Measuring Reddit ROI: From Comment to Customer

"Does Reddit actually work?" deserves a number, not a feeling. The measurement is messier than paid channels — but very doable for a solo founder.

What to track (the minimum viable stack)

Activity metrics (what you control):

• Replies posted, DMs sent, threads engaged — weekly counts
• Reply standing: upvotes, mod removals, poster responses

Thread metrics (what Reddit gives back):

• Comment score trajectory — high-performing answers keep earning
• Thread ranking: which of your threads now surface on Google for target queries
• Removal rate — the account-health canary

Business metrics (what pays):

• Referral traffic: reddit.com in your analytics, plus direct/DM-driven signups that don't show referrer
• Signup attribution: a "how did you hear about us" field captures the dark-social share that analytics misses
• DM conversions: prospects → conversations → customers, tracked per pipeline stage

The attribution reality

A chunk of Reddit-driven signup will never show a referrer — someone reads your comment Tuesday, Googles you Thursday. Accept it; the trend line still tells the truth. Over-rotate on perfect attribution and you'll abandon a channel that's quietly working.

The unit that matters

Customer acquisition cost in founder-hours. If 15 minutes/day produces two customers/month, that's ~7 hours per customer — a rate no ad platform touches at this stage. When the numbers prove it, scaling is just more of the same mornings.

Review monthly: which subs convert, which thread types, which reply styles. Reddit ROI isn't found in a dashboard — it's found in the pattern of what keeps working.