[random_visitor]

The article can be summarised to: "Use the subreddit where your target audience hangs out"

Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy (and reddit has a "no promotion over 10% of account activity" policy). There are things like self promotion threads but its only visited by people looking to promote their products and not by other people. Users who don't cease the promotion on being warned will have a very real possibility of having their account and domain banned from the sub.

I've been on the moderator side of subreddits, and the general sentiment is that people are there because of a shared interest and not to be the promotion ground for some wannabe-rich guy. If a subreddit is for fountain pen enthusiasts, they'd rather see 10 posts going "Help me choose my first fountain pen" rather than some guy promoting his fountain pen store on etsy.

[steelframe]

I'm the sole active moderator of r/electricvehicles, and you wouldn't believe the amount of self-promotion spam that I have to deal with on that sub. It's gotten to the point that I've written a custom Python app to use the Reddit API to pull all of the analytics on any new post and present it to me in a digested form: How old is the account? How much organic-looking activity has the user done across other subreddits? What is the actual content? Has the user posted the same URL to multiple subreddits? Has the user's activity received user reports? Fortunately I have some faithfully diligent reporters on my sub who will flag newly posted suspected spam in a matter of minutes.

If the post doesn't pass my sniff test, my script will remove the post, mute the user, and permanently ban the user with a single keystroke -- do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

I can't just rely on user reports alone because a few of the members of the community are overzealous about what they'll report. I need a variety of metrics to make the call, and it's much easier to use the Reddit API to collect, process, and report those metrics than to try to click around in Reddit's horrible moderation UI to get the information I need to make a reasonable decision.

Confession time: I started writing the script about 5 days ago, and since I'm waiting to start a new job, I've actually made this script into a bit of a hobby to kill the time. By now it's morphed into a multi-threaded Mutt-like Reddit moderation tool, where it displays all mod queue content via a curses interface that I navigate with VIM key bindings, and keystrokes issue commands onto an asynchronous queue that another thread consumes and acts upon via the PRAW package. For example, the keystroke to approve a submission will immediately delete the post from the curses view because I love wicked-fast and responsive UIs, but the deletion on the backend could take another couple of seconds, especially if I'm rapid-firing 5 or 6 approvals in a row, and I just let that happen on the queue. Maybe if I refactor so that Python experts' eyeballs won't bleed when they see my code (e.g., I'm manually grabbing and releasing locks on stuff that's shared between the curses interface code and the async queue code rather than using more elegant synchronization capabilities in Python) I might consider releasing some source.

[dhimes]

Many years ago I got banned by a moderator on a sub for answering someone's question. I did have a product but didn't pitch it directly except in paid ads on the sub. My username was the website.

I emailed the mod for clarification as to what line I crossed because it seemed arbitrary. She never replied.

So be careful with your metrics. What happened to me was definitely not cool. And, I quit my paid advertising there to boot.

[gpm]

I'm a big fan of the idea that it's ok to be a person with an account and a company, but not a company with an account. The dynamics of the latter situation feel very wrong - the goal should be to make online interactions as human as possible.

Obviously I don't know the details of the situation and certainly don't know the mods reasoning, but from your description if they banned you because of your username that sounds ok to me.

Your paid ads are irrelevant, an interesting consequence of reddit not paying moderators is that moderators are also not going to be biased because you are paying reddit.

[dhimes]

Please see my response here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25211102

My username was a handle like most others (almost nobody comes in under their real name). It never occurred to me, for instance, to go to gpm.com— likewise, almost nobody made the connection on the site.

There was one time that somebody was asking about a gpa calculator or something so I threw one together on my web page. I don't recall telling them that it was available because the conversation would have been over. I made my calculator so that you could triage your studying- so given some guesses about how much you thought you could increase your grades in your classes, it would tell you where to spend your time. I can't recall if I was banned around this or not, but that was as close as I came to being "spammy."

As I said in the sibling comment, I thought I at least deserved a conversation.

