You can now earn money on Reddit. Here’s how

Reddit is scrapping its current rewards program and replacing it with a new voting system through a Contributor Program, which allows certain users, including moderators, to earn money.

The new system offers users six purchase options for assigning rewards to posts and comments. If the recipient is eligible and verified for the contributor program, he can receive monthly payments (based on “gold” and “karma”) that he earns through eligible contributions.

The payment levels of the new contribution program vary depending on whether the user is a standard contributor or higher and depending on the amount of gold and karma he has earned. Standard contributors will receive 90 cents per upvote in gold, and the best contributors will receive 1 dollar per gold.

For now only in the United States

To purchase a reward, users can long-press the “upvote” arrow on mobile or hover over it on a desktop computer and choose one of six options to show their appreciation for messages and comments. The gold rewards given to the messages will be a positive gold vote instead of a gold coin or medal.

But not all golden “upvotes” will give rise to a cash payment. Users must undergo a verification process and meet certain eligibility requirements, such as being at least 18 years old, having a Reddit account dating back at least 30 days, living in an eligible country (for now only the United States is eligible and Reddit will expand the program over time) and having an account in good standing.

Some “golden upvotes” will be excluded from the contribution program, such as messages with sexual or violent content and subreddits that are not NSFW.

Reddit ended the old reward system on September 12, and users will not be able to transfer their Reddit coins to the new contribution program. Reddit coins were previously part of Reddit Premium, a monthly subscription that allows you to browse Reddit without ads, create custom avatars and access the subreddit Lounge.

Reddit coins were given to each subscriber every month and could be used to buy rewards to gild posts and comments. The Gold and Platinum rewards gave the recipient a set amount of coins and a week or a month of Premium Reddit.

Source: “ZDNet.com “