Comments are the metric, not members
Member count is the number everyone asks about, and it's the least useful one. Over 12 months we published 2.2K posts and got 8.7K comments. That 4:1 ratio is the whole business case: a subreddit where people answer each other is a place people return to. A subreddit full of unanswered posts is a graveyard with a member count.
So the operating rule became simple: every question in the community gets a genuinely useful answer, fast. Growth followed activity, not the other way around.
We removed 988 posts on purpose
Almost a third of everything submitted got removed. Self-promotion, low-effort questions, disguised link drops. It felt brutal early on when the community was small and any activity seemed precious.
But retention proved it right: 4.2K people joined and only 73 ever left. People stay in rooms where the signal is high. Moderation isn't the boring admin work around growth. It is the growth strategy.
One thread can bend the whole curve
In March, views jumped 4.5K in six days off a single thread that caught traction. That month alone the community went from 208 to 555 members. You can't predict which thread pops, but you can control the batting average: threads framed as real questions, written the way people actually search, with no brand mention in sight.
What didn't work
Posting more didn't work. Cross-posting the same content everywhere didn't work. Anything that smelled like marketing actively hurt, because Reddit's immune response is instant and permanent. The only lever that consistently worked was answering questions better than anyone else in the niche.
Growth followed activity, not the other way around.
If you're starting a community from zero: pick a niche small enough that you can be the most useful person in it, moderate harder than feels comfortable, and measure comments before members. The rest compounds on its own.