[derangedHorse]

Why would their username being the same name of their website be a ban worthy problem? Sure it may feel "wrong" but I don't think it should be a ban-able offense

[xavier_]

Reddit is for people, not for brands (except ads). Like many other forums, it's better to speak as a person.

I feel like it's the same on social media

[dhimes]

I always spoke as a person. Somebody would have had to think to go to xavier.com to find out my handle was also my website.

[DoreenMichele]

And for a third perspective:

I run a sub called r/ClothingStartups and the day I took it over -- it had been dead -- people began self promoting. I decided to embrace that and set rules about how often they could do that.

I made that decision in part because I was homeless for a long time and while homeless I participated a lot on Metafilter where people would squee at me for "caring" about them and giving everyone good advice for free, but no one was willing to help me solve my biggest problem which was that I needed to develop an earned income adequate to get back into housing. And they ultimately banned me for supposedly "self promoting."

People there were promoted all the time. You just had be in good with the right people and your crap could make the front page constantly.

And on r/ClothingStartups, a lot of people posting appear to be people of color and appear to be trying to start something while out of work during a pandemic. And they do all kinds of stupid, ham-handed stuff that looks really lame.

And as long as you don't have all caps in the title or violate the self promotion guidelines, I don't care.

This idea that you have to be adequately smooth in your self promotion techniques is a hardship for a lot of minorities and marginalized peoples who have no business experience, no money for ads, etc and no one will give them a break.

My sub is growing at several people a day and it has more than just self promotion, though it does have a lot of that. It also has discussion about "Where can I find a manufacturer?" and so forth -- which is exactly what it's for.

I don't know how much value it has for people to self promote there. I don't know if people are really turning that into an income. I don't have data on that.

But when I was homeless, I was surrounded by well-heeled people who were happy to benefit from my expertise for free and accuse me of "panhandling the internet" for having donation buttons on my websites. What I knew as a former mom is stuff people expect women to do for free out of the goodness of their hearts and it was an abusive expectation because they expected me to care about them but no one cared about me. No one cared that I was homeless and going hungry and was making an honest effort to figure out how to establish an earned income in spite of my medical situation.

So I think we need more spaces on the internet where they cut you some slack for being new to business and having no idea what you are doing.

Upper class people who know how to do the smooth thing and promote themselves everywhere in the socially acceptable fashion and are pro UBI are the same people that then have some problem with people doing something overly blatant like using their company name as their account name on Reddit.

It's a "Fuck you, got mine" policy masguerading as faux compassion. UBI is not about helping the poor. It's about actively treating them like parasites and actively turning them into parasites while slamming all other doors shut in their face because you can only self promote if you have a Harvard education and know how to do it the right way in accordance with the sensibilities of other Ivy Leaguers.

And that boils down to "Fuck all y'all currently poor people. We are not only pulling the rope ladder up behind us, we are burning it in front of you and pointing and laughing at your predicament."

[webdev4ever]

Reading your post was very cathartic for me, so thank you for that.

[allenu]

I posted recently on a large subreddit to promote my app. I read the rules on the side of the page that indicated which day to self-promote and what flair to add, etc. I still got banned a few minutes later, and the post taken down.

I asked the mod why and they directed me to yet another page with a huge list of rules that weren't referenced in the self-promo rules I had seen. I understood the intent and it's their rules, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth, having tried in good faith to follow their instructions.

[markdown]

Would you mind sharing a URL to the "huge list of rules"?

[matkoniecz]

> My username was the website.

So every post you made WAS an ad.

> I quit my paid advertising there to boot

Note that operator of subreddid and moderators receives no benefit whatsoever from that.

[dhimes]

My user name wasn't clearly an ad. I use that same username on, for instance, the Coral City webcam chat. I remember one person on the subreddit getting an "aha" as s/he was asking something and I wouldn't direct him to my site, but I said this information was available on the web.

I tried very hard to not be spammy. I always offered information.

