Restructuring the Rewards Program - Flipping to Total Value instead of Monthly

[jimtrue]

As a Green Friend of Pod, what's my incentive to continue subscribing? Or changing my subscription for a higher level?

We are changing our Friends of Pods Reward Perks and Levels to be based on Total Contribution to the Project. This way, our One Time Donors, our Initial Kickstarter donors, our Green Friends who have stuck with us through thick and thin, our most loyal fans can also earn Reward Perks from our Partners and from Us. Have you ever eyed one of those Silver Only Pods Boosts where you can schedule an hour of 1 on 1 time with our Lead Developers, easily a $300/value? Now you can earn it! (and some of you may have already earned it).

Maintaining active subscription also provides you free tickets to physical Pods Camps and front-row seats (hah) to the Virtual PodsCamps.

Is there a feature you've been dying to get into Pods but it hasn't gotten bounty? Earn a bounty through your continued donation and apply the donation to the bounty on a Feature instead of rewards.

What if I can't really afford to give money to Pods? Can I still help out (and earn rewards?) Of Course! If you provide hours of your time, we'll put in a handy converter and help you earn Pods Bucks towards rewards. Are you a regular contributor to Pods? Get listed both on our Special Thanks page for the work you do, but also convert the time you put in towards actual discounts on software, hosting or plugins or consulting! (Oi on how to handle this one)

Logistics

• [ ] Changing to Any amount you can afford monthly (minimum is $5) or One Time Donations (Minimum is $5).
• [ ] Monthly or Annual Subscriptions
• [ ] Earn the first 'level up' when you pass $25 (Bronze) and the 2nd when you pass $100 (Silver).
• [ ] Gold and Cornerstone are now available to our regular Friends when you pass $500 and $1000 in total contributions.
• [ ] Easier to Display Levels of our Friends & Partners this way, since we'll have Total Donations recorded by Donor, linked to User Account
• [ ] People who have been unable to stay donating can still be shown as Friends. We've earned something from them and it's helped.
• [ ] Level Ups are Rewarded Monthly at end of the Month (easier to create report once and generate the Level Up 'post' linked to the User Account

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Open for comment and review @sc0ttkclark

[quasel]

I love the Idea, a much better and consistent approach!

Things to think about:

• if I want a perk immediately I need to contribute immediately ammount x to get level x which can lead to one time donations and not ongoing maybe smaller stuff that helps more over time. Can we say enforce something like 5$ a month for at least x months?
• we don't offer much perks if you own a license to product x already

Bronze = 1 reward Silver = get's your second? ...

and some perks just take more Rewards to get? it's just needs to as simple as possible to manage and understand! can one reward be taken multiple times? (pods boost) who does pods boost anyway only scott? as he's the only lead developer - can he handle that ( at current friend rate I'm sure but ... )

[quasel]

transaction costs - does it make sense to have the option? do they count to the "lifetime" donation? would create imparity if not ...

[jimtrue]

transaction costs - does it make sense to have the option? do they count to the "lifetime" donation? would create imparity if not ...

What do you mean? The recovering the fee for the credit card usage? Yes, it's included in total donation.

On your other comment; we offer the reward based on the amount you donate, so it doesn't matter if that's the only time you donate or not. It's gated by the total amount of donation. We could make some perks only available to folks who do recurring donations, like gating consulting time behind that kind of perk.

The answer to offering many perks if you already own a license: all of those products do renewal fees and add-on packs, etc. It could apply to new purchases, too. But that's all the more reason to get more partners involved like all the groups who build products for Beaver. Opens up the possibilities.

The Pods Boosts (the consulting) can be taken multiple times but it's time-gated. It's the only one that is. We require folks to have recurring subscriptions and you can only get 2 in an annual period. Scott has done them. We have a very specific way to handle those so they don't take up too much of his time. They're focused on usually either direct consulting, answering questions or focused on building new functionality into Pods: feature funding work. They could reasonably also be for 1 on 1 training or explanation of how things work.

[quasel]

let me clarify - let’s say i’m just in the prozess of bying Beaver (saving $25) if i support pods so i can choose to just donate flat 25$ or go for a monthly option - but then i would have to wait - but wouldn’t we prefer supporters to just go on the $5 plan and forget about it and donating far longer? so maybe there is a way to lock them im for e.g at least 6 months (no idea about the SW side).

Math: one time payment = 25$ 6 months á 5$ = 30$ + optionally a user not canceling far longer = win! ;)

[jimtrue]

We have to grandfather in the rewards we gave in the past. (ie you can't take something away that you gave before) so we have to give rewards at the $25 level regardless of how long you subscribed before. The only real change we're doing is, we're rewarding ONE perk immediately. I need to make a money/value over time model that shows the new rewards system, so it's clearer.

[LaurieHeer]

I really love the opening text of this issue as well as quasel's comments about surrounding bounty: Bronze = 1 reward; Silver = get's your second. Is there a way to grandfather in the past contributions without having to grandfather in the reward policy itself? The suggestion below is an obvious improvement both to make becoming a friend more financially accessible as well as creating an opportunity to increase contributions. If I need a license to X and I can save $10 with the friends reward for my $5 donation I would absolutely do it. It may not even be necessary to require 6 months subscription as enough people will likely leave it active to balance out the folks that cancel after one month.

one time payment = 25$ 6 months á 5$ = 30$ + optionally a user not canceling far longer = win! ;)

[jimtrue]

That's actually kind of the point. We're converting an existing model so many people will have already earned their new rewards. We'll probably have to base it on $100 total contribution or something of that nature so we do get people to subscribe a little longer than just 2 months at bronze, etc. Typically, I've been providing at least one reward for one-time donations of $50, so I'd say that's the first cut-off point for Reward Fulfillment.

Grandfathering is based on 'total contribution' up to this point, so we reward people who've done one-time rewards and people doing the $5/month (which initially gave no return) a reason to continue. $5/month isn't much, honestly, until you calculate the annual for that, so obviously we're looking for larger memberships.

[jimtrue]

We can't give out rewards until they pass a 'threshold' or most people who do $5/month would quit after one month if they get their reward immediately.

[jimtrue]

@nicdford Pulling you in on this as well, so you know what the new model is.