There had been rumors that Reddit was planning to take on Kickstarter with their own crowfunding site. Today, the social media giant has finally launched Redditmade, the new crowfunding site that will help people publicize their projects, gather funding and connect with others.
Redditmade, the new crowfunding website, lets its users create merchandise around specialized interests. Redditmade joined two other already famous crowfunding websites: Indiegogo and Kickstarter.
But, unlike those websites, Redditmade targets the existing moderators of the communities on Reddit. These people, also known as subreddits, are the main focus of Redditmade.
The website revealed a bit about the goals and reasons of Redditmade, the new crowfunding site, in an announcement:
One of the biggest reasons we created Redditmade was to allow subreddits an easy way to create official subreddit merch for their communities. Whatever you want to make, we’ll connect you to our network of quality sourcing partners for a variety of products and walk you through every step of the process so your community can celebrate your connection and show off your pride without all the work.
The Reddit website is massive, as only last month it was revealed that it had around 175 million unique visitors; there are around 8,000 active subreddits. The Reddit business, though, is quite small; its two main sources of income are the sales of premium memberships and advertising.
Redditmade is going to allow subredditors, for now, to create and sell merchandise, in exchange of a fee, of course.
Unlike other crowfunding sites, such as Kickstarter, Reddit has a say in the creation of the product it will help sale. For now, the majority of Redditmade, the new crowfunding site, sells t-shirts that use designers’ artwork. The designer is also the person that sets the price, but other than that, Reddit does the rest, such as manufacturing and shipping.
When it comes to other goods, Redditmade requires you to submit rough examples of artwork and then it:
[…] connects you with sourcing partners, work with you to finalise designs, and help you step through all the other creative, legal, logistical, promotional, and financial hoops to make your campaign happen, but we can only help you as much as you’ll let us.