Because I can only say “I’m not on commission, honest” so many times before wondering whether I should be…
Suggestion: I would like people to be able to say on signing up (either explicitly or because I’ve given them a link) “Hi, I’m new here. DRMacIver sent me”.
Suggestion for how this could work which I am in no way wed to but is mostly intended as a sketch to prompt ideas:
Accumulation of “honey”. Essentially virtual dollars that can only be used for paying Beeminder for premium (not for goal derails: That would lessen the sting!)
When someone I have referred attaches a credit card to their account, I get $5 of honey (credit card rather than signup to prevent easy abuse. I don’t really imagine people would abuse it much right now, but it seems sensible to put in safeguards).
For the first time period (6 months? A year?) 10% of the money they pay beeminder accumulates as honey to me.
Bonus: Leader board of total amount of honey accrued (i.e. not deducting honey spent) for the busiest recruiter bees.
I’ve also referred people before. I always thought a handful of freebies would be a nice reward. Perhaps them ‘premium freebies’ that allow you to dial down an existing pledge to zero.
That, or a free month of one of the premium plans. Simple possibilities abound! I don’t like the complexity of honey.
I sympathize regarding your addiction! I have the same tendencies usually.
Lately I’ve been managing my work (programming + writing ATM) using beeminder + reasonably fine-grained task breakdowns & estimates (tagtime + tskedit). This has had the (positive) side-effect of making me go for minimal solutions initially and optionally dial up the complexity later…
My programming at the moment is mostly working on a system that has the defined behaviour of generating horrendously complicated solutions and then extracting a just as good but much simpler solution out of them. I think it may be exaggerating my natural tendency to do the same…
I didn’t realize anyone else was using TagTime’s task editor! Are you doing anything interesting with the data it’s collecting about the ratio of your estimates to actual amount of time spent?
Also, love the referral scheme ideas! In the meantime you two are definitely getting stickers if we haven’t already sent you some. (PS: I guess David’s not a sticker person. We’ll be in touch for your address, Ian!)
Just wondering if there are referral links or if they might be coming in the future?
I know there are tonnes of ideas out there on how they should apply.
I agree mostly with the idea that instead of any credits being applied against a sting, they should instead allow you to create an extra freebie goal or some credit towards a premium upgrade/trial with extra bonuses given when someone does sign up for a premium account and/or a SMALL cut of the sting paid by the accounts that we bring in. Obviously we don’t want to profit too much from someone else’s difficulties, we want to support their goals!
In theory I think it’s fair because referrals that incur stings are revenue that beeminder may never have had without the referral in the first place…
On a side note, it would also be incredibly helpful for people with “Freelance Income/Self-Employed Income” goals… lol. Why not allow beeminder to be an even greater part of an individual’s success?
Curious if anything further has developed or been decided on this?
These are just my thoughts. I respect that Beeminder is a business and entitled to its profits, however sharing is caring.
Counterpoint: I personally am more likely to avoid businesses that are using referral schemes Some are good but a lot are just pumping an empty well and it can be hard to tell the difference.
My usual suggestion to resolve this type of problem is that the credit can only be used to pay, say, 50% of a derail. So if you derail for $30, up to $15 of your credit can offset it. So your derails are never free but your credit is still worth something.
