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My team validates startup ideas using Reddit. Here is how to get started
My team validates startup ideas using Reddit. It has 1.5B visits a month, so it can be fast and accurate.
With this approach, we launched 5 projects, including a "cash cow" Email Verification Add-on and a recently launched micro-saas Silent Inbox.
Here is how I research subreddits and evaluate them for ideas validation.
- When I have an idea to validate I write down at least 5 keywords related to it. Example terms I used last week: “meditation”, “breathwork”, “breathing technique”, “anxiety”, “stress”. Enter one keyword at a time into the search bar and it will give you a list of subreddits where your keyword is mentioned.
- Find at least 5 subreddits with people who discussed your topic. Make a copy of my spreadsheet [1]. And collect information about the number of readers. Pro tip: don't waste your time on subreddits with less than 10K readers.
- Go to Related Subreddits by User Overlap [2]. You need to check every subreddit you found by searching your terms to get more ideas on when your potential audience is hanging out.
- Read posts within each subreddit to see if people might be interested in your project. Add subjective relevance to the spreadsheet, where 10 is for super relevant subreddit.
- Once all numbers are added to the spreadsheet, sort your list of subreddits based on the Score it calculates for you. Congrats, now you are ready to pick the most relevant subreddits, plan content, write a title, research the best time to post, etc.
If you're keen to learn more about the topic, check out our guide https://guide.opryshok.com on validating project ideas using Reddit.
Resources
[1] Reddit Evaluation Spreadsheet by Ryan Luedecke https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IjgpzGBgZF9L9dVKkUrC7tE_AkPErApK_fJazsTNIP4/edit#gid=0
[2] Related Subreddits by User Overlap https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps
- tmaly 6y agoI have seen a similar concept from Amy Hoy and one from Pat Flynn. How did you settle on Reddit?
- avian 6y ago> Every X copies sold, the price increased: sold 30 at $12, 70 at $19 It's currently at $29. I haven't seen this way of selling content before. It's funny because it's kind of backwards of everything else I've seen (as in, pay a premium to be among the first to see it). I can kind of see it work by triggering the sense of urgency and make people click it before having a second thought.
- detaro 6y agolower "early-bird" prices are not that uncommon though?
- avian 6y agoI've only seen early bird prices for physical products or things like tickets. It makes sense to me where there's inherently a limited supply and over time the available number of items for sale falls and hence price gets higher. In content I think it's just the opposite. At the start nobody has it and it makes sense that the price is higher. Then as early birds get it they may share it with others and so it gets more and more available. At least that's my armchair economics thinking. I'm sure the pricing model works for the OP. I just found it interesting.
- detaro 6y agoIn both cases, a strong motivation is to get people to buy now instead of pushing back to later, both so they don't bounce and to get the viral marketing train going as quickly as possible/while you are still in launch promotions.
- serendipityrecs 6y agoHow do you deal with trigger happy mods banning you even when your post is relevant to the subreddit?
- szemy2 6y agoGreat question; this is what I usually encounter aswell.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- talolard 6y agoThere’s a Reddit dump on big query so you can do this idea at relative scale with sum sql