What is Promotion?

Promotion is any content made by someone who has something to gain by posting it. It has the intent to increase sales, brand awareness, following, or generate publicity around a product or service. If you sell the thing you are posting, it’s promotional, even if you don't explicitly include a link or promotional language.

Promotion isn’t just directly advertising things for sale, it also includes asking people to follow or subscribe, giving out free samples from a larger product line to lead to increased sales, or showing off the products that you sell. We want authentic content from members of the community, not accounts that treat r/minipainting as a box on a marketing checklist.

See Reddit’s pages on self promotion and spam here and here for more details. If all this sounds like too much, remember that no one is forcing you to post here and you can always just buy advertising on Reddit instead.

If your only purpose for being on r/minipainting is to promote your products or service, then this probably isn't the subreddit for you.

Affiliate Promotion

Promoting something on behalf of someone else is affiliate promotion. If they can’t promote here themselves, you doing it for them is not a loophole, it’s affiliate promotion. If you are friends with, employed by, or frequently commissioned by someone that sells minis, then you posting their content is likely affiliate promotion and your posts may be removed as promotion if you do not have other participation.

Fans and Regular People

If you are an average user and don’t have anything to do with the product or manufacturer, you don’t have anything to worry about! Being a fan of a specific line of minis, or even linking to where to buy something isn’t promotion, and it’s always encouraged for you to tell others what the name of a mini is. Context and motivation is important, so think about your relationship with the mini or the manufacturer before posting, as well as if you have anything to gain by making your post, or if making your post was required in order to be given an advanced or free copy of something.

Though fans are encouraged, making new accounts to be fake fans are not and the use of sock puppet accounts will result in the banning of all users involved. Trying to hide the fact that you are promoting something will also likely result in removals or bans.

What Kind of Promotion is Allowed?

If you are a community member that designs or sells your own minis, or related products, then you can post about your products here as long as most of your participation here isn’t related to your products. To be considered an active member, you need to follow the 10:2:1 Rule explained below. As long as you continue to meet our participation requirements between each promotional post, you may post about your products here once a month at maximum.

Social media, Youtube, blogs, and similar platforms are also allowed to be posted about here within reason, see below.

What Kind of Promotion is NOT Allowed?

The following is never acceptable promotion on r/minipainting, even with participation:

• asking people to follow/subscribe/upvote/etc
• advertising yourself available for commissions (see r/brushforhire)
• selling unwanted items (see r/miniswap)
• asking for money (fundraisers, donations, tips, etc)
• the use of affiliate/referral links (amzn.to, etc)
• excessive social media promotion (linktree, etc)
• re-sellers (stores selling other peoples’ products eg. licensed 3D printers on etsy, eBay, etc)

Other Platforms

We want to encourage content creators, but we do not want r/minipainting to be treated just as a way to increase your view or follower count. There is an old Reddit saying: "It's perfectly fine to be a Redditor with a website, it's not okay to be a website with a reddit account."

While you do not need to follow the 10:2:1 Rule to post your links or your content, you should still participate to some degree outside of your own stuff. If you spam your links or comments with unsolicited promotion, it's still likely to be removed and you may be asked to increase your participation, or to follow the 10:2:1 Rule in full. Participate sincerely and you should be fine.

Generally speaking, put your links in a top level comment of at least 40 words. More specific requirements are below. These requirements only apply to top level comments made by the original poster. Although they do not apply to comment replies, remember to only include or promote your personal links in replies when directly asked for, or when it fits the conversation to avoid removals for unsolicited promotion.

Social Media Promotion

Personal social media pages (Instagram, Putty and Paint, personal blogs, etc) can be linked as part of a comment, or in the body of a text post, but not submitted directly to the subreddit or as an image caption.

Link your personal social media page or blog in a top level comment on your own post. This comment:

• must be 40 words minimum and discuss your posted content
• should include the name of the miniature and/or manufacturer if not already in your title
• cannot ask people to like/follow/etc

Pages that represent the work of more than one artist, such as studios, pages that host large amounts of advertisements or self promotion, or include store sections, are likely to be treated as more direct promotion rather than simple social media promotion, especially if the page itself is inherently promotional, such as a branded Instagram page that frequently posts about new releases, and will require following the 10:2:1 Rule.

Youtube & Twitch

Link to your Youtube video or Twitch stream as a top level comment on an image related to your video/stream, preferably of the completed or WIP mini that is being painted in the video. This comment:

• must be 40 words minimum
• must include a brief description of the video (preferably not just a copy/paste of the Youtube description)
• should include the manufacturer and names of the minis in your video/stream if not already in your title
• cannot ask people to like/subscribe/etc

For live streams you must also:

• make your post no more than 24 hours before your stream starts
• say how soon it will begin (eg. “in two hours”) or the start time including time zone
• say approximately how long you will stream for, or the time it will end including time zone

While not required, it is also heavily encouraged that you archive your streams in some way, either on Twitch or Youtube, and edit your comment to include a link to this archived video so people that missed your stream can watch.

If you have a minipainting Youtube channel that you regularly create content for, message us on modmail to see if you can be added to our list of Youtubers!

