Direct Selling on Reddit | The Adult Content Creators Beginners Guide

Starting an Account on Reddit

Reddit is a forum based social-media-like platform that prides itself on community involvement and has a strong focus on anti-spam. As a promotional platform for adult content it provides ample opportunity, and ample road blocks. When it comes to selling on the platform, the roadblocks double, but so can the income opportunities when done right.

When on Reddit you will find plenty of different ‘social norms and standards’ that pretty much must be followed (or face the wrath of the trolls and redditors). Along with the platform social standards there are multiple other Reddit-specific details that a direct adult content seller must know of on platform. Lets get into it all!

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Account Set Up

• Secure Your Account
  • Connect and verify your email address immediately.
    • This does a couple things. Not only does it help protect your account, it also helps show Reddit itself that you are a actual user and not a bot.
  • Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to safeguard your account from hacking.
• Hide Your Post History
  • Turn off ‘Show Active Communities’ visibility so others can’t see the communities you’ve participated in.
    • This is especially important if you’re active in location-based subreddits, like those for your city or region.
• Review Privacy Settings
  • Go through Reddit’s privacy options and adjust them to ensure you’re not sharing unnecessary information.

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Profile set up

When creating your profile there are a few things that are important to know and a few things that are important to have set up.

• Your username and display name
• Profile picture
• Profile banner
• Bio
• Social links
• Pinned post

Username Tips

• Your username can NEVER be changed! Double and triple check it when making it!
• Try and keep it the same or similar to all your other platforms
• Never use any of your real information.
• You can also set a display name. This will be shown throughout reddit instead of your username. This name is able to be changed.
• Though your profile picture may be hidden or replaced with a spoiler image on posts or comments elsewhere on Reddit, your username will always show. Be sure it aligns with your brand.

Profile Picture Tips

• Keep it a 1×1 square aspect ratio. The image will be converted to a circle. Be sure to keep the focus of the image centered.
• Pro tip: If you export your profile image as a PNG with a transparent background, it will remain with no background on your profile when uploaded. Here is mine for example.

Profile Banner

• Your banner sits at the top of your profile and can help set the tone of your profile.
• It is important to know that this is a very wide very thin space. Recommended dimensions are 1920×384 px

Bio & Social Links

• Keep your bio concise yet engaging. Try and mention your niche or focus to attract your right demographic.
• Get your personality into your bio! Don’t make it all about selling. Reddit is primarily a community focused platform. The community needs to be able to have an introduction to you as a human. Not just as a seller.
• Your profile has a section to include social links. The order of your links are very important as on some devices or browsers only the first will show.
  • Best practices for this is to always put your main platform first OR your link hosting site OR if you have it, your own domain.
• When it comes to adding your social links there are some important notes to keep in mind.
  • Heavily think through all possibilities before placing your payment links in your profile.
    • If you have them that public you run the risk of a minor sending money to you via a platform you use in the process of sex work. Even if you find out and return that, that will forever be on your statements.
  • There are some links and domains that are banned on Reddit and when used will either be filtered by the spam filter (which we will get to later) or get you shadowbanned (we’ll chat on that too). Check the below resource, which is being constantly updated, for the ones we know of.

Links Known to be Removed by Reddit

Pinned Post

Having a post pinned to your profile is crucial! This is a space where you can provide details about your offerings while also giving users a feel for your style. The below resource will go in depth on everything your pinned post needs to include!

TLDR:

• Short introduction to you and your content creation
• Limits and terms that buyers must know prior to reaching out
• Your menus
• Your contact methods and links
• FAQ section

Importance of a Pinned Post in Direct Selling

💡 Pro Tip: Use a text based post and add in images and GIFs to help break up walls of text and maintain visual interest. Check out the resource below to see how to do that!

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The Reddit Know-How

Reddit is a tricky platform for many because it is often forgotten that it is NOT a social media platform. It is a forum based platform. On top of that it is a forum based platform that thrives on anonymity and a hatred for self promotion. With those in mind, the question usually is: How do I interact on this platform in a rule and etiquette conscious manner, and still promote?

Reddit Rules

You are responsible for knowing and following Reddit’s platform rules. Y’all, when you lose an account on Reddit it is so much more devastating and hard to build it back. You are not just losing an account and followers, but you now have to build you karma back from the beginning. Its easier to never give the admins an excuse to boot or shadowban you.