I think I at least deserved the opportunity to discuss it.

The mods don't receive benefit directly from the ads, but I bet somebody at Conde Nast (or whoever owns them now) cares.

[random_visitor]

Haha, can relate to that. After a certain point the Reddit tools become really inadequate. I used to mod a super popular subreddit (the kind that are always on the r/all) and we had 3 bots and two dozen moderators and still the mod queues was always filled.

I'm about to graduate so I've stopped all that except for helping a moderately popular sub. Overall it's given me plenty time I needed in other parts of my life, but I miss the small joys that came from my little python scripts improving the day for 20 or so people. That was the first time when something I created made impact on another person's life.

[intended]

All those little pieces of code, are what keep millions of subs from just not collapsing.

Say whatever anyone wants, I think reddit is the future of human moderation (millions of experiments), over FAANG and their army of invisible workers and rules.

[reitzensteinm]

That's a tough sub to moderate. It seems like half the users are there because they genuinely like EVs, and half see it as the no man's land cold war between RealTesla and TeslaInvestorsClub, depending on whether they're short or long.

A while back there was somebody that was only posting VW press releases. They were promptly called out by somebody, who themselves turned out to only post pro Tesla articles and a handful of VW FUD.

The comments themselves are generally pretty based, though. Bad actors are quickly downvoted. It's one of the few places on the internet that gets just as excited by the Model Y launch as they do the ID.3. I read it daily, thank you for your work!

[layoutIfNeeded]

You have a SaaS product in there.

[xavier_]

Probably yes :)

I discovered with this thread that the mod tools are not unified on Reddit!

[papreclip]

>How old is the account? How much organic-looking activity has the user done across other subreddits?

these kinds of policies are the death of the throwaway account. many subs don't even allow you to post in the first place now if you haven't ground out a posting history in other subs that do allow new accounts. maintaining anonymity for anonymity's sake has become increasingly difficult over the years on the site

[xapata]

> manually ... releasing locks

You might like `contextlib.ExitStack` if `with lock` doesn't cut it for you.

[moetsi]

would be interested in seeing whatever you release ill be on the look out for a link if you're still keen

[syspec]

Does this count as self promotion?

[im3w1l]

I think people are cool with self promotion if you do it in a tasteful manner. They may not even think of it as self promotion.

People resent stuff like: "Special offer just today buy 2 pens and get 11% off!!"

But they do like stuff like: "How we designed the Fountilator"

[Farow]

It doesn't even have to be tasteful, just a generic feel-good story, some giveaway, or if you're already famous just post on /r/IamA.

> /r/Subreddit helped me achieve my life long dream of [...].

> You guys helped me in my though times and I am giving away [...] in return.

> My name is [Famous Celebrity] and you should buy my new [...]. Btw, I might answer some generic questions.

Alternatively, you can buy upvotes, comments and compromised years old accounts to promote your product.

[main_gi]

I strongly believe "if you're already famous" part is the most disgusting part of self-promotion policies (in general, not with these examples), because popular creators get at least 10+ people that will post their content as a link for karma, and then people starting out get none of that benefit, and starting out is the most difficult phase.

If everything/everyone adopted a no-self-promotion policy no product could get any popularity. I think the rule is often instated for reasons really involving low-quality content and spam (but with more exterior objectivity), but it hurts the already-disadvantaged in the process. The only good thing that may come from it is having to focus on features and benefits of the product more since you can't just dump the link to the product, but again already-famous people/companies don't have to deal with that.

[xavier_]

What do you call "famous"?

I started reddit a year ago, I now have 3k karma and didn't notice any difference...

[main_gi]

As in "you have an audience for your content already". This is more relevant on other platforms than reddit is, although you can get famous as a 'reddit-specific' user I think it's more difficult.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

That's true here on HN, too.

One thing about Reddit is that the addition of images allows a lot leeway for self promotion by brands.

[eli]

also known as Content Marketing

[xavier_]

Yes, that's the key!

