Re: Am I right that under your definition that wouldn't count as self-promotion?

Parsing "your definition" and "that" from above ^{^}

your definition: "to tell someone your value, e.g. a post clearly says, this is the value that I can bring to you"

that: So if someone owns a website, runs advertisements on that website, keeps track of view-counts to negotiate rates with companies which want to do sponsored posts, uses affiliate links which provide financial compensation if anyone purchases something through them (I'm not saying you personally do for the record for for illustrative purposes), but if the website doesn't explicitly say "This website is great" that's not self promotion? Even though the submitter would clearly benefit from increased traffic to their website?

Barely anything counts as self promotion then. How often do websites advertise themselves (as opposed to their goods and services)?

You're submitting your website to dozens of subreddits; that's telling people in those communities that they should go to your site. That's a claim that your post has value.

I'm not entirely sure what that refer's to in the above statement. Can you clarify?