Rules and Fairness
Cross-promotion only works if both sides show up. This page collects the rules that keep swaps fair: the trust signals you see before committing, the automatic protections against no-shows, the account-standing requirements, and the plan limits — plus the guarantees about what money can and cannot buy.
The trust signals
Cross-promotion shows you the facts that matter at the moment of decision — on the join page's "Before you commit" panel, on every directory card, on requests and on the board:
- Size verdict — Great match, Good match, Fair match or Uneven sizes, computed from both channels' subscribers and average views with the same formula everywhere on Onflow Ads. It appears wherever both channels are known.
- Track record — completed swaps, dropped swaps, a reliability percentage (with a meter), and the partner's average star rating from past swaps (see Ratings). New accounts are labelled "New partner · no completed swaps yet" rather than given a fake score.
These signals are free for everyone, identical on every plan, and computed the same way for every member.
Paid extras never buy trust
A few optional paid features exist around cross-promotion. All of them buy visibility or convenience — none of them touch the trust signals:
| Paid feature | What it buys | What it never does |
|---|---|---|
| ★ Featured directory listing | Position at the top of directory browsing, with a visible ★ Featured badge | Never changes match verdicts, track record or ratings |
| ⚡ Boost on a request | Top of the recipient's inbound queue, with a ⚡ Priority badge | Never changes whether they can or will accept |
| +1 CP Action override | One extra monthly initiation | Never bypasses standing checks |
| Campaign insurance add-on | Compensation if a post is taken down early | Never alters results or ratings |
And the flip side: results, match verdicts and track records are never paywalled — they're free on every plan, always.
Anti-ghost protections
"Ghosting" — joining a campaign and then never confirming — wastes the creator's time and allowance. Cross-promotion handles it automatically:
- If a joiner attaches but doesn't confirm for about 48 hours, the campaign is closed out automatically with the note "Partner didn't confirm in time".
- The creator is freed: they're notified that the partner went inactive, and the campaign does not count against their monthly allowance — starting a fresh one costs nothing extra.
- The joiner is warned by DM ("Please only join campaigns you intend to follow through on."), and after it happens a few times, joining is paused for a couple of days (creating your own campaigns is never blocked). The cooldown clears on its own; if you try to join while paused you'll see "Joining is paused for now — a campaign you recently joined went unconfirmed" with the exact reopening time.
- The same join gate applies to accepting directory requests and claiming Blitz slots, since both make you a joiner.
The mirror-image protections for creators are the two expiry clocks: unjoined codes die at 24 hours, and neither expired nor ghosted campaigns ever cost allowance. See Campaign lifecycle.
Backstops exist on the other side of the fence too: unanswered post reviews auto-approve after 6 hours so a silent partner can't strand a built campaign (Creatives), and pending requests expire after 72 hours (Partnership requests).
Account standing
Starting, joining, or accepting a cross-promotion requires your account's reliability score to be above a minimum floor, and accounts under review are paused from forming new deals. The same check runs at every deal-formation point — create, join, request send, request accept, Blitz claim. If you're affected, the error message states the floor and your current score. Finishing campaigns you're already part of is never blocked.
Reliability recovers by completing what you start — across cross-promotion and the rest of Onflow Ads.
Limits and plan gates
The monthly initiation allowance
Each plan includes a monthly number of cross-promotion initiations — creating a campaign or sending a partnership request. Joining is never capped, on any plan.
- Your usage is shown in the plan strip on the create and campaign pages ("X of Y this month", with a meter), along with your plan's other cross-promotion perks.
- Only campaigns that found and kept a partner spend a slot — expired, cancelled and ghost-released campaigns don't count.
- At the cap, creating or sending a request is refused with a message naming your plan, your usage, the plan that raises the limit — and a one-off +1 CP Action override you can buy in the Telegram bot at the price quoted in the message.
What higher plans add
Depending on the plan (the strip shows exactly what yours includes and what the next plan would add):
- a larger — or unlimited — monthly allowance;
- a cash-equivalent completion reward credited per clean completion ("Earn $X / clean completion", with a monthly cap);
- campaign insurance included on your campaigns;
- discounts on add-ons and paid extras, up to free at the top plan;
- Blitz multi-partner campaigns ("Blitz: up to N partners").
Upgrades live at https://onflowads.com/pricing.
The rules in one list
- Public channels only, with the Onflow Ads bot as admin — checked at every channel fetch.
- Show up: confirm or renegotiate promptly after joining; unconfirmed joins are released at ~48 hours and strike your record.
- One decider per proposal: you never approve your own schedule proposal, and only the receiving side approves a post.
- Review on time: post reviews auto-approve after 6 hours.
- One rating per side, after completion only.
- Initiations are metered, joins are not.
- Money buys position, never trust: featured placement and boosts don't touch verdicts, records or ratings.
- Results are free, permanent, and visible only to participants.
FAQ
Is the size verdict a rule or a suggestion?
A suggestion — Uneven sizes doesn't block anything. It exists so both sides commit with open eyes; an uneven swap can still be worth it (for example a big channel supporting a sister project).
Can I appeal a join cooldown?
Cooldowns expire on their own after a couple of days, and the message shows the exact time. If you believe something went wrong, contact support from your dashboard.
Does cancelling hurt my standing?
An occasional pre-go-live cancel with notice is normal and both sides are informed. What damages your track record is dropping swaps — ghosting after joining, or letting insured campaigns fail — which shows up in your dropped count and reliability percentage.
Next: FAQ and troubleshooting — quick answers and the exact messages you might run into.