Need ideas for how to reward members

Until I voted for this, and read this idea, it never occurred to me, but is great for getting a sense on who is really involved in the network and to what degree.

www.ningmods.com have a Rewards Application that you can install on your site immediately. It comes with every feature that you can think of, and more information is available at www.ningmods.com/mods/rewards/about.

It has the abililty to see how many people joined the networks BECAUSE of their invitation too, and Im in the process of making a "rewards Store" so you can allow your users to buy gifts with their points.

the best way to reward members would be to give them credits on the discussion forum for instance. They get new credits as soon as they post. It's about the same as the "feature a member" but much better as it's an automatic process. This is a very cool idea i saw on other social networks.

It does it.

It wouldn't be hard for Ning to add the functionality to export Invitee's to a csv file. This would solve my immediate needs and wouldn't cost a dime.

I am not ready to pay another monthly fee. Perhaps if Ning Mods would sell these features as a one time purchase it would be easier to justify the expense.

I agree with you NING mods... but this fee, will this be fore ONE application only or for the entire package?

I'm currently using Ningmods apps and this is for his entire package + future apps he develops. The Rewards app works very well and I'm quite pleased with it!

I have it installed on my site at www.blueskygear.com

And Thom has been great to take suggestions from his subscribers and make modifications to his apps - like being able to have members "redeem" points for merchandise et al (which he is currently working on)

It would be great to have on our network

strippers and blow.....dont dismiss it right away ....mull it over

While the rewards system is awesome for getting people involved with your network I think it's a rip off especially to those who pay for premium services. It should be included into the service package or at least be available for a one time payment. I would get it if you didn't have to pay a monthly fee. It would be nice to get it for less at least if that's the only thing you want.

Its only $14.95 per month, its as cheap as I can make it, and it comes with heaps more apps; the cost includes access and immediate support and its about "value for money" rather than "cheapness", under the concept that its inclusion adds value to your site.

Im going to port it across to the Ning Apps system over the next few weeks, so it will be available as a Ning app at about the same time as platform release.

Ning is going to bring out a rewards system in the future, so maybe ask them to hurry it up. More than likely, theyre working on it now.

Ning Mods

$14.95 per month .... that's $180/year. People won't pay a penny for something so basic and that is free on other social networks. Same for Facebook connect. Those are standard features (if not opensource) you just cannot sell.

The only way for you is to create a new social network with all features I would like to have for $15/month. There aren't many choices today, not more than 5. There's room for a new competitor as long as it can provide up-to-date technologies and fast running (i like Ning for the speed of their servers)

You guys do realise that Ning Mods is an independent developer and not a Ning employee, don't you?

Although I agree that these features should really be an integral part of the Ning platform, begrudging a third party developer for charging a small subscription fee for use of his software seems a little rich.

Software developers aren't here to be charity providers for you, they're here to make a little money!

i have nothing against making a little money. I'm against monthly fees that cost a real fortune over several years. Nobody is ready to pay $720 over 4 years just to have Facebook Connect. It's just not the right business model. Instead, i would suggest a 1-time flat fee. It's more democratic and more marketable. Think twice. Agree or not. It's your business.

Its a solid point about offering more options for payment, and its something that'll get rolled into the Ning Apps versions of the products, for sure!

The original idea was to charge a small monthly fee, spend the year coding roughly 30 apps, and build a community who would suggest things they wanted and offer feedback on improvements.

While I've only got 7 apps out, the plan was to get to 30, which makes the subscription fee great value for money. While the other apps are free on other platforms, they arent on Ning *at all*, and my plan was to at least get some of that basic stuff we take for granted on other platforms included in the offering, along with some larger apps, and stumble along that path over the rest of the year.

While I've made a few basic apps, to get the numbers up a bit (numbers look more impressive than complex apps, which is more my thing) most of my stuff is definitely not basic (on Ning). There's all sorts of crazy API calls happening and the two flagship products, Subscriptions and Rewards, have taken 7 months solid between them to build.

The Subscriptions App turns over great numbers for a lot of my clients, its become the entire source of their income and helped them become "Social Network Managers" in the true sense of the word. For my best client, he's turned over $30k in two months, which has cost him $30 in fees. That's the type of site Im working with more and more.

FaceBook Connect on Ning is definitely NOT easy. There was a few weeks of trial and error to get that working, given the technical and TOS constraints that I need to work within on this platform :( Most other systems will extend their signin model to include data but on NIng we have solid technical and TOS restraints on whats allowed.

But FB Connect project has been ceased now, in the end it wasn't possible without storing (encrypted) passwords somewhere, which is not something I wanted responsibility for.... I plan to utilise it in another form down the track, to help you get data from Ning into FaceBook, but in terms of automating signups, its off.

I've given a complete working copy of the FaceBook Connect code to Ning for free, with instructions on what needs to be done to extend the signup model, so hopefully they will use it to get it working quicker, but its probably been filed in the "circular filing cabinet".

interesting feedback. can you tell us if you tested the beta apis from Ning and if they are easy to use (flexible) or not?

Yeah they are good. Not easy to learn but once you get the hang of it its pretty good. I got some good code that Im sharing if you ever need some help. Just got a generic "wrapper" that sends across info that you can then use to build server-side with.

Download it from www.ozwebspace.com/os/helloworld.xml if you want. It will save you days of learning and trial and error.

REWARDS ..... following addon's as soon as we get approved by Ning.
http://developer.ning.com/forum/topic...

lol Charles. That kid Dustin is notorious for talking about products he does not own or create. None of that is real. Don't let it fool you.

All he's done is found the javascript on my site that allows the updates to appear on the main page. A few lines of javascript does not equal the thousands of server side code lines that actually go into making an application, nor will it help in a few weeks when the Ning Apps platform is out.

I'm a big dreamer. Thanks for letting us know. Rating, rewards and status (from third parties, i lost my faith in ning developers) is all what i'm desperately waiting for.

lol Charles. Why have you lost faith in developers? It's Ning that has crippled the works.

Any news from the ning reward system?