• Reddit’s core rules cover everything you can and cannot use the site for including the type of content you can and cannot publish.
• As we are planning to sell adult content we must know the rules on prohibited transactions.
  • Selling virtual sexual goods and services is not technically either of those. But physical sexual services are.
• Reddiquette is Reddit’s Etiquette policy as decided upon by both admins and users. It is very important to familiarize yourself with this set of policies as users themselves, the billions of users who flock to that platform, will interact with you depending on you following this set of policies.
• Reddit has guidelines for self-promotion. The general consensus is that it’s totally okay to be a redditor with a website, but not okay to be a website with a Reddit account. Generally meaning, it’s okay to use the platform as a user and sometimes promote your work, it is not okay to use the platform to solely promote your work. But let’s give those guidelines a deeper look.
• Reddit is strongly anti-spam. Knowing the rules regarding spam will help you plan your posting and platform behavior strategy. Not paying attention to these rules can land you caught in the spam filter. An AI based filter that will catch anything it deems spammy and take it down from the platform. Too many times getting caught in that spam filter will lead to a shadowban or worse,
• An important rule to keep in mind, and one that is a bit hidden is the 9:1 rule for links. That rule state that for every post or comment that includes a link taking users off Reddit that you make, you should have about 9 genuine interactions in the community that include no off-links.
  • As a direct content seller this can be tricky as your comment menu should include all your contact methods. The best way I have found to combat this is to link only to my pinned post which then contains all the important information.

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What is Karma & Do I Need it for Direct Selling on Reddit?

What is Karma?

Karma, or lovingly known as fake internet points, is a rough representation of your quality of interaction and contributions on the platform. Your karma changes when you participate in the community and you receive either up votes or down votes.

Upvoting or down voting is used as a way to either indicate to the algorithm that a post or comment is right for the subreddit or not, or to indicate the users like or dislike of it.

A commonly asked question about upvoting is why do the number of upvotes look off, or not reflect the accurate number of votes? This is due to a anti-bot and anti-spam measure called vote fuzzing. . Vote fuzzing is a process in which the visible count of votes on a post is slightly changed for every user, and every revisit to the post. This is a feature that was originally hush hush until confirmed by admins to fight spam bots.

Often we see folks wondering why they may have 500 up votes on a post, but didn’t receive 500 more karma. This is because Up votes and karma do not have a one-to-one relationship. Reddit karma is scaled. The more upvotes an engagement like post or comment receives, the less each up vote is worth in karma. We do not know the exact equation for this scaling. At very low upvote numbers, it may be one to one, but that does go down as the popularity and engagement increases on that post or comment.

Your upvote to Karma earned ratio has a cap as well. Regardless of how many thousands and tens of thousands of upvotes you get on a single piece of content or comment, you can only earn a max amount of karma around 5,000.

Why Do I Need to Care about Karma?

Many subreddits require minimum karma amounts in all of these or some of these different classifications before allowing you to post. This is very often where brand new users get stuck.

The best way to gain karma with a young account fast is to start commenting in SFW subreddits until you are ready to start posting. Leave meaningful, engaging comments that folks will want to interact with.

💡 Pro Tip: when you have a well established account it is always fun to do a bit of rage baiting. Better overall to not risk it with a young account that cannot burn spare karma points.

Want to know everything you might need to know about Karma? Check out this resource!

Karma Tips

• If you come across a subreddit that is built for building karma… RUN! DO NOT ENGAGE! These subreddits are called Karma Farms and karma farming is a prohibited activity.
  • Not only will Reddit penalize you for karma farming, so will moderators! Many subreddits have specific rules about karma farming and will ban you from the sub if you engage in it.
    • Even if you delete your posts, comments, etc, we can still see it from the moderation back end. Just never risk it!
• Start by engaging in communities you actually have interest in! If you care about what you are posting or commenting, it will come through and people will be more likely to engage!
• Lets talk L4L (like for like or up vote for up vote). DONT DO IT! That is considered vote manipulation by Reddit and could be penalized. There are other behaviors to avoid that Reddit will consider vote manipulation and they include:
  • Never ask for upvotes (even jokingly)
  • Don’t use multiple accounts to upvote your own content.
    • Don’t even allow your roommate or live in family/partners to upvote you! Reddit is know for mistaking this for the same account holder up voting.
  • Avoid any services promising to boost your posts
  • Don’t participate in upvote groups or circles
• You are NOT stuck to only NSFW subreddits! You absolutely can appropriately engage in SFW subs that DO NOT state no NSFW or creators or sellers in their rules.
  • If you are inappropriate or attempt NSFW promotion in SFW spaces, you will be banned from the sub, and could face action from the platform itself. Read through the following resource for why staying SFW in SFW spaces is so important.

