Let's Discuss Forum "Gifts", Virtual Items and More

[Ashley z]

Hello everyone! 🙂
Today I'd like to start a discussion about virtual items, gifts, and purchasable items or things on forums. You may be wondering what the heck I am talking about. That's totally okay! Not many forums offer paid items or gifts so I don't expect you all to know what I am talking about.


Gifts & Awards
Much like Facebook gifts, some forums have opted to include forum gifts that can be sent to other users. Gifts are purchased by one user for either real cash or forum cash and then sent to another user. Here is an example.

They are often displayed like so.

In that example, the present could have been a gift from MasterA? That's how gifts work. Users can purchase them for real cash, the forum makes money, and someone ends up with a gift that shows the world they are cared about.

Awards work the same way. The Twitter icon could have been given to me for tweeting a link to my followers that sends them to a FP blog post. Awards don't really bring in any cash as they are often given out freely by Admins, but they're still pretty sweet and tie right into gifts.


Virtual Items
Virtual items are similar to gifts, but you purchase them for yourself instead of other members. Maybe Virtual Items could be gifted to other users, but either way they are icons that are purchased for as low as $1 (or less?) so that members can have some sort of pride with their forum account.


It all sounds silly, but this is stuff that very large forums do to bring in extra revenue. When you have thousands of members, there's bound to be at least a few that will purchase something each month.


What other virtual items, gifts, or incentives do you think would be good to add to a forum, for the sake of bringing in extra cash?

 

[MasterA]

This is a very interesting idea! While the gifts don't actually do anything, I have seen this on forums before and I assume they get small number of sales if they are active.

 

[Ashley z]

This is a very interesting idea! While the gifts don't actually do anything, I have seen this on forums before and I assume they get small number of sales if they are active.

Exactly! They don't really change much about the actual forum. They just create a nice unique system that can bring in some side cash and entertain a few of the users.

 

[MasterA]

This is a very interesting idea! While the gifts don't actually do anything, I have seen this on forums before and I assume they get small number of sales if they are active.

Exactly! They don't really change much about the actual forum. They just create a nice unique system that can bring in some side cash and entertain a few of the users.

I think this will only work on some forums though. It will only work on forums where there are many members with spare cash to spend on these things.

 

[Ashley z]

This is a very interesting idea! While the gifts don't actually do anything, I have seen this on forums before and I assume they get small number of sales if they are active.

Exactly! They don't really change much about the actual forum. They just create a nice unique system that can bring in some side cash and entertain a few of the users.

I think this will only work on some forums though. It will only work on forums where there are many members with spare cash to spend on these things.

You can still implement a gift system without real cash. Using FP$, we could have a gift system in place. It might not matter that much because some users have thousands of spare FP$, but it will encourage newer members to make more posts on FP and do more exchanges in order to be able to afford some of the other vanity items, gifts and virtual items available. Just a thought! 🙂

I personally am surprised FP doesn't have some sort of vanity/virtual item awards system in place already.

 

[Thomasss]

I honestly would love a gift system, ProBoards has something like this only with real cash, and I must say I enjoy throwing little snowballs and gifting cookies and what not to other members. Having this on FP would be pretty fun, and would create another outlet for FP$.

I usually have gifts on my forums, it's something fun and during Christmas time things go all out, it's fun giving back even if they are just pixels. 😉

 

[Allenafaith]

That does seem pretty cool to be honest! I think members would enjoy this, I don't have a gift system on my forum, though. It might be something I will look into in the future, though.

 

[Gizmo]

This is a perfect idea. I like it. It would fit quite well just need to figure out what to make awards for and not for random silly things either 😛