Reddit Affiliate Marketing: Why It Matters and How to Build a Winning Strategy

(More of an A/V learner? Get the full scoop from Ewan Finser, Founder of ReddVisible and Amy Scanlon, GM of the affiliate practice at Right Side Up, in the webinar Unlock Affiliate Revenue Through Creators, Communities, and Forums.)

Today, affiliate marketing touches every stage of the buyer journey—and the partners driving success are more diverse than ever.

Yes, the Buzzfeeds and the Business Insiders of the world very much still have their place in the affiliate world. But buyer behavior has evolved, and the long tail—think creators, communities, and forums—now holds a firm seat at the growth table and in the LLMs. Decisions across the funnel are taking place in places brands don’t always have full control over, but must learn to influence. 

One multipurpose platform in particular deserves your full attention: Reddit. From generative engine optimization (GEO) to brand reputation to audience engagement, leveling up your Reddit affiliate strategy can help fill various strategy buckets—and deliver serious results.

“Reddit used to never really rank on the first page. Now it’s showing up everywhere, alongside your brand content and product pages." —Ewen Finser, CEO, ReddVisible

Let’s take a look at why you should care about affiliate marketing on Reddit—and how to do it successfully.

Why Should Marketers Care About Reddit?

You may think of Reddit as the home of orange-cat mishaps, instantaneous sports highlights, and animated discussions on the latest episode of The White Lotus. You would be absolutely right. 

But this free-flowing, organic ecosystem is exactly why marketers should care about Reddit: it’s the only place of its scale where people are having genuine (and mostly ad-free) conversations about anything and everything.

With buyer behavior increasingly favoring authenticity over polished branding, companies who are successfully able to join (and lead) this dialogue can unlock SEO power, brand equity, and incremental revenue.

And to add to the impact of Reddit, its prevalence in search results means that its reach goes far beyond the platform’s active users. Even if most of your customer base couldn’t tell you what an upvote is, they likely have stumbled upon a Reddit thread from a Google search at some point.

“Everyone is a Reddit user now because of how often it shows up on Google. My mom uses Reddit—she just doesn’t know it.” —Ewen Finser

Reddit Gives Brands Visibility in GEO

The rise of GenAI has turned the SEO world on its head. More and more searches are starting on ChatGPT and other LLMs—and Google introduced its AI Overview (AIO) in March 2024 for select searches. 

And despite a controversial introduction, AIOs are now showing up in search results more than ever. As of May 2025, they appear on more than 54% of all Google searches—and that number trends higher for informational queries. They’re also reducing clicks to sites by 34.5%.

Do you want to guess the most mentioned website in AIOs? That’s right—Reddit, with a current total of nearly 3 million mentions. 

(All the data above comes from the Ahrefs study: Insights From 55.8M AI Overviews Across 590M searches.)

To exemplify this shift in a context all marketers can relate to, Ewen directs us to look at a search query that’s all too familiar: “HubSpot vs. Salesforce.” In this example, the first source referenced in the AIO is a beefy Reddit thread from May 2023, which is directly driving sentiment. 

Not only that—if you scroll down to the first organic search result, you’ll see this same thread, as part of a Reddit “pack.” What does this mean for brands? Reddit is becoming a powerhouse in both GenAI and traditional search, and marketers need to adapt rapidly.

Reddit Can Make or Break Your Brand Reputation

Reddit’s brand is that it’s (famously) anti-brand, which means narratives are largely driven by the masses—not marketers. This can be a good or bad thing. But given Reddit’s increasing visibility, it’s an important thing.

“Reddit is the hardest place to market traditionally, but it’s also where the most honest conversations happen. That’s what makes it valuable—and volatile.” —Ewen Finser

Ewen recalls a specific example where, for years, a negative Reddit thread ranked first when someone searched for a client’s brand name—even though the concerns discussed in the thread had been long resolved.

His key advice to dealing with this difficult scenario? It’s counterintuitive and goes against the traditional PR playbook, but don’t jump in to defend yourself—most comments just “feed the beast” and give the thread more exposure. 

“The number one factor that affects whether a Reddit thread ranks highly or not is its level of engagement—in other words, its number of comments,” Ewen adds.

Conversely, brands who create positive threads that yield high engagement can enhance their brand reputation.