The Importance of Staying SFW in SFW Subreddits

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Subreddits & Reddit Structure

Reddit Structure

Reddit can seem so hard to master for so many because they post and interact on it as if it were a social media site. It is not social media and never has been meant to be used that way. There is no real single feed or algorithm pushing your content to the general masses. Instead, Reddit is a forum based platform that is broken up into individual communities called subreddits.

Subreddits

Subreddits are individual communities all based around separate themes with their own rules and requirements for engagement. Each subreddit is maintained and taken care of by one or a team of ‘moderators’. Moderators, or mods. are not employees of Reddit nor are they paid for their time.

❓How do I interact with moderators?

When interacting with a moderator or moderation team it is important to remember these are folks who are here nurturing this community to the best of their ability while being unpaid, and often having other full time commitments, such as being creators themselves.

Be respectful and remain appropriate. Consider Modmail to be a professional communication. Be prepared with any links, images, etc that can help you get what you need. Be patient when waiting for a response.

I personally have had many friendships, and professional opportunities open up from being personable and patient in Modmail. These include moderation opportunities, sub avatar model opportunities, banner images, etc. The benefits of having a mod team like you rather than see you as a problem child are numerous.

It is also important to remember that though each subreddit may have a separate moderation team, many many subreddits are a part of families that will share bans if moderators are abused or harassed.

Rules & Verification

Moderators are responsible for setting the rules and verification procedures of a subreddit and then for enforcing them. Rules and verification processes of a subreddit can be found in multiple location on a subreddit depending on if you are on mobile or desktop.

• Mobile:
  • By opening the subreddit menu. This is often directly under the banner image and will appear as a hyper link that says see more or similar
  • In a post pinned to the top of the subreddit
  • In the subreddit wiki (not all subs will have this set up) that can be found by:
    • Clicking the three dot menu at the top right hand of the subreddit
    • Clicking learn more
• Desktop:
  • In the side bar which can be found on the right hand side of the screen
  • In a pinned post
  • In the subreddit wiki

It is your job, actually a part of your job if you sell on Reddit, to read, understand and follow the rules of a subreddit. If you do not you will likely have moderators take action against your account. Though some subs are kind enough to allow a few mistakes happen, do not be surprised if others ban you from using their sub upon the first infraction.

For a fantastic example of well structured and well enforced rules set by moderators, check out the sub r/FetishWantAds and their rules which we broke down step by step in the below resource

r/FetishWantAds Rules For Direct Selling Adult Content Creators

Verification: The Why and How

Verifying in 50 different subreddits just to be able to post an ad or a piece of content can seem absolutely ridiculous and genuinely like too much work. I hear you, I feel you, you are seen. However, verification is crucial. It is not just the moderators going on some power trip. It is instead the moderators making sure their Community isn’t being taken over by catfish, scammers, minors, or other bad actors. In fact if you come across a selling subreddit that does not require that their sellers verify, run and run fast! We already have full and in-depth verification based resources available. Check them out below based on your needs!

How To: Verify in subreddits As a Faceless Creator

How-to: Navigating the Struggles of Verification in Subreddits

it is important to remember that every sub and every moderation team will have a different requirement and method for verification. It is crucial that you read through the listed rules or the verification rules for every single sub prior to attempting to verify. That being said, here is a little verification cheat sheet to check out for a good handful of selling subreddits! Now that was made a little while ago so I can never promise that it is completely up to date. Cross check it with the rules of the sub!

YOU are the only person responsible for tracking verifications and bans!

Subreddit Verification Tracker for Content Creators – Your Ultimate Organization Tool for Promotion on Reddit

❓ A subreddit is requesting nude verification images, do I have to do that?

Short answer, no, not unless you want to use that subreddit.

My longer answer is going to contain a word of love and a word of warning. The love comes in that honey you do not have to ever verify or do anything you are ever uncomfortable with. But you do have to functionally understand that if you refuse to do the verification that that Community demands in the way that it demands, you do not get to use the community. I personally will not verify anywhere that requires nudity. Now let’s talk a word of warning. We’ve spoke about bad actors so far verifying in subreddits but that is not the only place we can see people looking to do harm. Reddit moderators we have to remember are all just normal Reddit users who were given a little bit extra of power often by just asking the other team members who again are all still users. What that means is moderator abuse does happen. It is important that you learn to identify abuse of power in this space, and you refuse to bend to it. An example of what this looks like is in the post below.

