How to launch on Reddit without getting banned

Reddit defines spam as “repeated or unsolicited actions (whether automated or manual) that negatively affect users, communities, and/or Reddit itself”, and says it is never allowed (Reddit Help: Spam). The first example on its list is “Mass-posting repetitive content for the purpose of exposure or financial gain.” Others include sending large amounts of unsolicited chat or private messages, and using tools such as bots or generative AI in ways that facilitate spam.

The same page speaks directly to people with something to sell:

• If your contributions consist “primarily of links to a business that you run, own, or otherwise benefit from”, Reddit asks you to be thoughtful about how often you post, or to consider its advertising platform.
• If you’re unsure whether something counts as spam, check whether the community has specific rules of its own.
• Community moderators “adjudicate what constitutes unwanted/spammy content in their communities and may take action accordingly”.

Reddit’s guidance to moderators fills in the rest: “On Reddit, promotional content is not inherently considered to be spam.” Some communities disallow any promotional content. Others follow what the page calls the 10% rule, under which only 10% of your posting and comment history in the community can be self-promotional (Reddit Help for moderators). Reddiquette, which Reddit describes as an informal expression of users’ values written by users themselves, puts it as a guideline that only 1 in 10 of your submissions should be your own content (Reddiquette).

Neither figure is a site-wide limit that Reddit enforces by counting. They tell you what moderators are likely to expect: an account that takes part in the community and occasionally shares its own work.

Because moderators have the final say inside their community, the same post can be welcome in one place and a ban in another. Reddiquette’s first instruction for posting is “Read the rules of a community before making a submission.” Read all of them, since the self-promotion rule is often further down the list.

There can also be requirements you can’t see in advance:

• Karma minimums. Reddit says some communities require a certain amount of karma before you can post, to prevent spam, and that you earn karma by participating in communities you’re interested in (Reddit Help: karma).
• Undisclosed thresholds. When you start a post in a community whose criteria you don’t meet, a Poster Eligibility Guide tells you why and what you can do about it. Reddit notes that the specific karma and account age thresholds aren’t disclosed (Reddit Help: Poster Eligibility Guide).
• Filters. Moderators can turn on AutoModerator rules, reputation filtering and other safety settings that hold or filter posts from accounts that look like potential spammers, according to the moderator guidance linked above.

Reddit also has a feature called Post Check, which uses a language model to point out possible rule violations before you post. It doesn’t stop you posting, so treat a warning as a reason to reread the rules and a clean result as no guarantee.

Do this a few weeks before launch, for each community you’re considering:

1. Read the rules and any pinned posts. Look for the words self-promotion, advertising, links, and for a designated thread or day for sharing projects.
2. Search the community for posts like yours. Find a few where a maker shared their own product. Are they still up? How did they phrase it, and how were they received?
3. Start a draft post there. If your account doesn’t meet the criteria, the eligibility guide will say so before you’ve written anything.
4. Ask the moderators if the rules are unclear. Reddit’s spam page says you may contact a community’s moderators for clarification. A short message saying what you made and asking whether a post about it is acceptable costs nothing.
5. Take part first. Answer questions in the community for a while. It earns the karma some communities require, and it puts your history on the right side of a 10% rule.

Reddiquette asks you to “Post to the most appropriate community possible.” Two or three communities where your users actually are, each with a post written for that community, will do more than a dozen copies. The copies are also what Reddit’s spam definition describes.

Reddiquette asks for titles that are “factual and opinion free”. It’s a good rule for a launch post anywhere. Write the post so that a reader gets something from it even if they never click your link.

Bad title:   Introducing Tallybook, the BEST bookkeeping app for freelancers!!
Good title:  I got tired of exporting CSVs for my accountant, so I built a
             bookkeeping tool that lives in one file. Looking for feedback.

• Say you made it. “I built this” in the first line. Presenting your own product as something you happened to find is deceiving the people you want as users.
• Lead with the problem and what you learned. What you tried, what didn’t work, a number or screenshot from the real product.
• Put the detail in the post. Explain how it works and what it costs in the text. One link at the end is enough, and only if the community allows links.
• Ask a specific question. “Is the pricing page clear?” gets replies. “Thoughts?” mostly doesn’t.
• Write it for that community. A post for freelancers and a post for developers about the same product should read differently.

Then stay and answer every comment, including the critical ones. The guides on taglines and descriptions and building in public go further into wording.

Reddit’s rule on disrupting communities reads “Do not manipulate votes, evade enforcement, or otherwise disrupt Reddit communities” (Reddit Help: Disrupting Communities). For a launch, the parts that matter are these:

• Voting with more than one account. You may have several accounts, but Reddit says not to use them to vote on the same posts or comments (Reddit Help: multiple accounts).
• Coordinated voting. The rule lists “coordinated voting with an organized group of people (or bots)” and the use of voting services. A message to your team or your Discord asking everyone to upvote is exactly this.
• Asking for votes at all. Reddiquette lists sending messages or social posts that ask people to vote for your submission among the things not to do.
• Coming back after a ban. Using another account to get around a community ban is ban evasion, which the same rule prohibits.
• Reposting what was removed. Reddiquette: “If it was deleted/removed, it should stay deleted/removed.”
• Unsolicited messages. Mass private messages are on Reddit’s spam list, and being repeatedly reported for unsolicited chat messages is listed under disrupting communities.
• Collecting bans. Reddit lists being repeatedly reported for breaking community rules across several communities, and being banned across several communities on the same topic, as examples of the violation. Community-level trouble can become a site-level problem.

Don’t repost it, and don’t argue in public. Reddiquette also advises against complaining about the votes you did or didn’t get. Reread the rules to find the one you broke. If you can’t find it, send the moderators one polite message asking what would make a post acceptable, or whether there’s a thread where it belongs. Then accept the answer.

A removal in one community says nothing about the others, as long as you aren’t pasting the same post everywhere. If none of your communities allow product posts, keep taking part as a member and put the launch elsewhere. The guide on where to launch lists the other channels, and finding your first 100 users covers the slower work that Reddit is better suited to.