how to navigate reddit

Reddit is a massive collection of links.  A thousand links are submitted every day.  Everybody has an opportunity to vote up or down on each link.

Most people go just to the home page and they see just the links that have gotten the most upvotes that day. 

reddit is also broken down into "subreddits".  Some subreddits you might be interested in include:

permaculture
homesteading
renewable energy
self sufficiency

Since these have less traffic, you can see a list that of things that have been the most popular for the last week or two.  Things that are newer and more popular are near the top.  Things that are older or less popular scroll to the bottom.

Eventually, you might want to submit something to reddit.  Keep in mind that spammers want to submit things to reddit too, so your first submission might get caught in the spam filter.  If that happens, click on "message the moderators", explain that your submission didn't show up and maybe it is in the spam filter.  After you have done this a few times, the spam filter "learns" that you are trustworthy.

If you picked a good title and a good link, you could get a hundred upvotes.  And the link might get a few thousand views.

Reddit has no way to post pictures.  So the only way that people on reddit can see pictures is if they are on a non-reddit site.  Like permies. 

In fact, if we have a thread here that has lots of discussion and a collection of several pictures, that makes for excellent reddit fodder.

A thread with no pictures usually doesn't do well on reddit, even if the topic is interesting.

A thread with some pictures, some videos, good discussion and an interesting topic will do awesome on reddit!

As an example, I sumitted the following to reddit:

This woman built a rocket mass heater to heat the floor of her yurt, and wrapped copper tubing around it to get hot water

to the frugal subreddit.  It got 264 upvotes and brought permies about 5000 views. 

Good for reddit.  Good for permies.

I am making the podcast using the energy that used to tell folks about my new stuff.  Especially reddit.  My impression was that people were gonna take over that stuff, thus freeing me up to do the podcast.  My last video has not yet been posted to reddit.

I will send a permies.com mug and t-shirt to the first reddit submission of that video to net 100 upvotes.

I will also send a permies.com mug and t-shirt to the first reddit submission of any permies.com thread to net 100 upvotes.

If my stuff is getting submitted to reddit, then I will stop thinking about it and focus on the podcast stuff. 

BTW:  this subreddit is moderated by me.  please subscribe (add it to your front page)

http://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/

paul wheaton wrote:Reddit is a massive collection of links. A thousand links are submitted every day. Everybody has an opportunity to vote up or down on each link.

I didn't realize you were on Reddit. Much of it is not for the faint of heart. Note that the voting changes randomly and ghost banning is a thing. I can share a link that explains the pitfalls if that is ok with Paul. As long as you stick to sub-Reddits he moderates it is probably good.

On the plus side, Reddit can drive massive traffic and if you ever hit the home page you might rank in the search engines pretty much indefinitly.

From a a post in How to share Permies with your friends on Social Media:

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:Today, I ran across this excellent (albeit a bit extra glowy IMHO) video about reddit. Since I've had many people ask, 'what is reddit' I thought it might help to post here.

There is actually a permies.com sub-reddit:  http://www.reddit.com/r/Permies/.

This is also a good excuse to bump this thread as a reminder: if you want to help infect brains for building a better world, share what you love - the fun, informative stuff about permaculture!

And from paul's post in another thread about reddit.com:

paul wheaton wrote:I have mine set up so that it puts a little bar at the top.  So if I like it, I can upvote.  And if I want to see the comments, I just click on the title.  

I find that if it is late and my brain is fried ... I turn on by bed warming contraption and then spend ten minutes at reddit.  I usually get a good laugh or learn something particularly fascinating. And then go to bed.

Here is a sampling of the subreddits I'm subscribed to.  Now, when I go to the home page, I see the best links-of-the-moment for this collection.

http://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/
http://www.reddit.com/r/SelfSufficiency/
http://www.reddit.com/r/food2/
http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Canning/
http://www.reddit.com/r/simpleliving/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/
http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/

Jocelyn Campbell wrote:Today, I ran across this excellent (albeit a bit extra glowy IMHO) video about reddit.

Here is a more realistic view of Reddit: https://www.dirjournal.com/articles/reddit-guide-how-to-use-reddit/

But as I wrote it, I admit it will be my opinion. Be careful what you do there. If you care about a particular username, be REALLY careful or use something else you won't mind losing. They are very bad about ghost-banning people for a single "infraction".