I have an idea for a service I want to build that would help websites get more users / traffic.

[Mutiny]

Hi Everyone,

I have an idea for a service I want to build that would help websites get more traffic or users and I would love to get some thoughts on whether this service would be something you would be interested in.

The basic idea is that there would be a central website where users would create an account and in this account they could store points. Points they earn could be used to redeem prizes or enter contests, such as to redeem an Amazon gift card, etc.

If you had a website, you could pay a small fee to buy a certain number of these points. Then, your website would be listed in the main website's index along with a listing of actions that users could take on your website to earn points. For instance, if you bought points for your website you could award users 5 points when they register on your site, as well as one point for each new post on your website. This data would be communicated back to the central website and added to the user's point total, where they could save up points for contest entries or prizes.

I think that this website would accomplish two things:

1) Help users find new websites that they like by rewarding desired user behavior, such as registering, posting or buying a product
2) Help smaller websites get access to a bigger pool of users and offer users the chance for rewards on a much smaller budget than they could do on their own, since a user can belong to multiple websites to gain rewards.

If this seems like a good idea, I might just build this. I would love to get your thoughts, especially those of you who run websites or forums, as to whether you would pay a small monthly fee to be a part of a program like this if it were to bring you new traffic.

 

[FriendlyPerson]

Hi Everyone,

I have an idea for a service I want to build that would help websites get more traffic or users and I would love to get some thoughts on whether this service would be something you would be interested in.

The basic idea is that there would be a central website where users would create an account and in this account they could store points. Points they earn could be used to redeem prizes or enter contests, such as to redeem an Amazon gift card, etc.

If you had a website, you could pay a small fee to buy a certain number of these points. Then, your website would be listed in the main website's index along with a listing of actions that users could take on your website to earn points. For instance, if you bought points for your website you could award users 5 points when they register on your site, as well as one point for each new post on your website. This data would be communicated back to the central website and added to the user's point total, where they could save up points for contest entries or prizes.

I think that this website would accomplish two things:

1) Help users find new websites that they like by rewarding desired user behavior, such as registering, posting or buying a product
2) Help smaller websites get access to a bigger pool of users and offer users the chance for rewards on a much smaller budget than they could do on their own, since a user can belong to multiple websites to gain rewards.

If this seems like a good idea, I might just build this. I would love to get your thoughts, especially those of you who run websites or forums, as to whether you would pay a small monthly fee to be a part of a program like this if it were to bring you new traffic.

I could see this happening, there sites like this for name brands (Cole Cola, NetFlix, Hulu, etc) but I doubt any one of those would let me sign up as an "site owner" and assign a x amount of redeemable points to a finished action as you are doing.

The only concerns I have if it gonna be "plug and forget" or if I would need to bring in a developer to finish the job on my end to "relay" to your system that an action been completed or not. As well as if it accepting of wild card trailing like /checkout/success/* for example. As well as rates for doing such so it make sense even if someone were to only sign up for $1.50/month hosting for example. I wouldn't want to pay for example $0.75 for that minimal profit action for example.

 

[Mutiny]

The only concerns I have if it gonna be "plug and forget" or if I would need to bring in a developer to finish the job on my end to "relay" to your system that an action been completed or not. As well as if it accepting of wild card trailing like /checkout/success/* for example. As well as rates for doing such so it make sense even if someone were to only sign up for $1.50/month hosting for example. I wouldn't want to pay for example $0.75 for that minimal profit action for example.

Good points, and something I had been thinking about as well. I was thinking there would be an API, so depending on what you want to do, a developer may be required. However, my goal would be to eventually have plugins for the major platforms, such as Xenforo, MyBB, Wordpress, etc so that it could be rather plug and play on most websites.

My thoughts were that you could buy a bundle of points for say $5 USD for 5000 points and award them as you see fit. Maybe there's a max limit of points you can award per transaction, but there may also be value in you being able to award say 1000 points to someone for doing some super action you really want to reward for, such as making a purchase.

I'm hoping that a $5 price point to get started would be low enough to attract most websites to the program, although I may also offer a very limited free tier where you can get some points to award for free.

 

[FriendlyPerson]

However, my goal would be to eventually have plugins for the major platforms, such as Xenforo, MyBB, Wordpress, etc so that it could be rather plug and play on most websites.

I would consider other options too which would be easy to maintain, for instance Blesta is open source and standard PHP software it's probably not that much overheads to offer that an option as opposed to other options like WHMCS that might requires considerably more specialization. Due to its closed source nature and so forth.

My thoughts were that you could buy a bundle of points for say $5 USD for 5000 points and award them as you see fit. Maybe there's a max limit of points you can award per transaction, but there may also be value in you being able to award say 1000 points to someone for doing some super action you really want to reward for, such as making a purchase.

Exactly and you could dope up the offerings on larger "orders" like for example in your example let's say if I wanted to buy a 25 bucks pack (normally would be 25,000 in your example) maybe you could toss in say another 500 "bonus" points and marginally increase the incentives to keep administrative costs down like transaction, billing fees and such on your end.

I'm hoping that a $5 price point to get started would be low enough to attract most websites to the program, although I may also offer a very limited free tier where you can get some points to award for free.

Indeed that would be a good starting point offering this at initially $5 then you can requires more as the program extends. Though I wouldn't be like most Demand Side Platforms and requires ridiculous deposits. I would say $25 max is where I would top off this at at the end of the day.