Reddit is a True Full-Funnel Performance Channel

"Reddit is a social media platform, a search engine, a support hub, and now a source of training data for AI. It’s one of the few places that touches so many parts of the customer experience." —Ewen Finser

Reddit can bring your brand increased SEO visibility and improved brand reputation, but that’s just the start. Like the broader modern affiliate landscape, Reddit can bring value to your brand across the entire funnel in several ways. Here’s a breakdown:

Top-of-funnel (discovery and awareness)

• Through SEO and native searches, users often start their journey on a Reddit thread. Ewen points out that many often add “Reddit” at the end of their search to circumvent brand-influenced content.
• Creators and ambassadors can seed awareness within subreddits relevant to your brand. (A subreddit is a dedicated Reddit community focused on a specific topic.)

Middle-of-funnel (consideration)

• Product comparisons happen all the time on Reddit, whether they’re the direct subject of a thread (e.g., the prominent “HubSpot vs Salesforce” threads referenced earlier) or an organic tangent of a related discussion.
• Users regularly have deeper product and brand conversations—they ask questions, discuss pros and cons, and write testimonials.

Bottom-of-funnel (advocacy)

• In more engaged or loyal communities, users feel more comfortable asking for discount codes or trial offers.
• In addition to advocating and defending your brand where possible, loyal customers create UGC like case studies (“I saved $X by using [your product]”) or use cases (“How to get the most out of [your product]”).

Next Steps: Scaling Your Reddit Affiliate Strategy (3 Levels)

By now, you should have a pretty good idea of why you should optimize your brand presence on Reddit—and hopefully you’re excited about it! Let’s now get into some actionable tips. To accommodate a wide range of budget and resources, we’ve sorted these into three tiers: good, better, and best.

Good: Listen and learn

• Audit Reddit for brand mentions: Your first step should be to gauge how your brand is trending on Reddit. You can simply Google “site:reddit.com [your brand],” use Reddit Search, or leverage a social listening platform already in your tech stack.
• Know the rules: Guidelines vary from one subreddit to the next—Ewen adequately describes Reddit as “the wild west”—so make sure to familiarize yourself with rules of relevant subreddits.
• Claim your brand handle: “The easiest thing to do is just to own your handle,” Ewen advises. Even if you're still in the lurking phase, owning your handle will prevent complications once you make the leap to being active.

Better: Start engaging

• Seed net-positive content: Since it’s really hard to get negative publicity off Reddit, proactively create positive threads relating to your brand or offerings. Address questions, misconceptions, and product benefits.
• Activate advocates: Incent engaged users or partners to authentically share their experiences. According to Amy, brand ambassadors are excellent candidates to create, grow, and participate in communities.
• Link carefully: Reddit has strong spam filters and a general aversion to traditional marketing. When sharing links, prioritize indirect affiliate paths like landing pages or educational content.

“There’s an opportunity to incorporate brand ambassadors into your Reddit strategy—they can do a great job of actively creating or participating in communities to boost your brand equity and reputation.” —Amy Scanlon, GM, Affiliate Practice, Right Side Up

Best: Build and influence

• Launch or co-manage a subreddit: If your brand is big enough, launching your own subreddit can help you build long-term brand-building, according to Ewen. Think of it like a subdomain where you own the narrative while facilitating community interaction. Alternatively, you can also look to co-moderate a non-branded or affinity-based subreddit—this is great for leveraging an existing user base and gaining trust. However, you won’t have control over sentiment and need to be very careful when linking or promoting. If users detect too much brand influence, you’ll start losing their trust.‍
• Sponsor sidebar space: Short of running or co-running a subreddit, you can try to partner with moderators of relevant subreddits for sidebar mentions (or even to post threads). But again, remember: Reddit is highly decentralized and there is no universal policy regarding branded content. Different moderators will have different rules and feelings about partnerships.‍
• Intentionally influence GEO: Take the “seed net-positive content” strategy to the next level. Pull a full list of relevant threads that are showing up in Google’s AI Overviews—branded queries, product comparisons, and category-level terms. Add to that your own top keyword targets. Then, strategically seed or refresh content to shift sentiment. Keep in mind that AI models also pull tone from Reddit threads, not just content.

Need help building your Reddit affiliate strategy? Get in touch with our affiliate marketing team—we specialize in crafting responsible, incremental affiliate programs. Special thanks to our partners at ReddVisible for contributing their Reddit expertise!

‍