Reddit Will Now Pay Real Money Against Fake Internet Points

Reddit is a social media platform that contains much more than what you normally see on other social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. While most of the content you see on Reddit is Safe For Work, it also has a huge repository of NSFW content. But, now the Safe Work Work Reddit page owners can earn real Fiat money from the fake Reddit gold they receive monthly.

Reddit has introduced a Contributor Program that is currently limited to the US and will gradually expand across the globe. The program is facilitating earning opportunities for individual pages run by admins who are at least 18 years old and post only Safe For Work posts. The Redditors can verify their identities through Persona and Stripe. Each monetizable account must have existed for 30 days to be eligible for the program. 

This feature was leaked about a month ago by a reverse engineer on Android Authority, who used the data related to the program during an APK teardown. 

Reddit’s Contributor Program

Reddit users give gold and upvotes to Redditors that they find worthy of something. These points can be given to the comments, posts, or other contributions. Each Reddit page must meet monthly karma and Gold to redeem the money. The basic requirement is to earn 10 gold every 30 days, or the balance rolls over. For users who make between 100 to 4999 Karma, Reddit will pay $0.90 for 1 Gold. For more than 5,000 karma points earned, each gold will be worth $1. As the Reddit karma keeps growing, the value of gold will also keep increasing.

Reddit is also changing its system of awarding gold. Earlier, users could buy coins, which then could be used to buy gold. The new gold buying system is much more straightforward. Users can now long press the Upvote icon on their mobile app or hover the mouse over the icon on their computer to buy gold.

The Gold prices start from $1.99/Gold and go up to $49 for 25 Gold. But each Redditor earns only $1 or $0.99 for the gold they receive from the users. This means that nearly 50% of the Gold value is kept by Reddit as its share. This feature has rolled out on mobile apps in the US, but it will be available on the web later this year.

Reddit has introduced this monetization program amid a huge controversy within the community. After certain API updates on the App that made third-party development unaffordable for Reddit-based developers, a lot of top-traffic pages like r/awww and r/music went dark as a sign of protest. Popular Reddit-based third-party apps like Apollo, Reddit is Fun, ReddPlanet, and Sync have shut down after the recent API changes. Reddit also laid off 5% of its employees to cut costs and slowed its hiring process. With the introduction of this monetization program, Reddit creators may find a way to come back online and keep the community alive. But the hopes of that happening are pretty dismal.

Written By

Manish Content Strategist

With a mixture of literature, cinema, and photography, Manish is mostly traveling. When he is not, he is probably writing another tech news for you!

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