Reddit strategy for AI companion affiliates

Reddit is one of the few large platforms where people openly discuss AI companions, NSFW AI chat and character roleplay, often in dedicated communities. That makes it a natural fit for promoting Secrets AI. It also has some of the most aggressive anti-spam culture on the internet. Affiliates who treat Reddit like a link dump get removed in hours. Affiliates who treat it like a community they belong to can build a steady source of warm, high-intent traffic.

How Reddit decides what survives

Three layers filter your posts:

1. Reddit's site-wide rules and spam filters. These look at account age, karma, link patterns and whether many accounts push the same domain.
2. AutoModerator in each subreddit. Most active communities set minimum account age or karma, block certain domains, or hold link posts for review.
3. Human moderators and users. They remove or downvote anything that reads as an ad, especially from accounts that only ever post links.

You need to pass all three. Most removals come from the second and third layers.

Subreddit selection

Sort candidate communities into three groups.

Core communities. Subreddits about AI companions, AI girlfriends, character chat and AI roleplay. The audience already wants the product category. Rules on self-promotion are usually strict because so many affiliates target them.

Adjacent communities. AI art, anime characters, AI tools, chatbot comparisons, loneliness and dating discussions where AI comes up. Less direct intent, but less saturated. Only NSFW-marked communities are appropriate for adult discussion.

Your own community. A subreddit you create and moderate, for example around a character you built or a topic you post about. You set the rules, so you can link freely, but you have to grow it.

For each candidate, record:

• Whether it allows links, and which kinds
• Whether self-promotion is banned, limited (for example a weekly thread) or allowed
• Minimum karma or account age if stated
• Whether it is marked NSFW
• How active it is: posts per day and typical comment counts

Read the rules and the top posts of the past month before you post anything. The top posts tell you what the community rewards.

Account age and karma

New accounts with little karma get filtered almost everywhere. Before you promote anything:

• Use the account normally for a few weeks. Comment in communities you genuinely follow, including ones unrelated to AI.
• Build comment karma with useful replies. Comment karma generally carries more weight with moderators than post karma.
• Fill in the profile: avatar, short bio, a consistent identity.

Do not buy accounts or karma, and do not run accounts that vote on each other's posts. Vote manipulation is a site-wide rule violation and gets every connected account banned.

Value-first posting

The rule of thumb many experienced Redditors follow: most of your activity should be useful to the community and only a small share should point anywhere off-site. Posts that work in AI companion communities:

• Honest comparisons. What you found using several apps, including weaknesses. A fair post that mentions Secrets as one option survives better than a one-sided pitch.
• How-to posts. How to write a character prompt that holds personality, how long-term memory changes conversations, how to set up a scenario.
• Showcases. A character you built and an interesting exchange with it, within the community's content rules.
• Answers. Detailed replies to "which app should I use" and "does X do Y" threads.

Do not put your affiliate link in the post body unless the community explicitly allows it. Let readers come to you.

Comment strategy

Comments are where most Reddit affiliate traffic actually starts.

• Answer the question asked. If someone wants an app with voice calls and memory, explain what to look for and mention Secrets as one fit, with the reason.
• Be specific. "It remembered a detail from a week earlier" is credible. "Best app ever" is not.
• Mention, do not link. In most communities a product name in a helpful comment is fine. A raw link is not.
• Follow up. Reply when people ask more. Ongoing conversation builds the account's reputation.
• Disclose when relevant. If someone asks whether you are affiliated, say so. Hiding it gets accounts banned when discovered.

Profile funnels

Interested readers click your username. Your profile is the funnel.

• Put a clean, non-explicit description in the bio.
• Add your link in the profile's social link slot, pointing to an age-gated link page or bridge page rather than the raw offer.
• Pin a post on your profile that explains what you use and why, with your link.
• If you run your own subreddit, link it from the profile and put the tracking link in its sidebar or wiki.

This keeps links out of other people's communities while still capturing the readers who want them.

What gets removed

• Link posts to an affiliate URL from a low-karma account
• The same post or comment repeated across several subreddits
• Shortened or disguised links
• Posts that read like ad copy
• Promotion in communities that ban it, even if subtle
• NSFW content in communities not marked NSFW
• Comments that ignore the question to push a product

If a post is removed, read the removal reason and the rules again. Messaging moderators politely sometimes helps. Arguing never does.

Sub-ID tagging per subreddit

Your profile link is one link, but you can still attribute traffic. Options:

• One link page, many buttons. A link page whose buttons or entry URLs carry different sub-IDs.
• Per-community links where links are allowed. If a community permits links in a sidebar, wiki or weekly thread, give it its own tracking link.
• Your own subreddit. Its own sub-ID.

A practical scheme:

Field	Use	Example value
Source ID	Source	reddit
sub1	Click ID if your link page generates one (reserved)	{click_id}
sub2	Subreddit or placement group	r_aicompanions
sub3	Post or thread type	comparison_nov
sub4	Link location	profile, sidebar, wiki
sub5	Optional extra	nov_wave

Keep values lowercase with underscores so reports group cleanly. The full scheme is in tracking and sub-IDs.

Measuring

Weekly, review:

• Reddit side. Post and comment upvotes, removals per community, profile visits if you can see them.
• Everflow side. Clicks, signups and paying conversions by sub2 and sub3, in the Flex Report (Analytics → Flex).

Then act:

• Drop communities that remove your posts repeatedly.
• Focus on the post types (sub3) that produce paying users, not the ones that only produce upvotes.
• On RevShare, check whether Reddit referrals keep paying. Warm community traffic often does, which is why lifetime RevShare suits this channel.

Ask your affiliate manager for creatives and landers that match the angles your best posts use.

Next steps

• Add a video channel with the short-form video guide.
• Set up tracking with sub-IDs.
• Compare channels in the traffic sources guide.
• Apply to the Secrets AI affiliate program.