On Monday, Reddit unveiled a new contributor program, offering users real money in exchange for their virtual internet points. Now, eligible participants have the opportunity to convert their Reddit gold and karma into traditional currency (not cryptocurrency), which is distributed on a monthly basis.
Initially, the Reddit contributor program is restricted to users residing in the United States, who are over 18 years old and can verify their identity through Persona and Stripe. Additionally, accounts must have been active for at least 30 days, and only safe-for-work posts are eligible for monetization.
This feature was leaked approximately two months ago by Android Authority when a reverse engineer discovered information about the program in an APK teardown.
The amount of money a Reddit user can earn is determined by their Reddit karma, or the number of upvotes they have received. To withdraw funds, users must accumulate a minimum of 10 gold within a 30-day period. If they fail to reach this threshold, the balance will roll over. Users with karma ranging from 100 to 4,999 will receive $0.90 for every 1 gold earned, while those with more than 5,000 karma can earn $1 for each gold.
Twitter, now known as X, recently introduced a similar creator monetization program where some content creators can earn advertising revenue based on the impressions generated by their posts. However, there are concerns that such programs could encourage spammy posting and “engagement bait.”
Reddit is also simplifying its system for awarding gold. Previously, users could purchase coins to buy gold or other awards that could be given to high-quality posts. Reddit has now discontinued the awards and coins system to streamline the process. Users can now purchase gold by long-pressing the upvote icon in the app or hovering over it on desktop. Prices start at $1.99 for one gold and go up to $49.00 for 25 gold. If top users earn $1.00 per gold, Reddit retains approximately 50% of the payment. While these features will begin rolling out on the app, they won’t be available on the web until later this year.
These revamped payment programs are being introduced at a time when Reddit is facing challenges, as some parts of its user base remain hostile due to controversial API changes that have made it financially unfeasible for many developers to build on Reddit. Several popular third-party apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun, ReddPlanet, and Sync have shut down in response to these changes.
