Merchant's Guide to Reddit

Hey 👋

We all make mistakes and fall short 😥 

Especially in eCom, where there are way too many things that can go wrong 😬 

That’s why it’s best we learn from other’s mistakes & success.

And there’s no place better to learn than the frontpage of the internet, Reddit.

In today’s post, we’ll share a plant-based success story, an “ask me anything” from 7-figure store owner, and a "roast me” — Shopify edition 💀

Plus, we’ll teach you how to find only the most valuable info that can save you hundreds of hours with a few cool tools to instantly find what you need.

Let’s get into it 🔥

1. Why Reddit is a Goldmine for eCom 🤖 

Reddit can be extremely valuable to your store if you use it right. The best part is — it’s full of very diverse UGC. Merchants with all sorts of problems share their stories and seek out help.

It’s likely that most of the problems you’ve faced (and are currently dealing with), have already been extensively talked about and solved.

The trick is knowing which subreddits to look through, and the main 5 that are super valuable for eCom are:

1️⃣ r/Shopify — the official Shopify subreddit with 279k merchants

2️⃣ r/ecommerce — by far the biggest, with 507K eCom brand owners (not just Shopify-exclusive, but also with the likes of Amazon FBA & other DTC models)

3️⃣ r/ReviewMyShopify — 33K merchants, sharing their Shopify sites and flows looking for honest feedback

4️⃣ r/ShopifyEcommerce — with 27K brand owners, another alternative to r/Shopify

5️⃣ r/ShopifyGeeks — last, but not least, a more “hack-oriented” subreddit with tips and tricks most store owners don’t know about

While browsing them traditionally can still be useful, there’s a much better way to get the most out of Reddit to grow your brand..

Before we get to that, let’s look at a success story and a few very valuable posts we’ve found on the platform so you can get a rough idea of what to expect 😄 

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2. Million Dollar Plant Store ☘️   

The Sill a plant store that raised over $7.5M, and the owner shared exactly what they did in a post on r/Shopify.

In that post, he shared the four main points of The Sill’s success:

1️⃣ Ranked 1st On Google — The Sill’s site at the time ranked #1 for “plants”, and they did this with great PR, organic traffic, and quality backlinks. As the original poster said, “The Sill is a journalist’s dream”.

The whole idea of tying business & lifestyle into a single story during the age of IG & eco-friendliness helped the press & people write about it massively.

2️⃣ Low Competition — the original poster outlined that they were in the perfect spot, between your home depot and local garden centre. Neither of those could rank highly with the keywords “plants” and “plant delivery”, this was their unfair advantage.

3️⃣ The SEO Kicks In — once they had strong enough backlinks, they looked for topics that were less written about, such as “the best plants for shade”.

Can you believe that term gets 3k searches a month? They understood content like this needs to be written about informatively to get more eyes on their brand.

The poster suggests using Google Ads Search to find competitive keywords that can bring in money, for them it was terms like “plant delivery nyc”. The Sill would create separate pages for their brick-and-mortar stores with SEO focused on those keywords depending on city in the keyword.

This post closes off with the idea that retargeting ads can convert customers at a low rate, and all of the Shopify apps “The Sill” used at the end — a super clean, well-structured and value-packed post 🔥

P.S. — Want to learn more about chargebacks and how to win & prevent them? Check out our eCom Chargebacks Guide 👀

3. AMA’s & Honest Feedback 🧠 

While success stories like The Sill’s can be rare to find, you can find crazy value in just looking through r/ReviewMyShopify and searching for AMAs (ask me anything posts).

Here’s an awesome AMA where hundreds of merchants got to pick the brain of someone who turned their dropshipping store into a 7-figure brand:

This is literal gold — the poster answered hard questions like scaling winning ads without killing CR%, his product selection process, MOQs and more.

He even talked on touchy subjects most won’t talk about, like how much start-up money he had (which was around $1.8K, by the way), and admitting whether it was mostly luck or knowledge that played the big role in his store’s success.

Best part is, he’s still active to this day, and you can probably drop a comment and pick his brain a bit yourself. Posts like these are pretty plentiful, and even if you work in a certain niche, we’ll soon teach you how to find these goldmines 😉 

The next post is someone seeking honest feedback on their jewellery store, DEF:

The author wrote a very extensive post on their store, admitting that email automation isn’t yet set up, talking about what they’ve done, like visit their very own manufacturers in China.

But of course, they wanted honest feedback, and they got it. This is similar to a “roast me”, but for something you might love more than yourself — your Shopify store 😭

Lots of people highlighted that the site copy was great and had personality, while others point out the site itself is bland. Someone even pointed out that OP said they have manufacturers in China, but the site says the jewellery is hand-made in Brooklyn.

And there were a few more valuable replies like spec sizing needs more info, and measurements for whatever reason aren’t there — all in all the store owner got the honest feedback they looked for.

You probably see the potential and the value in Reddit for eCom, so let’s finally cut to the chase and show you how to research properly 🔥

P.S. — Check out our 2024 Ecommerce Recap in case you missed it, we covered every hot topic of last year, including the TikTok Ban (or bid), the de minimis loophole crackdown and 2024’s eCom holiday statistics 👀

4. eCom-Focused Searching on Reddit 🔎 

We personally use 2 tools to find valuable info on Reddit, but you can pick and choose however you need, we’ll start off with by far the best tool — GummySearch.

Here’s a neat visual showing how to use it, and a step-by-step guide:

1️⃣ Create an Audience — after signing up, create your first audience with a few subreddits you think may be helpful. Anything Shopify-related works (apart from Apps & Dev, unless you are a developer yourself).

2️⃣ Keyword Search — this is the fun part. Search for anything, like AMA, MOQs, any problems you’re having with your eCom brand.

3️⃣ Sort by Anything — you can sort by upvotes, comments, and upvotes. Can be handy if you’re looking for the best posts first, or if you want more opinions.

Yup, it’s really that easy. The free version of GummySearch is more than enough, but if you want analytics, trends, and AI reports, you could opt in for the paid version (at $59/mo 😬)

The next tool we use is Anvaka, a less popular but still very efficient site that lets you search multiple subreddits very fast.

Here’s a visual showing you how to use it:

1️⃣ Query — search for a subreddit name, you can start with Shopify like we did.

2️⃣ Connections — you’ll instantly see a web of connections, every subreddit tied to the main query you made. The ones highlighted in pink are most similar.

3️⃣ Browsing — this is pretty much a very simplified version of Reddit, letting you sort posts by hot, new, controversial (with time margins), and the top posts.

This tool, in contrast to the first one, is just a way to browse without all the clutter. We all hate getting distracted and wish to learn more, and I couldn’t find a better solution for that than Anvaka, with Gummysearch being the better of the two for finding the exact content you need!

And that’s that — we covered why Reddit’s a goldmine for eCom value, a few awesome posts highlighting success and giving tangible feedback, and the tools you need to find exactly what you want 🔥

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Daniil from ECORN