Reddit Post Examples: Good vs Bad, Annotated
A good Reddit post leads with the problem or the story, names the product once and late, keeps the link out of the first few lines, and ends with a real question. A bad post does the opposite: it opens with the pitch, reads like landing-page copy, repeats the link, and closes with a call to action instead of a question. Every example below is an illustrative composite built for a fictional product, written to show the pattern, not a real scraped post or a real person.
Below are four annotated teardowns, each a bad version of a common post type next to a good rewrite of the same idea, with the exact lines flagged and explained. Use the comparison table and the self-check at the end to run your own draft through the same test before you post it.
Reddit's weekly active user base, the full pool a single post can reach if it clears moderation instead of getting removed for reading like an ad.
View the Reddit usage data (Business of Apps)TL;DR: what separates good from bad
Good titles are specific and lowercase-normal, often a question or a plain statement of what happened. Bad titles are capitalized like a headline, stuffed with adjectives, or announce an achievement nobody asked about.
Good posts put the product name and link near the end, after the context has earned it, or leave the link out of the body entirely. Bad posts open with the link or repeat it two or three times.
Good posts spend most of their words on what was hard, what was tried, or what is being asked. Bad posts spend most of their words describing features and benefits, which is what a landing page is for.
Good posts close by asking something specific that invites a reply. Bad posts close with a link, a discount code, or a generic 'let me know what you think' that reads as filler.
What each callout below means
Every teardown below tags specific lines with one of three labels. Here is what each one signals before you read the examples.
Skip the draft that needs a teardown
Describe your product and the subreddit you are posting in, and get a title, a full draft, and removal-risk warnings that catch the ad-speak and link-placement problems shown above before you ever paste anything into Reddit.
Title options
The launch post
Illustrative composite for a fictional product. Not a real post, not a real account.
🚀 Introducing TaskFlow AI - The Future of Team Productivity is HERE! We are THRILLED to announce the launch of TaskFlow AI, a revolutionary new project management tool built for modern teams! ✅ AI-powered task prioritization ✅ Real-time collaboration ✅ Beautiful, intuitive interface ✅ Seamless integrations with 50+ tools After months of hard work, our team is proud to bring you the ultimate productivity solution. Sign up today at taskflow-ai.example and get 50% off your first year! Check us out: https://taskflow-ai.example/launch Would love to hear your thoughts!
Spent 4 months building a task tool because Trello kept losing our team's context. Here's what I learned My team was losing an hour a week just re-explaining task context that got buried in comment threads. I tried three existing tools and none of them solved that specific problem, so I built one. The hardest part was not the AI prioritization, it was figuring out how much context to surface without turning the task list into a wall of text. I ended up with a summary line that expands only when you click it, which took three complete redesigns to get right. It's called TaskFlow AI if anyone wants to poke at it (link in profile). More interested in whether this "lost context" problem is one other teams actually have, or if it was just a quirk of how my team worked. What do you use to keep task history from getting buried?
The feedback request
Illustrative composite for a fictional product. Not a real post, not a real account.
Please review my SaaS landing page and give feedback!! Hey guys, I built a landing page for my new SaaS product InvoiceSnap (invoicesnap.example) and I would really appreciate some feedback from this awesome community! It's an invoicing tool for freelancers. The design took me weeks and I think it looks pretty professional now. Let me know what you think, and if you like it, sign up for early access! Every bit of feedback helps a small business like mine grow. Thanks so much in advance!!
Freelancers: does this pricing section make it obvious what you're paying for, or is it confusing? (landing page for an invoicing tool) I've rewritten the pricing section on my invoicing tool's landing page four times and I still cannot tell if it's clear or if I've just stared at it too long to judge it fairly. Specific things I'm unsure about: - Does "per client, not per invoice" make sense on first read, or does it need an example? - Is the free tier's limit (3 clients) obvious before you scroll down, or does it feel hidden? - Would you trust a tool that doesn't show a demo video anywhere on the page? Link is in a comment below to keep the post itself free of self promo. Brutal honesty is welcome, I'd rather hear it now than after launch.
The 'I built X' post
Illustrative composite for a fictional product. Not a real post, not a real account.