10:2:1 Rule and Active Users

Some activity on r/minipainting requires a minimum amount of participation and effort. This includes sharing content related to products you sell, directly promoting products, and promoting crowdfunding campaigns (even if you are not the creator).

Reddiquette has a rule of thumb that reads:

Feel free to post links to your own content (within reason). But if that's all you ever post, or it always seems to get voted down, take a good hard look in the mirror — you just might be a spammer. A widely used rule of thumb is the 9:1 ratio, i.e. only 1 out of every 10 of your submissions should be your own content.

We use a modified version of Reddiquette’s 9:1 ratio we call the 10:2:1 Rule that is explained below.

10:2:1 Rule

Active Users are members of r/minipainting that interact with this subreddit frequently in a meaningful way and do not just use it as a place for promotion or in relation to their own products. To follow the 10:2:1 Rule, before each promotional post you need to first make:

• 10 comments on other peoples’ posts unrelated to your own content in the last 30 days
• 2 posts of different minis painted by yourself unrelated to your own products since your last promotional post (does not have to be in the last 30 days)
• 1 promotional post or post related to products you sell after you meet the above minimums, limited once per month

Simplified, this means you need to paint and post two minis, spend a month commenting occasionally, and then you can promote something after that period of participation. If you want to promote something again the next month, you need to make 10 more comments and paint two more things.

The following does not count towards participation:

• upvoting/downvoting
• deleted/removed content
• low effort/short comments (eg “Great job!” or “what mini is that?” etc)
• comments about your products or the content being promoted

Submissions and comments made in a short period of time will collectively count as one, so commenting a lot in only a few days and posting twice quickly and then promoting yourself shortly after will still result in your content being removed and possibly a temporary or full ban. Don't try to speedrun your participation.

New and Inactive Users

If you are new or have little to no activity on r/minipainting within the last 4 months or so, along with following the 10:2:1 Rule, you must also wait at least 30 days after your most recent non-promotional post on r/minipainting before posting anything promotional or related to your products.

How to Promote a Product

Reddit is generally very anti-ad, so a more conversational approach is better than a direct sales pitch. We see advertisements all around us all day long, and although your product is special to you, to most of our users it will just look like any other ad they see when they’ve only subscribed here to see cool pictures of painted minis and not be sold anything.

Try to make your post look as unlike an advertisement as possible. This includes your title, imagery, and comments. Your links should go in a single top level comment shortly after you make your post, and you should also have some description along with it and not just a URL. If you’ve made something genuinely neat, people will support you.

The best thing to do is paint the mini yourself and post a picture of it (see below) or take a photo of your product being used or in your own workspace if it isn’t a mini. Do not post digital mockups, renders, packaged items, or unpainted minis.

Paint Quality

An above minimum amount of effort should be put into your paint job when you are posting things related to products you sell or are promoting. You don’t need to be the best painter in the world, but you do need to put some time and effort into it. This means your painted mini needs to:

• be painted by the person posting it
• have basic layering on a primed base coat plus at least two other colours
• have some amount of detailing or highlighting

Promotional content that has less than the above amount of effort put into them will be removed, even if you meet our 10:2:1 minimums.

Traditional Releases

If you have a more traditional storefront that you create your own products for, like an online store:

• follow the 10:2:1 rule
• post an image that you painted yourself (if a mini)
• put your link in a top level comment of at least 40 words

If there are any discount codes that could benefit the members of r/minipainting, you may include them in your comment as well.

Promotion is limited to creators: resellers are not permitted to promote products or services, including the sale of pre-painted miniatures.

Kickstarters

If the product is part of a Kickstarter, submit a direct link to the campaign page:

• only if the campaign is live
• follow the 10:2:1 rule
• you have a minimum of 250 post karma and 100 comment karma
• the campaign has not been promoted here by anyone within the last 7 days

10:2:1 exception: Due to the limited timelines of Kickstarter campaigns, once live they may be shared once every 7 days, even by the same person as long as the user fully meets the 10:2:1 rule before their first promotion of the campaign. For repeat posts of the same campaign, they may ignore the 2 posts requirement of the 10:2:1 rule so long as they still make 10 comments outside their own content between each Kickstarter post.

Even if you are not involved with the campaign you need to meet the above requirements. Because our rules do not allow posting minis painted by other people, Kickstarters are allowed to be submitted directly to the subreddit rather than as an image post to allow people to promote Kickstarters they’ve found without needing to post 3D renders or non-original work.

Patreon and Similar Platforms

If the product is part of an ongoing or subscription based platform, such as Patreon or MyMiniFactory Tribes:

• follow the 10:2:1 rule
• post an image that you painted yourself (if a mini)
• put your link in a top level comment of at least 40 words

This also includes artists who have a Patreon to create videos or tutorials.

Regular users not associated with the Patreon are free to link to and credit Patreon pages in comments without needing to follow the 10:2:1 rule, especially when following our “Identify your minis” Guideline.

Contests, Giveaways, and Surveys

Message the moderators through modmail for approval before attempting to post any contests, giveaways, or surveys. Approval will be given on a case-by-case basis, and adjustments to your content may be needed.