Reddit Marketing Strategy: Combining Accounts, Upvotes, and Comments

A practical breakdown of how we used bought Reddit accounts, upvotes, and comments from services such as BuyUpvotes in a way that was careful to respect subreddit norms and avoid obvious rule violations.

Important disclaimer

Every subreddit has its own rules, and Reddit’s site-wide policies can change at any time. Many communities explicitly forbid vote manipulation, undisclosed promotions, and using multiple accounts to mislead users. The following is a descriptive case study of a strategy designed to avoid obvious spam and to behave like a normal contributor. It is not legal advice or a guarantee that your content, accounts, or campaigns will be allowed or remain undetected. Always read and follow the current Reddit Content Policy and each subreddit’s rules before doing any kind of promotion.

Why Reddit requires a different marketing approach

Reddit is built around communities that are skeptical of overt marketing. Unlike traditional ad platforms, users expect authenticity, detailed discussions, and clear value. This means:

Overt self-promo is usually downvoted or removed.
Brand-new accounts posting links get flagged as spam.
Vote brigading and low-quality comments stand out quickly.

Our strategy focused on behaving like normal, value-adding users: contributing to discussions, respecting rules, and only occasionally introducing links or brand mentions in contexts where they genuinely helped.

Step 1: Researching subreddits and setting boundaries

Before any account activity or outside services came into play, we mapped the landscape where our audience already spent time.

Identifying relevant subreddits

We started with three buckets of communities:

Primary niche subs — directly about our product category (e.g., SaaS, productivity, or specific industry communities).
Adjacent interest subs — where our audience hangs out, even if the topic is broader (e.g., entrepreneurship, small business, marketing, design).
Support and Q&A subs — places where people ask for recommendations and help.

Understanding rules and culture

For each subreddit, we checked the sidebar, pinned posts, and recent mod comments to understand what was acceptable:

Whether self-promotion was allowed, and under what conditions.
Whether third-party tools, affiliates, or “I work for X” disclosures were required.
How strict mods were about link posts, referral links, and repeated mentions of the same site.
How people spoke (tone, level of detail, preferred post types).

This step effectively defined where we would not use any paid support at all (some subs had a zero-tolerance stance toward anything promotional), and where a careful approach might be acceptable as long as we followed the rules and added real value.

Step 2: Establishing and warming up accounts

The next layer of the strategy involved using multiple accounts to avoid concentrating all activity on a single profile. There are known risks in operating or buying multiple accounts, including policy violations if they are used to mislead others or manipulate votes. To reduce those risks and avoid obvious red flags, we focused on making each account look and act like a genuine participant.

Account mix and roles

We ended up with three broad account types:

Core contributor accounts — accounts that primarily posted detailed comments, guides, and discussions; only occasionally mentioning our brand.
Observer and engagement accounts — accounts that upvoted genuinely good content (ours and others) and participated in lighter discussions.
Legacy or aged accounts — accounts with longer histories (either our own older accounts or third-party “aged accounts”) that were used sparingly for higher-stakes posts where a totally new profile would look suspicious.

Warm-up period

Any new or recently acquired accounts went through a warm-up phase. During this period, they:

Commented on popular threads without including links.
Participated in different subreddits, not just our niche.
Posted occasional original content like text posts or simple questions.
Avoided any pattern that looked like immediate promotion.

The goal was to build a normal-looking activity history long before these accounts ever mentioned our product. That history also served as a buffer against accusations of being “throwaway shill accounts.”

Step 3: Planning content and value-first interactions

Reddit users reward depth, expertise, and honesty. We created a content plan that revolved around being helpful first, with subtle brand exposure second.

Content pillars

Our content followed several main pillars:

How-to and troubleshooting answers — actionable answers to questions that frequently came up in our niche, with step-by-step instructions.
Case studies and breakdowns — anonymized real-world scenarios that walked through a problem, the process, and the outcome.
Resource roundups — lists of tools, checklists, and frameworks that people could bookmark, where our product was one of several suggestions.
Opinionated takes — thoughtful commentary on news or trends in our space that positioned our accounts as informed practitioners, not just promoters.

Subtle brand integration

Instead of dropping our link into every reply, we used several softer approaches:

Answering questions fully in the comment body, with the link as an optional extra resource at the end.
Offering screenshots, templates, or summaries directly in the comment instead of saying “click here to learn more.”
Only mentioning that we were involved with the product when it was directly relevant and beneficial to be transparent.
Rotating which accounts, if any, mentioned the brand, to avoid a single account repeatedly pushing the same site.

Step 4: Using bought upvotes strategically

The controversial part of our strategy was selectively using paid upvotes from services such as BuyUpvotes. We treated this as a visibility nudge, not a replacement for organic engagement, and we were careful to avoid clear patterns that would violate subreddit rules or Reddit’s broader stance on vote manipulation.

