Key Takeaways: r/SideProject is the rare Reddit community where posting your own project in the main feed is the intended behavior, not a rule to sneak around — the sub exists so makers can show what they built. That openness comes with conditions: it must be your own genuine project, described properly, with the maker giving feedback to others rather than only dropping links. The strict 90/10 rule loosens here, but reciprocity replaces it as the social contract. What still gets removed: low-effort "check this out" posts, resold or affiliate products, repeated reposts, and upvote-begging. Read the pillar guide on Reddit self-promotion rules for how this compares to stricter communities, then treat r/SideProject as a place to show real work and genuinely engage with other makers.
What kind of community is r/SideProject?
r/SideProject is a showcase-and-feedback community for people building things on the side — apps, tools, sites, hardware, games, weekend experiments. Its defining characteristic, and the reason it matters so much for anyone doing Reddit marketing, is that it inverts the normal Reddit promotion rule. In most communities, posting your own product is the thing you have to earn the right to do; in r/SideProject, showing your own project is the reason the community exists.
That single difference changes everything about how you should approach it. On r/startups you channel promotion into a weekly "Share Your Startup" thread and treat the main feed as off-limits for anything commercial. On r/marketing you demonstrate expertise and never link to yourself. r/SideProject flips that: the main feed is for your project, and the failure mode is not "you promoted" but "you promoted lazily, or you promoted something that is not really yours."
Understanding that inversion is the whole game. Makers who arrive with the defensive, tiptoe-around-the-rules posture they learned in strict subreddits often underperform here, because they hedge and bury the actual project. Makers who arrive treating it as a free billboard get removed for low effort. The sweet spot is specific to this community and nowhere else.
Is self-promotion actually allowed in r/SideProject?
Yes — with a precise definition of what "your project" means. The community is built for you to post something you personally built and are working on. What it is emphatically not built for:
- Resold, white-label, or dropshipped products. If you did not build it, it does not belong here as "your side project." This is one of the fastest routes to removal.
- Affiliate and referral link farming. Posts whose real purpose is to route clicks to an affiliate offer read as spam regardless of packaging.
- Courses, "make money online" funnels, and lead magnets. The community is makers, not an audience for info-product marketing.
- Low-effort drops. "Check out my app [link]" with no description of what it is, who it is for, or why you made it gets removed or ignored even when the underlying project is legitimate.
So the honest answer is that r/SideProject welcomes your promotion in a way almost no other subreddit does, but it is strict about authenticity rather than frequency. The gate is "did you actually build this and are you presenting it like a real maker," not "have you earned enough karma to be allowed one link."
How does the 90/10 rule apply here?
The classic 90/10 rule — at least 90 percent genuine participation, at most 10 percent self-promotion — is deliberately relaxed in r/SideProject, because a community where sharing your project is the point cannot also demand that project-sharing be under 10 percent of your activity. That would be self-defeating.
But the principle behind the rule does not disappear; it changes shape. In r/SideProject the currency is reciprocity. The makers who thrive are the ones who show up for other people's projects — leaving genuine feedback, asking good questions, upvoting work they like — not just the ones who post their own. An account that has only ever posted its own product, over and over, with no engagement anywhere else, still reads as a spammer even inside a sharing community. The pattern gives it away.
Practically, this means: for every time you post your own project, spend real time engaging with a handful of other makers' posts. Not drive-by "cool!" comments, but the kind of specific feedback you would want on your own work. This does two things. It keeps you on the right side of the community's social contract, and it makes people recognize your username — which means the next time you post your project, you are a familiar contributor rather than a stranger dropping a link.
What gets your post removed or your account banned?
Even in an open community, moderators remove a predictable set of things. Watching for these keeps you out of trouble:
- Not-your-work posts. Reselling, white-labeling, dropshipping, or passing off someone else's build as your side project.
- Repeated reposts. Posting the same project again and again to farm views. Share meaningful updates, not the same launch on a loop.
- Pure ads with no substance. A post that is indistinguishable from a paid ad — all pitch, no build story, no context — gets pulled for low effort.
- Affiliate, referral, and "make money" links. Anything whose real purpose is monetizing clicks rather than sharing a project.
- Vote manipulation. Asking for upvotes, running "upvote if you like it" mechanics, or coordinating votes is a sitewide violation, not just a subreddit one, and can get your whole account actioned.
- Ignoring flair and format requirements. Many communities of this type ask for specific post flair or a minimum description. Skipping required flair is an easy, avoidable removal.
The sitewide penalties described in the self-promotion pillar — spam suspensions and shadowbans — still apply on top of anything r/SideProject's moderators do. If you blast the same project across dozens of communities including this one, Reddit's own filters can flag the account regardless of how welcoming any single subreddit is. Because subreddit rules and enforcement change over time, read the live sidebar and pinned rules before every post rather than trusting a guide.
How to post a project people actually engage with
Getting into the community is easy; getting engagement takes a real post. The difference between a project that gets feedback and one that sinks is almost always the framing.
Lead with a one-line description of what it does. Before anything else, the reader should know exactly what the project is and who it is for. "A scheduling tool for freelance photographers" beats "excited to finally share what I've been building!"
Say what stage you are at. Prototype, beta, launched, revenue-generating — makers calibrate their feedback to where you are. A prototype gets directional feedback; a launched product gets tactical critique.
Ask one specific question. The single biggest lever for engagement is replacing "thoughts?" with a concrete ask: "Is the pricing page clear?" or "Does the onboarding make sense?" Specific asks get specific, useful replies.
Share the build story honestly. r/SideProject rewards authenticity. What was hard, what you cut, what surprised you, what you would do differently. This is the content that turns a link drop into a post people remember.
Respond to every comment. Active threads rise; abandoned ones fall. Replying to feedback also signals that you are a real maker who cares, not a marketer who posted and left.
Give before you take. The most reliable way to get eyes on your project is to be a recognizable, generous voice in other people's threads first. In a reciprocity-driven community, the feedback you give comes back to you.
Where r/SideProject fits in a broader Reddit strategy
r/SideProject is an excellent launch and feedback venue, but it is not a complete strategy on its own. Its audience is other makers — great for early feedback, first users, and build-in-public momentum, less ideal if your actual buyers are, say, enterprise procurement teams. Treat it as the top of a funnel: a place to pressure-test the product, gather testimonials, and find your earliest advocates.
From there, the durable work happens in the communities where your real customers spend time. If you sell developer or B2B software, that means building genuine presence in tighter, stricter communities — the kind covered in our guides to Reddit marketing for SaaS and the best subreddits for SaaS, and for early-stage companies, Reddit marketing for startups. Those communities demand the patient, value-first approach that r/SideProject's openness lets you skip — which is exactly why r/SideProject is the easiest place to start and the wrong place to stop.
The through-line across all of them is the same one from the self-promotion rules pillar: contribute like a member, not a marketer. r/SideProject just happens to be the community where "being a member" and "sharing your product" are, for once, the same thing.
Want to turn a good r/SideProject launch into a real Reddit growth channel? GrowReddit helps founders and B2B SaaS teams build authentic presence across the communities where their customers actually are — the right subreddits, the right cadence, and promotion that respects each community's culture. Schedule a consultation to map out your strategy.
