How to mention your product on Reddit without getting banned

Every day, someone on Reddit describes the exact problem your product solves. "Is there a tool that…", "How do you all handle…", "I'm sick of…". For a founder, those threads are the warmest leads on the internet. They're also where a lazy promotional comment gets you downvoted, removed, and sometimes banned from the community for good.

The difference between the two is not luck. It comes down to a handful of habits.

1. Read the rules before you read the thread

Every subreddit sets its own self-promotion policy, and they vary a lot. Some allow links. Some allow you to name your product but not link it. Some ban any mention of something you made, and push promotion into a weekly thread. The rules are in the sidebar or the community's "About" tab, and moderators enforce them.

Before you write anything, know which of the three you're in:

• Links allowed: you can link, but only when it genuinely helps.
• Mention OK, no links: you can say what the tool is called. The reader can search for it.
• No self-promotion: answer the question and don't name your product at all. If your answer is good, people check your profile.

2. Answer the question first, fully

The comment that works is the one that would still be useful if your product didn't exist. If someone asks how to track revenue across three Stripe accounts, explain how to do it, including the free way. Then, if the rules allow, add one line: "I built a tool for this, happy to share if useful."

A comment that opens with your product name reads as an ad. One that opens with the answer reads as a person who knows the problem, and that person is who people want to buy from.

3. Say who you are

If you mention something you built, say so: "I made this" or "disclosure: mine". Redditors are very good at spotting a founder pretending to be a happy customer, and nothing gets a comment reported faster. Being upfront is also simply honest.

4. Be early, not everywhere

A reply in the first few hours of a thread gets read. A reply on a week-old thread mostly doesn't. It's better to answer three fresh threads well than to paste the same comment into thirty. Posting near-identical comments across communities is the fastest way to get flagged as spam by Reddit itself, whatever each subreddit's rules say.

5. Use your own account, and build it

An account whose only comments mention one product is a spam account, however good the comments are. Take part in the communities where your customers are: answer questions you have no stake in, share what you've learned. When you do mention your product, it's coming from someone people recognise.

How Signals follows these rules for you

Signals, in Vitals, looks for threads where people describe the problem your product solves and drafts a reply for each one. It follows the rules above:

• Each draft answers the question before anything else.
• Each subreddit's self-promotion rule is checked. If the community bans links or product mentions and the draft has one, the copy button stays locked until it's fixed.
• It never asks for your Reddit login and never posts. You read the draft, edit it, and post it from your own account.

That last point is deliberate. A tool that posted for you would be faster, and it would get you banned. The judgement about what to say, and whether to say anything at all, stays with you.