When we chose to boost a post

We were very conservative about which posts received a boost. A post or comment had to meet several criteria first:

The content already had organic traction (some genuine upvotes and replies).
It was non-spammy, detailed, and genuinely useful, even without any link.
It fit cleanly within subreddit rules and norms.
We believed it could rank near the top on its own if it simply received earlier momentum.

How we approached the upvote pattern

To keep things from looking artificial, we considered both timing and quantity:

Small, incremental boosts rather than large, sudden spikes. A few extra upvotes soon after posting, not dozens all at once.
Not every post was boosted. Most posts were left entirely organic so there was no easy pattern to detect.
Only high-quality posts were ever boosted. Low-effort content stayed untouched or wasn’t posted at all.

This approach meant the paid upvotes helped our best posts rise early in a thread’s lifecycle, where more users could see and respond to them. The subsequent engagement (comments, additional organic votes) mattered far more than the initial bought upvotes.

Step 5: Supporting posts with relevant comments

Upvotes alone are not enough to make a thread feel natural. We also supported key posts with additional comments when it made sense, again focusing on legitimacy and relevance rather than empty praise.

Types of supporting comments

We coordinated comments in three ways:

Clarifying questions — secondary accounts asked genuine follow-up questions that other users were likely thinking about. This gave us the opportunity to add more detail in threaded replies.
Alternative perspectives — some comments brought in different tools or approaches (including competitors), which made the discussion look balanced and reduced the sense of shilling.
Experience-based mini-case studies — comments that started with “In my experience…” and outlined a scenario similar to the original post, sometimes mentioning our product as part of the solution.

Keeping comment patterns natural

To avoid obvious coordination patterns, we:

Varied comment length, tone, and depth between accounts.
Avoided repetitive phrases or identical structures.
Ensured that many comments did not mention our brand at all.
Allowed genuine community members to drive most of the conversation.

When real users engaged, we prioritized answering their questions thoroughly and respectfully, even if they recommended competitors or criticized our approach.

Step 6: Staying aligned with community expectations

Even with external support, the strategy would have failed if we did not keep the community’s expectations front and center.

Transparency where appropriate

In subreddits that were more tolerant of industry insiders, we sometimes disclosed our connection to the product:

“Full disclosure: I work with the team behind X, so take this with a grain of salt.”
“I’m one of the people who built X, happy to answer technical questions.”

This often improved trust and led to deeper conversations, especially in expert or B2B communities where people expect founders and practitioners to participate.

Listening to moderators

Moderation feedback served as an early warning system. Signs we watched for included:

Mod removal reasons like “self-promotion” or “spam.”
Direct mod messages asking about our affiliation or posting habits.
Automoderator triggers that automatically removed certain link formats.

When we hit resistance, we adjusted quickly: posting fewer links, rewriting copy to be more educational, or avoiding some subreddits altogether.

Performance tracking and iteration

To understand whether this complex setup was worth the effort, we tracked both on-platform and off-platform metrics.

On-Reddit signals

Upvotes and comment counts on posts and replies.
Which subreddits produced the most constructive discussions.
Karma trends for each account over time.
Frequency of mod removals or user reports.

Off-Reddit signals

Referral traffic from Reddit (by subreddit and URL).
Conversion events associated with Reddit sessions.
Brand mentions and search impressions that correlated with active campaigns.

This data helped us refine where to put effort. Some subreddits were great for discussion but terrible for conversions, while others quietly drove highly qualified traffic from a few deeply engaged threads.

Risks, limitations, and ethical considerations

Using multiple accounts, paid upvotes, or coordinated comments can cross into prohibited behavior if used to mislead users or manipulate visibility in ways Reddit does not allow. It also carries practical risks:

Account bans or shadowbans.
Removal of posts and comments.
Reputation damage if users expose the campaign.
Policy changes that retroactively make past behavior unacceptable.

Ethical use depends on intent and execution. Our internal rule of thumb was:

Would this comment still be useful if it mentioned no product at all?
Are we misleading users about who we are or why we are posting?
Are we respecting each community’s explicitly stated guidelines?

When the answer to those questions was not clear, we erred on the side of not posting or not boosting.

Practical takeaways

Combining accounts, upvotes, and comments can amplify your reach on Reddit, but it cannot replace genuine participation and high-quality content. Some practical principles emerged from our experience:

Start with research and relationship-building in each subreddit.
Warm up any new or acquired accounts with non-promotional activity.
Create value-first posts and comments that can stand on their own.
Use any form of boosting sparingly, and only on posts that already fit the community well.
Monitor mod feedback and adjust your strategy quickly.
Think long-term: one viral thread is less important than a reputation for being consistently helpful.

Ultimately, the safest and most effective Reddit marketing strategy is to act like a knowledgeable community member whose main goal is to help others, with your product appearing naturally as part of that expertise rather than the centerpiece of every interaction.