glossary
The 90/10 rule
Reddit’s self-promotion norm: at most one in ten of your contributions should promote your own work — and the other nine must be genuine participation, not filler.
By The Marketinque TeamReviewed June 2026
The rule comes from Reddit’s long-standing guidance that you should be “a redditor with a website, not a website with a Reddit account.” Mechanically it caps self-promotion at roughly 10% of your activity; in spirit it demands that the other 90% be participation you would do anyway — answering questions, sharing lessons, contributing to threads where you have no stake.
The common failure is treating the ratio as an accounting trick: nine throwaway comments to buy one promotional post. Reddit’s spam policy evaluates the whole pattern — repeatedly posting the same link across subreddits, promotional comment histories, and vote-trading all count against you regardless of ratio, and your Contributor Quality Score carries the verdict from one subreddit to the next.
Many communities also route promotion into designated threads (weekly “share your project” posts) where the ratio does not apply — the safest promotional surface on the platform. Check each subreddit’s rules before posting, score drafts with the Reddit pre-flight check, and see community-safe plays for formats where the value genuinely leads.
formula
self-promotional contributions ÷ total contributions ≤ 10%
worked example
A founder answers twelve questions about onboarding metrics over three weeks, then posts one write-up of their own onboarding rebuild that links the product in context. Ratio: 1 of 13. The same link posted cold, three times across three subreddits in one afternoon, is spam at any ratio.
Related terms
Sources
- Reddit, Reddit Rules (spam & manipulation policy) (Reddit, Inc.)
- Reddit, What is the Contributor Quality Score? (Reddit Help)
Compiled by The Marketinque Team to our editorial standards.