I built an AI resume builder in 3 weeks and it's already making $2k MRR!! Hey everyone! Just wanted to share my exciting journey building ResumeGenie, an AI-powered resume builder that helps job seekers land their dream job faster! In just 3 weeks I went from idea to $2k MRR, which I'm super proud of. The tool uses cutting-edge AI to optimize your resume for ATS systems and craft compelling bullet points automatically. If you're job hunting or know someone who is, check it out at resumegenie.example - first 100 signups get lifetime pro for free! AMA about my indie hacker journey!
Built an ATS resume checker after getting rejected by a system I never saw. Here's what I learned about how these filters actually work Got rejected from four jobs in a row with zero explanation, then found out most of it never reached a human, an ATS scored the resume against the job description first. I wanted to know exactly what it was scoring, so I spent three weeks reverse-engineering the common patterns. The biggest surprise: formatting matters more than wording. Tables, columns, and headers/footers get mangled or dropped entirely by a lot of these parsers, which explains a lot of "qualified but never called back" stories I'd heard. I turned what I learned into a small checker (ResumeGenie, link in profile) that flags formatting issues before you submit. No idea if this is a problem worth solving for anyone besides me. Has anyone else here gotten ATS-rejected and never found out why?
The question post
Illustrative composite for a fictional product. Not a real post, not a real account.
How do I get more users for my startup? (also check out my product below) I run a small startup called LinkPulse (link tracking for marketers) and growth has stalled. We're at 40 users and haven't grown in a month. What marketing channels have worked for you? Paid ads, SEO, content marketing, cold outreach? Also if anyone wants to check us out: linkpulse.example. Would appreciate any feedback or upvotes to get this seen by more people! Thanks in advance for any tips!
Stalled at 40 users for a month after early traction. What's the actual first move: more channels, or fixing what's not converting? Got to 40 users mostly from a single Show HN-style post, then growth flatlined completely. I've been assuming the answer is "try more channels," but I'm increasingly unsure that's even the right question to be asking at this stage. For people who broke out of a similar plateau: did more channels actually move the number, or did you find the real problem was upstream of that, something like onboarding drop-off or the core value prop not being obvious fast enough? Trying to figure out where to spend the next two weeks before I default to just throwing more channels at it.
Good vs bad, across every dimension
The same seven checks the teardowns above apply, laid out flat so you can run your own draft against each row.
| Dimension | Bad | Good |
|---|---|---|
| Title | Capitalized like a headline, emoji, adjectives ('revolutionary', 'ultimate'), announces an achievement | Lowercase-normal, specific, often a question or a plain statement of the situation |
| Opening line | Names the product and what it does in the first sentence | States the problem, the story, or the question first; the product waits |
| Link placement | In the title, at the top of the body, or repeated more than once | Near the end and once, or moved to a comment entirely on newer accounts |
| Body content | Feature list, benefit language, adjectives that could sit on a landing page unchanged | What was tried, what was hard, what was learned, told in plain sentences |
| Proof and claims | Unverifiable numbers stated as fact (revenue, user counts) with no context for how they were reached | Numbers included only with context, or left out entirely if they cannot be shown |
| Ending | A link, a discount code, a call to sign up, or a generic 'let me know what you think' | A specific, honestly uncertain question that invites a real reply |
| Tone | Excited, promotional, written to be shared, exclamation points doing the emotional work | Plain, slightly uncertain, written to be discussed, more like a message to a peer |
The five patterns behind almost every bad post
Every bad example above traces back to one or more of these. Recognize the pattern and you can catch it in your own draft even without a line-by-line teardown.
Landing-page language leaking into the body
Phrases like 'seamless integration', 'cutting-edge', or 'the ultimate solution' are written for a page designed to convert on sight. A Reddit post is read by people who came to be skeptical, and the same words that work on a landing page read as a red flag here.
The link doing too much work
A link at the top of the post, in the title, or repeated more than once concentrates the promotional signal in the first few seconds a reader or a filter sees the post. Moving it later, or into a comment, spreads that signal out and gives the surrounding context a chance to land first.
Claims without a way to check them
A specific number stated with no supporting detail, no method, and no context reads as marketing copy even if it happens to be true. Several subreddits enforce this explicitly by requiring proof before an MRR or user-count claim is allowed to stand at all.
A call to action instead of a question
'Check it out', 'let me know what you think', and 'sign up today' are all instructions aimed at the reader's wallet or attention. A real question aimed at the reader's experience or opinion is what actually produces a comment thread instead of a scroll-past.
