[docquesting]

I would like to be able to buy these credits to keep my status from being below 0 if needed. Sometime you may not visit for awhile and wonder where your new people are coming from. Then you happen to visit here again and notice the negative balance. It would also be nice to get an email stating when you have say five or less.

To keep this forum viable it does need to make money as most should to stay afloat. The buying credits would be a plus in this aspect. Not only that but a conveniance for the users. Charging up to $.25 per credit would be reasonable. After all users are coming to a well established site that has one of the best set ups for this nich market that I have seen yet.

[Ryan]

It's a great suggestion.

In fact, I have even considered in the past getting paid posting services to come in here and post at the top forums in order to be sure that our top PF members get posts in return. The only thing that has stopped me is the fact that PF itself does not bring in direct revenue, so I'm not sure that we would be able to continue to fund that kind of thing.

Anyways, regarding your suggestion, I do like it, however your price of $0.25 per credit does seem a bit high. The going rate for a post from an individual person seems to be about $0.10 per post and the rate for a post from a posting service will be around $0.15 per post, varying depending on the company of course. That said, I feel that if we did this, our credits would need to be kept lower than the going rate for a posting service and possibly even lower than $0.10. Reason being, we do not "employ" the PF members to post and therefore cant control the quality of the posts.

I'd like to hear what others have to say about this, as it's obviously something that will affect a lot of people and I'm not sure I've had time to examine all sides of it.

[Seraph]

I would not buy posts, but sounds like a good idea for those that need them.

[RedMatrix]

This is very interesting indeed. If someone with negative PF balance can pay X amount of cents to get back to zero (or higher) then someone with positive PF balance can sell theirs for Y amount. Meanwhile, AdminFusion can take a rake from transactions.

Oh, poker term sorry. Rake is like a piece of the pie. Like a tax.

[illusion]

I don't like the idea one bit I think that the rich forum owners could prevail over the poorer ones. The activity of the forums would also suffer because a forum could be in +123 but it has like 200 posts, because the owner has bought the credits.

Maybe if we had like people in -100 can pay $10 to get back to 0. And a minimum of 20 posts can be bought a week. As a forum owner who has had his fair share of lack of funds, I just don't really like it.

[RedMatrix]

Ben, if an admin doesn't have $ to pay his debt, then he has the time to make posts on someone else's forum. Time does in fact equal money, only the conversion rate is questionable.

And when I say debt, I mean negative posts vs balanced at zero.

[Ryan]

I've already thought about that, and here's the thing Ben.

Let's say you are at the top of the list with +100 (you have earned it)...Now let's say that somebody comes in and buy 150 posts. Not fair, right? Well not really....because if somebody buys 150 posts, that means that we have some $ to spend at AF, money that we can spend on PF. What we would do is pay a posting company to go in and post at the top forums listed - including yours! We wouldn't pay them to post 150 posts at the top 1 forum, but instead would pay them to post as to even out the top forums.

The way I'm looking at it, I just think that if somebody buys a whole lot of credits, all that means is that we get a posting service in there to knock them back down and/or whoever else is at the top of the list. I'm sure we could even set up a sponsorship of some sort with one paid posting company and receive long term deals - which means better and more posts for you.

[RedMatrix]

That seems like a well thought out plan. I like it because I was thinking that in the back-burner of my mind.

Especially the loyalty program idea; it is brilliant!

Ryan, is it possible for someone to buy PF credits even though they are not on PF yet?

[Ryan]

I don't see why it would not be ok.

There's still a lot to be worked on here though. Larry and I talked about this on MSN earlier and will go further with it, but setting up some rules and actually implementing it could take some time. We'll need to examine it from all sides to be sure that it cant be cheated in any way...and also make sure that it doesn't make things unfair for current PF users and those who cannot afford to buy credits.

[markblair]

How would PF accurately calculate the posts then if this were in place? There would be no accurate way to show the +/- a forum is receiving since they could have bought their way out of a negative balance. I realize this could be helpful for AF but if we are just turning the money around for a posting service, how is that helping? Plus, if I have a -150 balance and I buy myself back to 0, then the posting service AF gets would be to help the top sites (not mine). I guess I'd need to hear more about this and why someone should be able to buy themselves out of a negative balance. If you can't keep up with the posts, your site can be disabled from PostFusion if I'm not mistaken.