Guide to selling courses online using Reddit

If you are looking to boost your revenues as an online tutor, you should consider selling courses online using Reddit. It is the world’s most popular content aggregator platform. For people who know how to use it right, it can be the most valuable source of information when compared to other sources like Quora and the more popular social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Further Reading: How to sell courses using Facebook

There are topic-specific subreddits where you can ask questions or post your opinions for other users to comment on. For example, r/marketing is a great subreddit (a community within Reddit where people talk about a specific topic) for anyone looking to clear any doubts regarding marketing. 

For online educators, this is a great platform to market and sell their courses to targeted audiences. Let us now understand the different techniques of selling courses online using Reddit.

How Reddit works  

Redditors share links, images, videos, gifs, and text-only posts for discussion with others on the platform. Users post relevant questions and opinions on subreddits hoping to receive feedback or start conversations. Topics can be something as casual as gaming to something as serious as tax preparation, and there will be subreddits for almost any general topic that you can think of. 

In the context of online courses, you can find subreddits like r/elearning. Or for example, if you teach coding, you can explore subreddits like r/coding and r/programming. These subreddits are governed by users called moderators (or mods) who enforce specific rules. 

Some subreddits don’t allow posting some kind of content like videos or links. Follow these rules to have a good experience on Reddit. 

A high level of anonymity exists in Reddit because it has an easy signup process that does not even require users to link their email ids. There are around 50 subreddits that make up the front page of Reddit, and this is what a user who hasn’t logged in sees when they land on the home page. 

The popularity of posts and their comments are determined by upvote and downvote arrows that appear next to them. As a rule of thumb, you can only use the downvote when content is very irrelevant, abusive, or contributes nothing to an ongoing discussion. 

Types of Reddit content 

You can find any kind of digital content on Reddit. Marketing and ultimately selling courses online using Reddit is not an easy task without the right type of content. The following are the content types that get the most engagement. Bear in mind that original content is what gets the most recognition regardless of the format. 

• GIFs: Redditors love GIFs because they are bite-sized versions of videos. They can include sports, events, movie scenes, animations, animals, etc. 
• Video: Do not link out to an external online video platform like YouTube or Vimeo as it will lead to low engagement. A simple hack is to create GIFs out of the most important parts of the video and then provide a link to the video in the comments. 
• Image: The best thing about images is that they are mobile-friendly and require little attention for initial engagement. 
• Text: Many subreddits thrive entirely on text posts because many Redditors love in-depth content and thought-provoking discussions. 
• Blogs: Redditors don’t generally like external blogs, but you can be exempted if you are someone who’s very active in the subreddit where you plan to share a blog. You should make sure that the blog content is up to date and relevant.   
• AMAs: AMA stands for “ask me anything,” and they basically mean you can ask a person any question they want. Users who have a unique story to tell or have a huge following benefit from this the most. 

Related post: How to organize online courses?

How to create a brand presence for your course on Reddit 

To market and sell your courses on Reddit to the right people, follow the below roadmap. 

Create an account 

First of all, create a Reddit account by choosing a username that includes your brand keywords or personal name. If possible, try to give it the name of an actual person associated with your institute or course because it will look more authentic. 

Build your feed

Do thorough research to find and join all subreddits that are relevant to your field. You can start with the homepage and then uncover smaller, more niche subreddits. Look at recommended communities within a subreddit sidebar and do a Google search for “Reddit + [Keywords]. 

Listen and Lurk

Check your Reddit feed daily and participate in discussions. Start upvoting and commenting wherever you can contribute. This will help you get a sense of what kind of content your target audience finds engaging. 

Share original content

Create content exclusively for your target audience but don’t get upset if it doesn’t get a lot of attention. You’ll be lucky if you get a few upvotes and a few positive comments.

Be consistent

Consistency is essential if you want to achieve your goals on Reddit. Continue being active on relevant subreddits and be a valuable contributor to the community. 

How to engage and market on Reddit 

Redditors are very protective of the communities they have built and will fiercely come down on any brand or individual who they think is trying to hijack a subreddit for their own benefit. Most marketers get it wrong and treat post on Reddit like they would do on Craigslist. Posting without giving due attention to your audience’s values and priorities will backfire because Redditors have come together on a subreddit for a specific reason. For example, you cannot go on a subreddit about school education and start asking questions or giving opinions about a master’s degree. 

The following are the best practices for marketing on Reddit: 

• Become a member: Before you start marketing your course on Reddit, you need to build enough reputation for your account. This is because people don’t usually trust a brand’s or individual’s account with very little activity history. 
• Give more than you take: Most communities on Reddit ask that you spend 80% of the time contributing and only 20% of the time on self-promotion. This can vary depending on the content and your target audience, but you should always give more than what you take. 
• Post original content and engage genuinely: if you think repurposing your Facebook posts on Reddit is the path to success, you could not be more wrong. Redditors appreciate, and award thought-provoking original content that actually contributes to the community.  
• Don’t even think about fake accounts: Some marketers on Quora have the habit of asking a question using one account and then using another account to answer the same question. This practice may work on Quora but not on Reddit because once you get caught, there may be no way to get back your reputation. 

These norms are universal. But keep in mind that each target community has a culture of its own. Become a member first and then take a sincere interest in the community you seek to engage. This will help you pick up subreddit’s traditions and mannerisms and what type of content they’re interested in. 

Related post: How to create high value courses?

How Learnyst can help you sell your course 

Now that you have understood the techniques for selling courses online using Reddit, club it with Learnyst that can help you easily market your course in a digital-first world. Firstly, we can create a mobile-friendly custom website for you as well as a mobile application. Your website will be SEO optimized so that it can easily be found on search engines like Google. If you want more outbound marketing, Learnyst can easily integrate with third party marketing tools like MailChimp. 

To find out more, reach out to us!