How to Get Your First 100 Customers From Reddit (Without Getting Banned)

I've helped startups get their first 100+ customers and reach $10k MRR through Reddit. While doing so, I also got banned a couple of times. This guide is based on that experience - the parts that worked, and the mistakes that got accounts removed.

First, why Reddit is worth your time at all:

People search Reddit before they buy anything. "Best X" and "is X worth it" queries increasingly end in a Reddit thread.
Reddit threads rank on Google. A thread you comment on today can sit on page one for years.
LLMs are trained on Reddit conversations. Showing up in the right threads means showing up in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers too.
Reddit content compounds. Unlike X posts, which disappear after 24 hours, one great Reddit comment can drive traffic for years.

Here's everything I've learned about marketing a startup on Reddit, in the order you should do it.

Step 1: Find the right subreddits

Go where your ICP hangs out. Look for subreddits with 10k–50k+ members where people are asking questions, sharing problems, and talking about tools in your space.

Smaller communities in that range are often better than million-member subreddits: the mods are stricter about spam in big subs, and your post gets buried faster. If you're not sure where your buyers are, start with a few site:reddit.com searches for your problem space, or use a subreddit research tool to map the communities first.

Step 2: Warm up your account

This is the step 90% of people miss, and it's the reason they get banned.

If your account has no karma and you start promoting your product on day one, you'll get banned. Reddit's spam filters and moderators both check account age and karma before anything else.

If you want to start as soon as possible: spend a week just being a normal user. Leave 10–15 genuine comments in your target subreddits, upvote things you like, and make 2–3 unrelated posts. Get to 30–50 karma before you mention your product even once.

If you have more time, spend 2–3 weeks and let the account age a bit past that. And keep the ratio sane: for every comment where you mention your product, leave 4–5 that are just helpful, with nothing in it for you. Comment karma matters more than post karma here, because it shows you talk to people instead of only posting your own stuff.

It's boring. That's kind of the point. Everyone skips it, which is why it works.

Step 3: Marketing through posts

Filter a subreddit by top posts of all time and study what types of posts work well, then write similar posts.

From my experience, two formats work:

Long educational posts. How-to guides, a personal story backed by real numbers, a breakdown of a mistake you made, resource lists, contrarian takes. For example: "I raised $5M, here's what I learned" or "I hit $1M ARR, here's how I did it."

Offering help. For example: "I'll do this for free, drop your product below." This type of post generates a lot of traction — but only do it if you can actually help.

Step 4: Marketing through comments

Find threads where people are discussing the problem you solve. There are four ways to find them:

Search for keywords related to your product on Google and add site:reddit.com to your query.
Join subreddits where your ICP hangs out, open Reddit once or twice a day, check the posts in your feed, and comment on the relevant ones.
In those same subreddits, filter top posts by today, this week, or this month and comment on relevant posts.
The easiest way: go to Okara, drop your website URL, and let it monitor Reddit 24/7 for keywords related to your product and draft authentic replies. (If you want to compare the options for this, see our breakdown of Reddit keyword monitoring tools.)

When you comment, help first, then plug your product naturally. "I ran into this exact thing and ended up using X, here's what worked" lands way better than "you should check out X."

If you'd rather not play the subtle game at all, just be the founder openly. Use a name that makes it obvious and say something like: "I built this so I'm obviously biased, but here's how we think about it — happy to answer anything." Reddit respects honest founders far more than stealth marketers who get caught.

A hack for writing comments that actually perform

If you don't know what to comment, here's a setup that takes 20–30 minutes and pays off for years:

Open 15–20 Reddit threads in your niche.
Take screenshots of the questions and the top replies.
Upload the screenshots to an LLM and ask it to analyze why the top replies received more upvotes. What are they doing well? What patterns do they follow? Is it because they didn't post a link? Is it because they added value first, then plugged their product naturally?
Tell it: "I want to write high-performing replies like these for my brand." Give it an overview of what your brand does, then ask it to write a system prompt you can use.
Paste that system prompt into Okara (or wherever you draft your replies).

You're reverse-engineering what each community already upvotes instead of guessing.

How to avoid getting banned

Everything above only works if your account survives. These are the rules, learned the hard way:

Warm up your account before any promotion (see Step 2).
Don't post links in your comments. This is the fastest way to get banned. There's one exception: if the comment section is full of people dropping their own tools and links, the community expects it there, so adding yours is fine. I'm talking about posts like "What did you build this week?"
Don't comment on too many posts in a short window. Velocity alone can trigger a ban.
Add value first and only mention your product where it's relevant (without the link). Reddit is fine with that.
Not every comment has to be about your product. Help people and comment thoughtfully without mentioning it.
Follow each subreddit's rules. Some allow self-promotion, some have weekly threads for it, and others don't allow it at all.
Write like you're talking to a friend.
Don't drop the same comment across ten threads.
Don't post in one subreddit a bunch of times in one day.
Don't talk about your product back to back. Space it out.

How to measure attribution when you can't drop links

No links makes tracking harder, but not impossible:

Ask new users "how did you hear about us?" during onboarding or on a call.
Watch Google Search Console for jumps in people searching your brand name.
Check your analytics for Reddit, ChatGPT, and Perplexity showing up as referrers — remember, LLMs cite Reddit threads, so a good comment pays out through AI answers too.

Doing this without living in the feed

The whole playbook above is manual: find threads, read the room, write replies, space them out. It works, but it's hours a week, and it's the first thing founders drop when a product fire starts.

That's the gap Okara's Reddit agent covers. You drop in your website URL, and it monitors Reddit 24/7, finds the high-intent conversations, and drafts authentic replies you approve before they go out — following the same rules in this guide, because a banned account helps nobody. It's part of a full AI CMO at a flat $99/month, alongside SEO, GEO, and content agents.

Frequently asked questions

Can you really get customers from Reddit? Yes. I've helped startups get their first 100+ customers and reach $10k MRR primarily through Reddit. It works best for products whose buyers ask questions in communities before purchasing, which covers most software.

Why do accounts get banned for promoting on Reddit? Usually one of three things: a brand-new account with no karma promoting on day one, links dropped in comments, or the same promotional comment repeated across threads. All three are avoidable with the warm-up and ban-avoidance rules above.

How much karma do I need before mentioning my product? Get to at least 30–50 karma over a week or more of genuine participation, with comment karma weighted more heavily than post karma. More age and karma is always safer.

Is it against Reddit's rules to promote your product? Not inherently. Reddit's spam guidelines and most subreddit rules target low-effort, link-heavy, repetitive promotion. Helpful comments that mention your product where relevant, with no link, are generally fine — but always check each subreddit's own rules first.

How do I track signups from Reddit if I can't post links? Ask "how did you hear about us?" at onboarding, watch for branded search growth in Google Search Console, and check analytics for Reddit and AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity) as referrers.

How long until Reddit marketing produces results? Expect 2–3 weeks of warm-up before you promote at all, and the first signups typically follow within weeks of consistent commenting. The compounding kicks in over months as your comments accumulate in threads that rank on Google and get cited by LLMs.