Hey y’all I am coming in with a big heads up and a big reminder about moderators on Reddit and what abuse of ‘authority’ looks like and how it should be treated. (And mildly a rant)
byu/kuyariggedalley inCreators_spicy_tea

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Reddit for Direct Selling

Understanding the Reddit social Funnel

When you post either promotion or a ad on a subreddit a buyer may come across it. From there the sales funnel goes as demonstrated in the infographic above. They see your post, go and scroll through your profile to decide if they like the content you are creating. From there if they like what they see they will go to your pinned post. If the logistics on your pinned post match with theirs and their budget, they will then reach out to you in DM’s or in whatever best contact method you have will work for them. From there it is a one-on-one sale in your DMs.

Okay so if you have been selling for more than 5 minutes on Reddit or just about anywhere else you might have read that paragraph and asked in what fantasy world does this happen. So yes the above is the absolute best case scenario and hoped for strategy, though it is important to note that many many buyers may not go look for your information. Which will lead to you having a set of questions that you are very often asked and will very often have to answer.

💡 Pro Tip: have a copy and paste set of answers for questions that you get regularly.

The Importance of a Curated and Intentional Profile

Your profile needs to be your final sales billboard. The content you post should be a direct reflection of the quality and content style that a buyer can expect to receive from a sale. Some tips for keeping an intentional curated profile:

• Alternate your content themes and formats.
• Keep a constant variety of subreddits and subreddit themes you rotate through. This keeps your profile from having a wall of similar content. This helps keep the potential buyer interested and scrolling through.
• You have four slots for pinned posts. Use them wisely. One of them should always be the main informational post we talked about above. However you can also consider including one for announcements, sales, etc.
• Maintain a clean and updated profile by fully deleting any posts removed by moderators. Once the content is no longer visible and will only look like the image below with a trash can. Multiple of these lead to a account looking untrustworthy to potential buyers.

Your comment section matters!

Be sure to pay attention to your comment section. It is public and is absolutely a place buyers are looking before buying. If it is all comment menus or request replies it looks spammy and even lazy. This resource covers a bit more.

❓Should I post NSFW on my profile?

That is entirely up to you. That is a core decision that needs made prior to beginning. You can absolutely see success by posting full NSFW, however I can personally attest that you can see equal success by posing lewd/lingerie only.

❓Should I delete my posts after a while? Will deleting posts remove the karma I earned from them?

Once again, sorry, but deleting posts or not is up to you. It is not a bad idea and will not hurt you if you do delete posts. Once karma is earned it can only be lost through downvotes by other users. Deleting your content does not affect your karma counts. I personally set a minimum upvote count requirement for my past posts and delete any that perform under that set amount.

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Posting & Selling on Reddit

Finding Where to Post

Where to post is going to depend on your niche, brand and content offerings. When you are first starting your account a solid practice is to begin by commenting and engaging in subreddits that you genuinely have interest in. Build some account age and karma there, then branch slowly into engaging in the promotional subs you want to dig into. After you have that going, then beginning using the selling subreddits. This builds a solids foundation for your selling to stand on.

Variety in posting

It is important to not only post in selling subreddits. Variety matters when posting and that includes posting ads vs promotion vs padding.

• Ads: Selling posts that are posted in selling subreddits meant to advertise your services.
• Promotion: Posts in subreddits that feature you or your content but are not directly selling or advertise
• Padding: Non-promotional posts that are meant for community engagement

There are many reasons for the importance of maintaining this balance. Including:

• This keeps your profile from looking less spammy to potential buyers and shows you are genuinely using their preferred platform.
• This looks more professional and intentional.
• Selling subreddits will often use what is called ‘Flood Bot’ when a user is banned. This will delete all of that users posts in one button click. If the majority of your posts are wiped out in this action your account may face adverse consequences.

Selling Subreddits

When choosing a subreddit be very certain to do your due diligence in reading the rules and researching the community. You need to make a decision on if a subreddit is safe or not to engage in. This resource helps break down how to protect your account and do your research.

How To Spot Safe & Reputable Fetish Selling Subreddits: a guide for buyers & sellers

Promotional & Padding Subreddits

Padding subreddits are especially important for hybrid (SFW & NSFW combined) accounts. Padding can be anything you have a interest or hobby in. Mine for example include photography subreddits where I submit my nature photography. Think food photography, video game specific, sports related, etc. These are subs where the topic or the focus is not on you.

These posts in padding subs help show your potential buyers that you are using their chosen platform in the way it was intended to be used, This also helps protect you a bit with Reddit’s anti-spam policies.

Promotional subreddits should be focused around your brand, niche, and content offerings. If you need help identifying your niche and brand, peruse through these related resources.

