How do I promote my app on Reddit without getting removed?

Why that post worked

It was personal. The post said what drove everyone mad about the prep options: stupidly expensive courses, question banks clearly untouched since 2015, or scanned PDFs handed out in class. It was not selling a solution. It was a person saying what was wrong, who happened to have built something about it.

The ask was feedback, not money: 25 free Pro accounts for honest feedback, and "If it's rubbish, definitely tell me, that's worth more." In the end well over 40 were given away. There was no link in the post. The link went in the comments only when someone asked. That is the whole rule: the post should read as you going through the problem, not as a pitch to your customer.

The post, in his own words

The rules for the post

1. Keep it human. Write the way someone actually talks, in long loose sentences if that is how you talk, not in tidy marketing structure.
2. No dashes. Write it the way you would say it out loud.
3. Real experience only. Your own frustration, your own numbers. If it did not happen to you, it does not go in.
4. It reads as you. The story is yours, going through the problem. It is not your customer's.
5. A question or a story, never "try my product". Saying you built something is fine, as long as it is not the point of the post.
6. Never claim to be one of them when you are not. The PrepAMT post said plainly who had built it and what it rested on, and asked for testers who were sitting those exams or had sat them recently.
7. Read the rules and the filters. One subreddit where PrepAMT's buyers talk bans posts about their exams and about schools, and its automatic checker flags words like "test" and "bank". There the way in was a discussion post about how people prepare, with the link in the comments only if someone asked.
8. One product per post. Posts that mentioned both Prep66 and PrepAMT did worse than posts about one of them. Keep each post to one.
9. Your own voice. People told Ancestorii's founder that his posts and replies sounded like ChatGPT wrote them. In a subreddit full of the people you are selling to, that would have killed the post.
10. Every community has its own manners. The link in the comments is Reddit's way. Hacker News wants the thing itself in the post, something people can try at once. Wherever you post, say you built it, and never ask friends to vote.

How to reply

Reply fast and short, the way you actually type, and never pretend. When the free places ran out within about 48 hours, the founder said so plainly and offered the early crowd half price instead. When someone asked how to use the code, he told them where the promo box was. When someone asked for a version for a different set of exams, he said yes, in two weeks, and built PrepAMT.

What happened after

• A follow up post a week later got about 1,900 views and far less engagement. The first honest post is the one that counts.
• The PrepAMT launch post, a week after that, got 2.1K views, 2 upvotes and 3 comments. PrepAMT was built because people in the first post's comments asked for it.
• The paid Reddit ad that ran after the launch post, at about $6 a day, brought one signup and no payment. The free post did better.

If you are not one of your own buyers

The post worked because it read as a person talking to the people reading it, not as a pitch. If you have never been your own buyer, do not fake it. Tell the story you really have, of building the product or of finding the people who have the problem, and say plainly who you are.