche subreddit about your specific topic will always outperform a large general “videos” subreddit. A woodworking tutorial does better in a woodworking community of 40,000 people than in a 20-million-member catch-all, because the audience actually cares.
Read each subreddit’s rules in the sidebar before posting. This takes two minutes and prevents most removals.
Participate Before You Promote
This is the part most people skip, and it’s the part that matters. Comment genuinely in a community for a while before posting your own content. An account with real history and karma gets a very different reception than a fresh one with a link.
Frame It Honestly
Reddit’s culture rewards transparency about self-promotion over attempts to disguise it. “I made this and here’s what I learned” performs better than pretending to be a neutral third party sharing something interesting. Users routinely check post histories, and being caught pretending is far worse than simply saying you made it.
Better: Answer Questions Instead
Often the highest-value approach isn’t posting your video at all — it’s finding questions in your niche and writing a genuinely useful answer, mentioning your video only where it directly helps. This builds standing in the community and drives more qualified traffic than a link post.
What Gets You Banned
- Posting the same link across many subreddits — this reads as spam and can trigger a site-wide ban, not just a removal.
- Paying for upvotes — violates Reddit’s terms, and vote manipulation is detected more reliably than people expect.
- Using multiple accounts to upvote your own posts.
- Ignoring subreddit rules repeatedly after removals.
Set Realistic Expectations
Reddit traffic spikes fast when a post lands and drops just as fast. It’s a burst, not a growth engine — and those viewers often don’t subscribe, since they came for one specific thing. Treat it as one channel among several rather than a strategy in itself.
FAQ
Does it cost money to post on Reddit?
No, posting on Reddit is free.
Can I post my video to several subreddits at once?
No. Posting the same link across multiple subreddits reads as spam and can trigger a site-wide ban.
Should I say the video is mine?
Yes. Reddit rewards transparency — saying you made it performs better than posing as a neutral sharer, and users check post histories.
What kind of traffic should I expect?
A sharp spike that drops fast, with low subscriber conversion — useful as one channel among several, not a growth strategy on its own.