Reddit’s organic traffic has grown 900% over the past 18 months. Meanwhile, small affiliate blog sites have lost most of their SEO traffic. Can Reddit affiliates recoup lost SEO traffic in affiliate programs in 2025?

AM2.0 #9 In Reddit, We Trust

From an affiliate SEO perspective, Reddit is the new affiliate blog site—or at least it can be. 

Since Reddit organically fosters conversations around products (with implicit trust), it’s even more powerful.

By a stroke of good fortune, Imagine Marketing clients have “accidentally” sold ~$50k in attributable Reddit sales on Levanta since August 2024.

In about half of Imagine Marketing’s Levanta programs, Reddit affiliates are among the “top five” affiliates.

This is a strategy the team is looking to scale.

Here is a roadmap on how the team plans to approach Reddit in 2025.

Links-based Strategies

Reddit’s Stance on Affiliate Links

A great Hello Partner article discusses Reddit’s stance on affiliate links.

Using affiliate links is “frowned upon” by Reddit but not outright disallowed.

Affiliate links will often be removed, and Reddit profiles posting affiliate links will be banned on rare occasions.

In the previous five months, Imagine Marketing’s programs generated $50k+ in traceable affiliate sales, bypassing Reddit’s policing.

Flying Under Reddit’s Radar

To mitigate this risk, it is best to partner with Redditors with "high karma scores" who have a history of providing value on the platform.

These profiles have a longer leash on Reddit than newer users with less engagement history.

General Guidelines for Karma Scores:

1. Casual Users: 1,000 - 5,000 Karma

2. Dedicated Users: 10,000 - 50,000 Karma

3. Power Users: 100,000+ Karma

4. Elite Users: 500,000+ Karma

Recruiting Reddit Affiliates

Affiliate Networks

The affiliate network publisher marketplace is the first place to start for recruiting efforts.

For example, searching “Reddit” in the market yields around eight affiliates who leverage Reddit as a marketing tactic.

Try to determine the subreddits associated with these affiliate profiles.

“Best XYZ” Site: Reddit

This strategy aims to search all the Reddit pages that mention the keyword “best xyz” or any other keyword.

In this example, the consumer searches for “best coffee mugs.”

This should help to show subreddits where active in-market consumer conversations are happening.

THe first page results show subreddits like r/coffee and r/pourovers.

The goals of this strategy should be to:

• Identify relevant subreddits for clients (like r/pourover) - find subreddits where relevant product conversations and comparisons occur.

• Build relationships with moderators - learn if affiliate promotions are welcome with various moderators and how you can promote products while providing value to the subreddit community.

• Identify affiliates already promoting in the subreddit - identify various product links and establish if affiliates are already actively promoting in a subreddit.

• See the brands regularly mentioned - perform competitor analysis to see if other brands participate in affiliate marketing promotions on Reddit.

Comment Mining for Links

If your team has coordinators or VAs with free time, have them mine various subreddits for affiliate links.

For example, the Imagine Marketing team found this comment from a Redditor linking “these wireless waterproof earbuds.”

There is a fair chance that any direct product links to Amazon or a PDP are affiliate links on Reddit.

In this example, you can see all the information after the “?” in the link, designating it as an affiliate link.

This would be a good prospective affiliate to recruit into an program.

AI Subreddit Search

Have ChatGPT or Perplexity generate a list of relevant subreddits to browse and mine for affiliates.

Deals & Reviews Subreddits

There are various product reviews and deal subreddits, like r/deals on Reddit.

A simple ChatGPT search will generate multiple product reviews and deals subreddits to research.

Some examples:

• r/Coupons: A hub for sharing and discovering coupons across various retailers and products.

• r/DealsAndPromotions: Focuses on consumer deals and promotions across various categories.

• r/DealsCouponsBargains: Offers a variety of deals, coupons, and bargains, with a notable emphasis on tech products.

• r/DealsOnAmazon: Specializes in finding and sharing deals available on Amazon

Supporting Reddit Affiliates

It’s important to remember that most Redditors sharing affiliate links are probably not digital marketers.

This means there’s an opportunity to provide direction and support for better performance.

There are two primary ways the Imagine Marketing team has supported Reddit affiliates.

1. SEO Research

   Find relevant subreddits and discussion ranking on SEO for searches like “best coffee mugs.” Encourage affiliates to comment, engage, link, and refer to their subreddits if they have them.

2. Build Content

   A Reddit affiliate has a subreddit dedicated to supplement reviews. The Imagine team use a comparison and review template for various product categories.

Code-based Strategies

Affiliates have been distributing coupon codes via Reddit for over a decade, bypassing affiliate links and assigning credit using codes.

Revitrage has been specializing in this type of affiliate marketing and code distribution for years.

The key to code distribution with partners like Revitrage is to provide exclusive, unique codes that expire within a few months to prevent “leakage.”

While brands may be “anti-discount-ing,” leveraging a code-based strategy is a safer bet as there is no chance Reddit will remove the affiliate links.

Indirect Strategies

An indirect strategy is for blogs, review sites, and similar publishers to funnel traffic from Reddit to their websites, where publishers can freely post affiliate links.

The idea here is that it’s easier to source traffic from Reddit than it is from Google.

To return to the coffee mug example, a strategy would be to discuss all the “best coffee mug” discussions and link to a review like this one from Food & Wine.

Of course, that’s probably a more viable strategy with smaller publishers.

Bonus Strategy 🔥🔥🔥

Here is one last bonus strategy that involves replicating the Revtirage strategy on a smaller scale.

Revitrage generates millions of dollars in sales on Reddit by distributing affiliate codes in various targeted subreddits.

Thanks to the “high karma” they have built on Reddit over 10+ years, the posts they share with exclusive codes get high visibility.

Try to leverage the highest karma affiliates to distribute affiliate codes for clients.

This way, exclusive (affiliate) coupon codes are given high visibility and have a very low chance of being removed by Reddit.

Reddit shouldn’t even notice 😉