Exactly one year ago Reddit launched a subscription revenue stream called “Reddit Gold”. You can pay $3.99/mo for extra features and a special trophy next to your username.
Some Background
Reddit is a thriving community site where users can vote up (and vote down) news articles, images, and videos. The homepage consists of the top links found around the web that is changing constantly based on users votes.
Reddit was struggling a year ago
They were one of the biggest sites on the internet (top 500) and they weren’t able to keep their site up – they needed cash for servers and engineering talent badly!
Reddit Gold was Born
Instead of blasting their users with take-over advertisements they charged their community money (a la Reddit Gold) for extra perks on the site! This turned out to be a major success by bringing in much needed cash.
Here is a great quote from one of the Reddit team members:
Today we know that the reddit gold program turned out to be a huge success. We used the cash infusion to buy a raft of new servers, which (by great, dumb luck) came online just in time for the Digg implosion. The new capacity allowed us to ride this tidal wave instead of getting crushed by it. – Raldi
Checkout their explanation of why you should subscribe to Reddit Gold:
What do I get for joining?
We plan to continually add features over time. Right now we’re offering:
- A trophy on your userpage
- The ability to turn off sidebar ads, sponsored links, both, or neither
- The option of seeing twice as many comments at once without having to click “load more comments”
- New comment highlighting: see what’s been posted since the last time you visited a thread
- Friends with Benefits™ — you can add notes to your friends to help you keep track of them all
- Access to a super-secret members-only community that may or may not exist
- A thank-you note
Notice how it’s nothing fancy just a few extra feature additions.
Proof: Don’t Be Afraid to Charge
If your users love your site, a very small fraction of them will pay you and it might turn out to be much more significant than your advertising revenue.
What do you think of this move? Do you know of any community based sites that should launch a subscription option? Please let me know in the comments below.