[fakedang]

This is the Way.

He has spoken.

(couldn't resist, just got started with the new Mandalorian season)

[hombre_fatal]

> Nothing wrong with the advice, but most subreddits have a no self-promotion policy

So, instead of "Go to my site to buy X!" you just talk about X in the third person. You mention your product/service X alongside the obvious brand names, you always have a story ready about how X can do what OP wants, etc.

The self-promotion rules just force you to be dishonest at all times.

Works well because people have a knee-jerk hate for "check out this X I made" but they are completely blind to "check out this X I found." You can see this a lot in r/gaming when solo devs share their work.

[munificent]

> The self-promotion rules just force you to be dishonest at all times.

No one is forcing you to compromise your morals. You can get free stuff from stores if you grab it and run out the door, but that doesn't mean that price tags force you to steal.

[wolco2]

It does when the dials are turned up.

In your example the price of everything is too much to afford ever grabbing the food and running makes you a hero with strong morals.

[munificent]

I don't think anyone is literally going to starve to death if they are unable to deceptively pimp their own software startup on Reddit.

[xavier_]

Very much depends of the subs. I spend a lot of time on /r/startups, the rules are super enforced. Way more than /r/Entrepreneur for instance.

The goal isn't to spam Reddit, but to leverage the audience without trespassing the rules. And, like all social networks the key is to help others (for real) and create value

[Kluny]

I have successfully promoted my company on Reddit, but it is tricky, for the reasons mentioned. There are two techniques that worked for me.

0. Be a chronic reddit user for years, with a main account that has thousands of karma and a couple of throwaway accounts that also have various content.

1. Write an interesting blog post with useful content that relates to your product, and post it on a relevant subreddit. Put a call to action like "Buy Now" at the bottom of that post. Post it a maximum of twice in any 24 hour period. If it doesn't succeed on a given subreddit, you can try it maybe once more with a different headline before you should move on to a different subreddit. If you post it more than 4-5 times total anywhere on reddit, you're liable to get banned.

2. Hang out in subreddits where people discuss products like yours. Answer questions with useful information. After providing the information, link your site as the source. Do not just link your site without also providing a useful answer on reddit.

Reddit does drive quite a bit of traffic, something like 60-100 hits per upvote. It's great, but it still often doesn't result in as many sales-per-click as facebook or instagram.

[xavier_]

Interesting! You mean facebook & instagram ads or groups/regular posts?

[Kluny]

Posts in our company's page or on our own walls gave us the best clickthrough, and we did a lot of grinding to build up our audience there. Facebook ads did well also, we would pay about 30c/click and something like 10% of those turned into sales. Instagram actually didn't do well for us - we got a higher sales capture rate but fewer clicks. We just didn't give the insta account the attention that it deserved (before I left the business, anyway).

[xavier_]

Woo, 10% conversion rate on FBads! It's huge!

[Kluny]

Yeah, we were getting crazy good results from our first $1000 of ad spend! Unfortunately diminishing returns set in pretty quickly after that, haha, but we had some winning strategies.

[xavier_]

Yes of course, don't spam or self-promote if it's not permitted! However, you can create some valuable content for the subreddit and share a link to your blog. Most Subs are ok with that (if you really bring value) and it can drive you some serious traffic.

[random_visitor]

Varies from subreddit to subreddit. This is purely anecdotal but on a big subreddit it's usually like 1 in 100 submissions linking to external site get the to "serious traffic" level of traction. You can instead write the same content as a subreddit post and add a link to your site at the end, such posts will have a much higher chance of reaching the subreddit frontpage.

[shiftpgdn]

Most moderators are already wise to people doing this. I moderate a decent sized subreddit (50k users) and whenever I see a wall of text post with a link at the bottom I just remove it. 99% of the time what is written is garbage and adds no value to anyone.

[xavier_]

It is hard to know what content will go viral for sure. From my experience is pretty much correlated to the value you bring to the community. If you're honest, transparent and teach something, relate your experience or your difficulties then you get engagement.

