Subreddits are discussion forums, they aren't business ventures. Obviously the very big ones run into some gray area, but the overwhelmingly common situation i

Subreddits are discussion forums, they aren't business ventures. Obviously the very big ones run into some gray area, but the overwhelmingly common situation is that moderators "put effort into the task" of creating a subreddit so they can simply have a nice place to discuss things and not "to reap benefit". Trying to monetize a subreddit isn't really the purpose of the site, and if you want to do that there are other tools available.