>> When you target to a sub, you have a good chance of showing up on that sub's home page - but no one really goes to a sub home. You need to get people on their front pages.

Not arguing with your larger points, but this is completely untrue for me — I only use Reddit via subreddit home pages, i.e., I never go to the "front page". I don't even know what a "front page" is. Is that where you just go to http://reddit.com/? I must have visited that once, way back when I first started using Reddit, but since then, never.

I have a dozen or so subreddits I'm interested in and when I will occasionally get a whim to check up on one of them, I navigate directly to the subreddit (autocomplete in the browser makes this easier). I also subscribe to RSS feeds for my subreddits.

Apparently I'm using Reddit in an unusual way.