Asking for upvotes, engagement, or shares directly
Any explicit ask for votes or shares reads as an attempt to manipulate the post's visibility, which is treated seriously by moderators and Reddit's own systems regardless of how politely it is phrased.
How to run your own draft through this test
Five checks, in order, pulled directly from what separated the good rewrites from the bad originals above.
1. Cover the last paragraph and read only the title and first two sentences
If those alone could be mistaken for a headline or an ad, the post needs a rewrite before anything else matters. This is the single fastest self-check and catches most bad posts on its own.
2. Count how many times the product name or link appears
Once, near the end, is the target for most subreddits. Two or more is worth a hard look, and some subreddits are safer with the link left out of the body entirely and dropped in a comment instead.
3. Circle every adjective
Words like 'revolutionary', 'seamless', 'powerful', and 'game-changing' are the fastest tell of ad-speak. Replace each one with a concrete detail, a number with context, or cut it outright.
4. Check the last sentence for a real question
If the post ends with a link, a call to action, or a generic 'thoughts?', rewrite the ending as a specific question you are genuinely unsure about. A closing question is what turns a post into a discussion.
5. Read the subreddit's rules against the finished draft, line by line
A post can pass every check on this page and still get removed for a rule specific to that community, like r/startups requiring 250+ characters or r/smallbusiness requiring the post be phrased as a question. The generic checks above are necessary, not sufficient.
This page vs the title-only examples page
If you only need to fix a title, Reddit Post Title Examples That Actually Get Upvoted covers titles only, with the exact word patterns that tend to earn upvotes. This page is the companion: full posts, teardown by teardown, covering the opening line, the body, link placement, and the ending, not just the headline. Use the title page to sharpen the first line, then use this page to check everything that follows it. For the specific phrasing swaps that turn ad-speak into Reddit-native language, see How to Write a Reddit Post That Doesn’t Sound Like an Ad, which goes deeper on rewriting individual sentences than the teardowns above have room for.
If you only remember three lines
Problem first, product late. Every good example above spends most of its words on the story or the question before the product is ever named.
One link, placed deliberately. Late in the body, or moved to a comment entirely, not repeated and not at the top.
End with a real question. Not a call to action, a genuine, specific question you do not already know the answer to.
What actually earns upvotes, in one walkthrough
Reddit post examples, answered
Are the examples on this page real Reddit posts?
No. Every example is an illustrative composite written for a fictional product, built to show a pattern clearly, not a real scraped post or a real account. No usernames, subreddit post URLs, or upvote counts on this page are real.
What is the single most common mistake in a bad Reddit post?
Leading with the product instead of the problem. Nearly every bad example on this page opens by naming the product and what it does in the first sentence, which reads as an ad before the reader has any reason to care. Good posts spend the opening on the story or the question and let the product show up late.
Should the link always be in the body of the post?
Not always. Several subreddits filter or downrank link-in-body posts from newer accounts, so a text post that tells the story with the link dropped in a comment is often safer, as shown in the feedback-request and 'I built X' teardowns above. Check the specific subreddit's rules, since some require the link in the post and others restrict it there.
Is it ever okay to mention revenue or user numbers in a post?
Only with context. A number stated alone, with no explanation of how it was reached, reads as a flex rather than information, and several subreddits explicitly require proof before an MRR or user-count claim is allowed to stand at all. If you cannot show the context, it is usually safer to leave the number out.
What makes a title good versus bad, in one sentence?
A good title states a specific situation or question in plain, lowercase-normal language, while a bad title reads like a headline, with capitalization, emoji, or adjectives like 'revolutionary' doing the work a real sentence should be doing.
How is this page different from the title examples page?
The title examples page covers headlines only, the exact word patterns that tend to earn upvotes. This page covers full posts end to end, teardown by teardown, including the opening line, the body, link placement, and the ending, so use both together rather than one instead of the other.
Can I just copy one of the good rewrites and post it?
No. These are illustrative examples for a fictional product, not templates to paste verbatim. Copying one word for word would misrepresent your own product and would also read as generic to anyone who has seen the pattern before. Use them to learn the structure, then write your own version in your own voice.
What should I do after reading this page?
Run your own draft through the five-step self-check above, then compare it against the good vs bad table for anything you missed. If you want a first draft that already follows these patterns for your specific product and subreddit, use the Reddit Post Generator to skip straight to a version worth editing instead of one that needs a teardown.