Reddit is the highest-risk, highest-reward promotion channel a creator has. Get it right and a single post can send a flood of exactly the right viewers; get it wrong and you are downvoted into invisibility or banned from a subreddit in minutes. The platform has a finely tuned sense for self-promotion and very little patience for it, so the only way in is to bring genuine value and treat the link as an afterthought, if you include it at all.
The mistake that gets people banned is obvious to everyone but the person making it: join a subreddit, immediately post "check out my new video", contribute nothing else. Reddit reads that as spam because it is, and responds accordingly. It is not a noticeboard for your links. It is a set of communities with their own rules, and it expects you to be a member, not a marketer.
The rules of not getting banned
- Find the right subreddit, and read its rules. Many ban links or self-promotion outright, or allow it only on certain days. The rules are in the sidebar. Read them before you post, every time.
- Be a real member first. Comment, help, take part for a while before you ever post your own thing. An account that only ever drops links is transparent and unwelcome.
- Bring the value into the post itself. Write the actual useful thing as a text post. If your video is genuinely the best expansion of it, a link can sit at the bottom, framed as going deeper, not as the whole point.
Why it is worth the care
Because Reddit traffic, when it works, is some of the most engaged you can get. People arrive already interested in the exact topic, from a community built around it, and they tend to watch properly and stick around. A single well-placed, genuinely useful post in the right subreddit can outperform a week of link-drops everywhere else. The care is the cost of access to that.
Think of it as a long game. Become a real, liked member of one or two subreddits in your niche, contribute more than you take, and the occasional time you do share your own work, it is welcome because you have earned the standing. That standing cannot be faked or rushed, which is exactly why it is valuable.
When in doubt, don't
If you are unsure whether a post counts as too promotional for a given subreddit, it probably does, and the safer move is to share the value with no link at all and let people find you if they want more. A reputation as a helpful member is worth more than any single video's traffic, and one ban can close a community to you for good. Caution here protects the channel, not just the post.
Where Chewbr fits
Post to Reddit (carefully) is step 44 of the 47, and the "carefully" is doing real work in the name. It is the Promote step with the sharpest downside, included because the upside is real but only reachable by playing it as a member, not a marketer.
Keep reading
Safer ground next: your newsletter, an audience no algorithm can take away. The value-first rule is the same as posting to X, and the member-not-marketer mindset matches telling your own community.