[jbob2000]

Most subs don't allow you to promote your own blog posts. Because why not just make the post right on the subreddit? That's what reddit is for.

The whole premise of trying to drag users away from reddit to your own domain is totally against what reddit is trying to do, expect to get blocked no matter how you work around it.

[throwaway3699]

You've got this the wrong way around. Reddit, much like HN, is mainly centered around discussing links on the internet.

[MattGaiser]

I have known a few people who got a lot of users from reddit. Their attitude was that accounts are cheap so while they were banned numerous times, they just kept on going back.

[xavier_]

That's the bad way to doing it IMHO. You don't bring anything to the community and you probably don't get results either.

[mooreds]

I thought this was a good "Ask HN" on the topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25118624

The OP asked about how to self promote on Reddit and there were a variety of answers (including what you said: "don't").

[xavier_]

I missed that one! I need to hang out more here

[bpodgursky]

It is likely to get you banned, yes.

But if the goal here is "advice on how to reach a target audience"... it's probably worth getting an account burned (not like they cost money), if it gets your post to the top of a relevant subreddit.

[steelframe]

Except if you're self-promoting, you're not going to get your post to the top of any healthy subreddit with an active user base. In my experience on r/electricvehicles, self-promotion/spam posts stay at 0 upvotes with a handful of reports and complaints in the comment section. It's literally just spam that wastes everyone's time.

One pattern is for a YouTube channel to try to spam their content on the sub. I know it's the channel owner (or someone affiliated with the channel owner) because each video they post everywhere has the same logo in the upper-left corner. And those videos are pretty much all they post. They get banned from my sub very quickly, and in my experience they don't come back.

[xavier_]

You won't get banned if you participate to the community and respect the rules. And that's also how you'll get the best results! That's the same for every "social networks", if you're just spammy you can get some short term results but if you bring some value to the community you'll get visitors, reputation and even fans.

Take the time to read the rules, participate to the subs, learn what works, what don't and try to help others in the topic you're into. Then, create some valuable content that help the community and post it with a link to your blog if you want some traffic, or ask for feedback on your idea.

[bpodgursky]

Honestly, I'm pretty over the reddit contribution rules. The rules are oriented at people who post links all day, and incredibly unfriendly to casual users, or people who generate OC.

Ex, many of them ask for a 90/10 other/self-promotion ratio. Well, I don't surf reddit and submit links all day, so I violated this in /programming by posting two self-posts (in a year) about OSS side projects I've worked on, and got shadowbanned. They weren't monetized at all, they were describing completely OSS personal projects (exploring d3.js and other graphics libraries).

If that's not what reddit wants... then I don't care what reddit wants. I'll use burner accounts and post like a normal human being, and if they get banned... I'll make new ones.

[random_visitor]

> not like they cost money

This is why subreddit have a account activity requirements to interact on a subreddit. It could be a threshold of account age, total post/comment karma, comment karma on the subreddit or a combination of them. Getting an account above that threshold is gonna cost you in time and effort. Imo there are better use of time than grinding burner reddit accounts.

Also, if a user is banned the content that led to ban will almost certainly be taken down. Not to mention, getting an external link to top is going to be a challenge in itself

[VectorLock]

Most of the self-promotion posts you see on reddit usually are titled "Look at the so-and-so my girlfriend/boyfriend/sister/mother/whatever made!" Even if its not the skirt the no-self-promotion rule I think they tend to do better in general.

[shakezula]

There's a big difference between promoting your Etsy fountain pens store and promoting the fountain pen you're making and selling, though.

I think the author is the latter, while the type of promo you're talking about is usually the former.

[basq]

This is still news to me, the 10% rule is presented as 10% of posts... posting 9 other things to post 1 of my OCs seemed overly excessive.

Now I might actually start posting some things...

[xavier_]

That's less drivable than ads for sure. I should probably compare the two ROI and see what's the more efficient!