You’ve seen it floating around Twitter. Or X. Or whatever Elon’s calling it today.
Some guy swears there’s a working Reddit scheme: spin up some accounts, mask them through AdsPower, sprinkle in Geonix proxies, post a “what’s the best X tool?” question, and—two days later—edit that post to drop your referral link. Supposedly free traffic, baby.
Sounds easy, right? Like one of those “just five minutes a day” side hustle videos with aggressive ukulele music. But let’s slow down a bit.
1. The anatomy of the trick
The playbook’s simple. You make or buy a few Reddit accounts. Not fresh ones. Those get insta-banned. You need aged profiles—ones that have karma, comment history, and maybe a few posts about cats or local food. Anything human.
Then comes the disguise part. Anti-detect browsers like AdsPower or Incogniton are your mask. They give every account a new “digital fingerprint”—unique cookies, user agents, fonts, even timezones. You match the timezone to your proxy’s location (Geonix, or whatever provider you prefer) so Reddit doesn’t see your five accounts all posting from the same couch in Warsaw.
Each account lives in its own little bubble, isolated. That way, if one burns, the others survive. It’s like raising clones and pretending they’re all strangers.
Now, once your identities are in place, you pick your battleground—subreddits that rank high in Google. “r/CryptoCurrency,” “r/Entrepreneur,” “r/SaaS,” “r/Dropshipping,” anything where people ask for advice.
The post formula is always the same:
“What’s the best [tool/product/app] for [problem]?”
Looks harmless, right? A curious newbie asking for help. No link, no sales pitch. Just an innocent question to the hive mind.
Then you wait. A couple of days. Maybe add a comment or two to look alive.
And when the post is indexed and untouched by mods—you edit it. Drop your link. Sometimes a Medium article that redirects to an affiliate offer. Sometimes a “comparison blog.” Sometimes straight-up ref link. Then you sit back and watch. Maybe you get traffic, maybe you get banned. It’s roulette with karma points.
2. Does it actually work?
Short answer: occasionally. Long answer: only if you’re stubborn.
Some people have pulled it off. There’s that old SEO blogger, Harsh Strongman, who wrote how his affiliate comments from a decade ago still bring in a trickle of sales. He used the same logic—blend in, post, wait, edit, profit. And yeah, Google loves Reddit threads. They rank ridiculously well. A Reddit post with your link can end up top three for some long-tail keyword and feed you passive clicks for months.
But Reddit isn’t stupid. The anti-spam systems evolved faster than most “growth hackers” realized.
Now, the moment you edit a post and insert a link, the filters sniff it.
Mods get an alert. Sometimes the system shadow-removes it instantly.
There’s even a known bug (or feature?) where any post you edit with a new external link gets silently flagged and vanishes from public view, even though you still see it on your own profile. You think it’s live. It’s not. Nobody else can see it. That’s called a shadowban.
So yes, the “wait and edit” move worked better in 2021. Now? Half the time, your link disappears before anyone clicks it.
3. The human factor (and how Reddit smells fear)
Redditors have this built-in bullshit detector. You can’t fake it easily.
If your account’s new, posts weirdly polished questions, or talks like a marketing intern—they’ll tear you apart. Downvotes, reports, bans. Gone in an hour.
Even if your post survives the bots, you still have to pass people. Mods sniff patterns. Same syntax, same “what’s the best…” question popping up weekly with different usernames—it’s obvious.
I’ve seen threads where mods literally compare writing style and IP ranges. They ban all related accounts in bulk. And once one sub bans you, other subs sometimes auto-ban. Reddit has a shared spam database.
That’s why those “anti-detect” setups exist in the first place—to break that chain of tracking. And yes, technically, they help. Reddit doesn’t instantly connect your five sockpuppets. But again—if the content sucks, you’re toast anyway.
The golden rule? Blend in. Spend a week or two just posting memes, commenting, upvoting others. Earn some karma. Be part of the conversation before selling anything. People who skip that step never last.
4. Why people still try it
Because it sometimes hits.
You post in r/SideHustle or r/CryptoCurrency with a catchy title like “What’s the best mobile wallet for USDT?”—and boom, Google picks it up. A few hundred visitors a month, steady trickle, no ad spend. Even if half of them bounce, a few will click your ref link.
But those small wins blind people. They forget that every 10th post might survive while the other nine get nuked. That means endless churn—new accounts, new proxies, new warm-ups.
If you’re running an affiliate network or testing offers, fine—it’s a disposable tactic. But if you’re trying to build a brand or legit project, it’s suicide. One exposure thread (“OP is shilling his own product”) and you’re done. Redditors don’t forgive manipulation.
5. The tech props—do they matter?
AdsPower, Multilogin, GoLogin… fancy toys. They do one thing: make Reddit think each of your accounts lives on a different planet. Different canvas fingerprint, hardware ID, timezone, IP, all of it. Without that, you’ll get mass-banned after your second login.
So yes—they work, in the technical sense. If you’re managing 10+ accounts or buying aged ones, you need an anti-detect browser. It keeps your identities clean.
Geonix proxies? Sure. Residential IPs look like real users. Avoid datacenter proxies—they’re blacklisted faster than you can spell “proxy.”
But these tools don’t help your writing. They don’t make you sound human. You can cloak your device all you want, but if your first sentence reads like ChatGPT trying to be relatable—people will smell it.
Honestly, the best “anti-detect” is personality. Sound like a real Redditor: messy grammar, opinions, emotion. No one trusts perfect grammar there.
6. The money math (and disappointment)
People brag about making $500, $1000, maybe $2k a month from this. And that’s possible. But it’s a grind. Dozens of posts, daily maintenance, juggling bans, replacing dead accounts.
One marketer admitted he still earns pocket change from decade-old affiliate comments but said outright: “This will never make you tens of thousands. It’s just a dirty side stream.”
That’s the truth—this whole Reddit game isn’t scalable. You can’t automate human trust. Reddit hates automation; every API, every bot, every script gets throttled or banned. So you end up doing it by hand. Slowly. Carefully. Pretending to be five different personalities. Exhausting.
If you put that same energy into an actual blog, or building a product, you’d have something stable. But hey, some people enjoy the chase more than the reward.
7. The smarter version of the same idea
If you must use Reddit for marketing, there’s a cleaner way. Be transparent.
Write long, honest posts with genuine info. Put your link right there, but make the content worth it. Like a mini-guide, not a pitch.
There’s this unspoken Reddit rule: if a post is good enough, the community forgives a self-promo. They might even upvote it. Some affiliate folks now openly tag posts as “I work with X, but here’s my honest review.” Those stay up way longer than sneaky edits.
So instead of hiding your link behind fake curiosity, just earn the right to drop it. People can tell when you’re faking it. It’s 2025—AI spam’s everywhere, users crave real voices.
Ironically, being too clever—using proxies, writing prompts, delayed edits—makes you look less human, not more.