The 28-Day Field Manual: Cheat Sheet

Shortened for this page. The full cheat sheet is in program 4.

Our results from one business, Oct 3 to Oct 31, 2026. Not promises, not guarantees. Section numbers point to FIELD-MANUAL.md.

Page 1. The numbers and the rules

The record: 24,586 posts and replies, 5,164 rooms, 20,087 with a link, 234 community bans, 297 removals among 14,363 survival checks.

The funnel (S1): 326,640 candidates read, 7.5% posted. About 13 judged for each post out.

Removal (S3 to S6)

About 2.1% of check records show "[removed]"; by distinct post 2.7% removed, 3.4% hidden any way.
Check at 1 hour and 1 day. The 1-hour look sees about half of the 1-day removals (1.4% vs 2.8%).
First reply we ever posted in a room: 7.3% removed. Every later reply: 1.8%.
Link plus offer 3.0%, plain reply 2.3%. Room kind ranged only 1.8% to 3.4%.
We cannot tell moderator removal from sitewide filter. Survival data covers posts of Oct 5 to Oct 13 only.

Bans (S8 to S10)

Reddit gives no ban reason. A ban shows up as a "currently banned" message in the comment box.
Ban rate by room kind: games and game-dev 15.9%, startups and business 9.9%, marketing 9.1%, apps 5.8%, AI and dev tools 5.8%, general 3.0%.
Rooms where we posted 6 or more times banned at over 10%; 1 to 5 posts, under 4%.
Share of posts with a link: 80% in banned rooms, 82% in the rest. Links did not predict bans.
Ban records per 1,000 posts: about 1.6 through Oct 21, about 18 from Oct 22.

Rules that stuck (S12 to S19)

Never reply to someone in crisis. Excluded by room and by text.
Disclose every time: "I make ThreadFox" on any reply that names the product or links.
No promises, guarantees, invented urgency or testimonials.
Read the room rules before drafting; a decided "no" closes the link or offer; ambiguous rooms post; re-check rules at send.
Rate limit means wait (10 minutes, doubling, 60 maximum), not stop.
Unknown send outcome: stop and reconcile from the account's own history. Never replay.
Re-lint every ready draft before it sends.
Write only what can post within about 15 minutes.
Price only where the author's own words are a buyer signal; otherwise free first.
One correction per bad reply, under our own comment, no product, link or price.

Page 2. The posting law, the reply shape

Posting law at Oct 31 (S20 to S25)

60 outreach posts an hour, always. Plus 30 customer or free-sample posts an hour.
Past the Judge and written, it gets posted.
Only Reddit closes a room (a ban, or a community Reddit banned or made private). Grow by new rooms, not higher caps.
One link per reply, only where the room allows, each link tagged. No DM invitation. No DM outreach at all (retired Oct 20).
Help-only rooms: help, no product name. No-link lane: name once, company sentence, or offer in words, as far as the room allows.
Removed posts are not reposted, reworded or resent from another account. Replace the volume with new rooms.
Volume actually ran about 670 a day to Oct 27, then about 1,950 a day (81 an hour) Oct 28 to Oct 31.

A reply that survives (S26 to S28)

Answer the question first, 2 to 4 sentences.
One concrete specific from their own post. Never invent experience.
A trade-off or free alternative where useful.
80 to 150 words. Plain paragraphs. No bullets, bold or emoji. Hard limit 170 words.
"I make ThreadFox." on its own line.
One closing, 40 words or fewer: live price, terms, no automatic renewal.
One tagged link at most, only where allowed.

Wording barely moved survival (2.6% to 3.3% across lengths). Where you post mattered more than how you phrase it.

Day one again (S35) Keep the free-plan funnel and add the paid page beside it. Read every room's rules first. Treat the first reply in a room as the riskiest. Check survival for the whole period. Go slow in game, startup and marketing rooms. No DM outreach. Reconcile before retrying. Count real visitors and tag every link. Change one price at a time and write the date down.

Biggest mistakes (S34): one-day offer switch that collapsed the funnel; owners-first ordering that starved links; sends of unknown outcome that stopped the business; measuring survival for only 30% of posts; moving the price five times.