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You don’t need a huge audience to have a lot of success. It’s better to find that niche audience and focus. “The Riches are in the Nichess” as they say. 

Insurance Exam Queen (IEQ), aka Melissa Dillon, on YouTube is proof of that.

She started her channel several years ago and has experience as a teacher and in working in the insurance industry.

She combined both to help people pass insurance both of the most license exams, Life & Health and Property & Casualty, with her YouTube channel.

I can attest to the fact this insurance exam material is quite boring… I feel asleep while studying for my Life & Health exam. 🙂

I watched IEQ for the L&H and when studying for P&C License and passed both on my first attempts. All thanks to watching Melissa’s videos.

She makes learning about insurance fun, engaging, and interesting. Something I believe most people would be surprised by.

IEQ has paid courses along with insurance classes and coaching sessions.

She’s made $1 million+ dollars since she started her YouTube channel years ago. Likely more now as this was what she made at the 4-year mark.

Currently the IEQ channel sits at around 8.2 million views.

Most YouTubers might scoff at a such a “low” number of views. Thee are YouTube that do these types of views a day.

However, going viral is not the point of the channel. It’s designed to help people with a very specific need and topic. The people looking to pass these test are looking for new careers or starting careers in insurance.

What about Reddit?

Most of you reading this are probably thinking, “What does this have to do with Reddit?” After all MuttMarketing main focus is on helping clients with Reddit Marketing and getting mentions.

Well Meilssa and her Insurance Exam Queen has great reviews online anywhere you look.

This includes on Reddit.

People constantly mention her when Redditors ask about studying for resources for the Property & Casualty exam or the Life & Health exams. She also has added a courser for passing to get an Adjusters license.

People are eager to jump to say how helpful she was, what a great teacher she is and that you should watch her videos.

She earned those mentions because she offers such a great service to the insurance world.

Lots of people ask me how they can get similar mentions on Reddit.

When you have a great service or product like IEQ, it’s easy.

Not only does she get a lot of Reddit mentions but all of these mentions are feed into AI. I’ve asked a lot of questions about studying insurance. Guess how comes up?

Insurance Exam Queen.

It’s not like she had a great scheme to get these mentions. She focused on what people need to know to pass insurance exams… and boom. She gets AI Citations.

Redditors Honesty

Redditors are honest when something doesn’t meet expectations or kind of sucks. I see it all the time.

Most managers and executives are not prepared for this. It’s usually why they actively avoid and hate Reddit. They don’t like negative feedback.

Insurance Exam Queen far exceeds anyone expectations. So her reviews, citations, and mentions are all great.

I actually don’t think I’ve seen 1 bad review of what she offers.

That’s why Melissa has been so successful with her insurance teaching business.

Great service gets rewarded on Reddit and honesty wins with Redditors.

Many people try to take over inactive or unmoderated subreddit communities through a process know as Reddit Request.

Reddit Request is a process and subreddit where Redditors can request to be a Mod on a subreddit. There are thousands of communities on Reddit and Mods do not manage them forever. Many come and go as life changes.

Often a Reddit community can be abandoned and is ripe to take over for new community leadership.

The Reddit Request process is a bit complex for those new to it but generally for them to be successful you need an active Reddit account. Most clients MuttMarketing works with do not in our experience. This makes it a bit more complicated as Reddit always awards participation.

Reddit has also additional guidelines for accounts doing a Reddit Request these days. For instance you need 2FA enabled on your account.

Just because you want to take over a Reddit community through does not mean Reddit Admins will let you.

Publicly some of what we know Reddit have stated when reviewing requests are listed below.

1. Moderator Experience

If you are requesting a Reddit community that had a lot of users, traffic and posts everyday, but no Mod experience, Reddit may not like this.

They like to see if you have previous moderator experience. Managing a smaller Reddit community takes a lot of work and time most regular Reddit users do not understand and realize.

There is a lot more to it than meets the eye. It’s like going from just coming into work to being a manager. Completely different mindset and Reddit Admins, those who work at Reddit, know this.

2. No Reddit Activity

If you are NOT upvoting, downvoting, or commenting on Reddit… why do you want run a community?

Reddit typically want to see you are an active member in Reddit to let you manage a community.

It helps to participate in Reddit, something I tell clients all the time.

You can’t expect Reddit to just give you access to a big potential community with no history.

3. NSFW (Not Safe for Work) Mod Experience

This is more specific to NSFW, and some that focus on OnlyFans, but I’ve seen these get denied as well.

NSFW subreddits come with a lot of extra headaches for mod duties. Be prepared for it if you want to take over a NSFW subreddit.

We typically find a lot of those clients that work with OnlyFans models want to manage NSFQ subreddits. Makes sense and many of the larger OF agencies actually Mod the larger NSFW subreddits.

4. Inactive Moderation

If you are already a Mod in a Reddit community and just let chaos happen in the subreddit… welll you will definitely be denied.

Again Reddit likes to see active participation in the community.

If you are not Modding this community, why would they let you Mod another community?

Granted they do know that sometimes Mods want to move on from certain communities. Interests and hobbies change.

5. Too Much Modding

If you have  50 subreddits you are Modding for, Reddit will not like this either.

Managing communities properly takes a lot of time, care, and mental energy. They prefer you focus on a few.

Reddit even updated the rules recently so that Mods can only handle 5 subreddits with 100,000 members or more.

This sounds like a lot but there are a lot of Mods with a lot of experience that used to sit on the top of the food chain. They are trying to even it out these days.

6. Account Suspensions

If you have had any recent suspensions of Reddit accounts, this will not be looked on favorable by Reddit.

If you get banned, why would they let you Mod a Subreddit?

7. Community Bans

If you have been banned from a lot of communities, Reddit will definitely take this into consideration.

I’ve seen many Redditors say they want to be banned from a community. This doesn’t make sense if you want to be a Mod. Getting banned from a lot of communitie signals to Reddit you are not following good Reddiquette.

Why are you getting banned so much and why?

8. Violation of Reddit ToS

If you have violated Reddit’s Terms of Service this is a pretty obvious no.

It happens with a lot of AI companies I work with though that came to Mutt Marketing.

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Anyway if you are interested in putting together a good Reddit Request or walking through the process, let me know.