💡 Some tips for finding subreddits:

• Avoid official GoneWild or GW subs as most of them are anti-creator, anti-seller, and anti promotional account.
• Avoid the big OnlyFans (etc,) subreddits. They are highly saturated with creators posting, And even though the weekly visitor counts can seem impressive, it is important to remember that most of that traffic is other creators posting, not buyers looking for a provider.
• Avoid reliance on the big generic NSFW subreddits. They are incredibly oversaturated as that is where everyone seems to land at first. Buyers know reddit already and they will be focused in on the subreddits for their specific tastes.
• Focus your posting in the direct sub themes you can create content for. For example I post regularly in high heel, foot, nylon and smoking subs because I very often have folks find those posts and then DM for custom content based on that specific theme.

❓Should I start my own subreddit for my persona?

This is up to you. I will not be doing so ever for very many reasons. However if you do decide to start your own subreddit there is very much that you must know. Be sure to give the following resource a in-depth read prior to starting your subreddit.

Starting a Subreddit: The How To For Beginners

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Posting Best Practices

1. Keep 25-45 minutes between all posts. If you are using a scheduler, double check that before manually posting something as well so you do not go below this. If you get too close once of twice, just be more careful. But repeating this behavior will paint your account as a bot and could lead to a shadowban.
2. Keep Reddit’s 10:1 rule in mind and reduce the amount of off platform links you share down to one per every non-linking post or comment.
3. Every subreddit has its own optimal posting times. SocialRise Subreddit Analyzer has been the most reliable tool I have found for this.
4. It is crucial to stay on topic of a subreddit. This will help build community trust and prevent bans or removals.

More Resources on Best Reddit Practices

Resources, Tips, and Advice for Adult Content Promotion on Reddit

❓Should I use a scheduler?

That is up to you. YES, a scheduler is safe to use, though there are some best practices to follow that can help.

• Do not use a scheduler until your account has minimum 200-500 karma. Engage naturally and manually first to show the algorithm your account is real.
• Do not only rely on a scheduler. You should be manually posting and commenting to avoid looking like a bot.
• Do increase the amount of manual comments you are leaving to balance the bot behavior of the scheduler.
• Do not schedule repeated content, comments, captions, or off platform links.
• Do use Fangrowth.io!

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Bans on Reddit

There are multiple levels of bans that are passed out on Reddit against users. These range from everything as superficial as a temporary subreddit ban, to a device level platform ban.

Shadowbans on Reddit

We already have multiple extensive and in depth resources on Shadowbans on Reddit and how they affect direct sellers. Dig into them below.

Shadowbanned on Reddit? Here is How to Build Back Up

Shadowbans on Reddit: Everything You NEED to Know

Fighting the Reddit Shadowban Waves for Direct Sellers

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Client Management & Sales on Reddit

DM Management

Once a client comes into your DMs you can finalize your sale. Reddit’s native DM feature is… Rudimentary at best. There are a couple features that are newer to the platform that I would suggest checking out:

• Persistent Messaging: Persistent messaging disallows and disables the feature that made it to where either member could delete any messages that they had sent previously from both sides of the conversation. 
• Pinned Chats: Now we have the opportunity to pin specific chats that we choose, up to five separate chats, to the top of our inbox. 

Read more new Reddit features and how we can use them as adult content sellers here!

New Reddit Features | How to Use Them as Adult Content Creators

Client Management & Sales Organization

The number one struggle I see new folks who take off in direct selling face is organization. It is important to have and maintain a CRM or client relationship manager. This helps you track everything from usernames, payment platforms, to sales.

Not only will this help you keep on track, but if you track the right data you can use it to determine your most effective working schedule. This keeps you from wasting hours online and optimizes your time and labor,

Adult Content Client and Order Tracker

Content Delivery

Reddit DMs allow image sharing, but not file, audio, video etc. To send content via Reddit DMs your best option is going to be using a media or file hosting site such as Dropbox and delivering the share link. The below resource goes in depth on the many different content sharing options we have.

Content Storage Sharing And Organization Solutions For Spicy Creators

Age Verification

❓Do I have to age verify my buyers when selling on Reddit?

YES! You absolutely MUST be age verifying your buyers and you should be tracking that information as well in yout CRM. Reddit is not an adult content platform and they will hold no liability if you sell content to a minor and end up in a court case.

Age Verification for Adult Creators: Why It’s Mandatory (And How to Do It)

Getting Paid

❓Does Reddit have a way to pay me? If not, how do I get paid selling adult content on Reddit?

No, Reddit does not have a native payment method. To get paid you need to use a third party payment method. Commonly used platforms include:

• Cash transfer apps
• Wishlist sites
• Content platforms

Safe Payment Methods for Content Creators: A Complete Guide