The shopping community Ciao are experts in motivating their members. They recognize and reward member participation through two parallel remuneration systems: cash rewards, and a nonmonetary system of “community points” that increase a member’s status in the community hierarchy.

  1. Cash rewards: Members earn small amounts of money for publishing useful consumer reviews and for referring new members to the site. The earnings are credited automatically to online accounts. When a member’s account balance reaches a minimum threshold amount, the member can request a payment.
  2. Community points: Members earn points for certain community activities. A member’s community score, or points total, is displayed publicly to the community. Points cannot be converted to cash; the community points system works in parallel to the cash rewards system but is not part of it. So what’s a community point worth? What can members do with the points they earn? When a member reaches certain threshold community scores, this changes the color of a dot that appears next to the member’s user’s name on the website. That’s it. If you’d think that no one over fourteen years old would care about colored dots, then you’d be very much mistaken. Just by surfing the Ciao websites, you’ll see that members are extremely excited about these dots. They celebrate every color change with messages on their profile pages. They congratulate other members on changing color. They set public goals for themselves to change their color by a certain date.

What these two rewards systems, one monetary and one nonmonetary, have in common is that they combine instant gratification with longer-term goal-setting. When I participate in the community, I see an immediate result: more cash in my online account and/or additional points added to my community score. This is highly satisfying. At the same time, I am advancing toward a larger goal: reaching the minimum threshold to request a cash payment, or reaching the next points level to change the color of my dot. And this is a powerful motivator to keep participating in the community over time.