Frequently Asked Questions regarding "credits" at openCards
The openCards "credits program" gives you the opportunity to earn real money for your collaboration on openCards. We share our commercial income with you depending on the number of "credits" you collect on openCards. You can earn "credits" for posting articles ("POST credits"), when other users read your articles ("HITcredits") and for special support of openCards ("BONUS credits") e.g. for helping us to integrate a new game into openCards. All three kinds of "credits" together define your share of openCards "credits" and decide how much money you will earn.
Below we answer the most common questions about the openCards "credits program". If you have further questions or suggestions please use our special "credits" forum in the openCards forum area.
For what will you receive "credits"?
For what can you use your "credits"?
How many "credits" will you get for the different possible articles or posts?
How do we count "HITcredits"?
Where can I see how many "credits" I have collected?
How much money will be distributed to our members in each accounting period?
Can I lose my "credits" ?
Since when is the openCards "credits program" active?
How is the user share exactly calculated?
How and when do we draw up your account?
For what will you receive "credits"?
We distinguish between three kinds of "credits" on openCards:
- You receive "POST credits" when you create a new article on openCards or when you post a comment or a forum post.
- You get "HIT credits" when other users of openCards read your articles.
- You can earn "BONUS credits" when you support openCards in a special way e.g. when we integrate a new game into openCards.
All three together define your share in the openCards "credits".
For what can you use your "credits"?
We share 50% of our commercial income with our members! This so-called "user-share" will be continously shared with all our "credits" shareholders. The operative point here is your own share, which decides how much real money you earn for your "credits" - and for what you can use real money depends only on you ;-)
How many "credits" will you get for the different possible articles or posts?
We devide between "POST credits", which you will get once for each article when you post this article, and "HIT credits", which you will receive every time when a user of openCards reads your article. A full list of all content types and the "POST" and "HIT credits" you can earn for them you will find here.
Because there are so many different things you can do to support openCards, we have no fixed list with "BONUS credits". In fact "BONUS credits" will be individually agreed upon between you and the Brand Manager of each game.
Last remark here: While you receive "POST credits" immediately, the "HIT credits" wil be counted only once each month. We will explain this in more detail in the next paragrapht: "How do we count "HIT credits"?
You will receive your "HIT credits" for your articles once each month. For this we count all user access to your articles. Because of this method an article that has been read by many different users will earn more "credits" than an article read by only few or always the same users.
To prevent malpractice with our "credits program", we will not simply count each click on your articles! In fact, we evaluate how many different users per time interval access a particular article. We won't share the exact algorithmus with you - but we explain the basic mode of operation here:
We distinguish according to thier openCards User-ID. Visitors will be distinguished by using thier IP-Adress. The time interval, which we use for the evaluation, could e.g. one hour.
Example:
We use a time interval of one hour. We have as result e.g. for april 30*24 = 720 different time intervals. We count for each of this intervals, how many different users have read your article. In this way, we analyse how many different users access your article in one time interval. If the same user accesses your article in two different time intervals, each access count. It counts even when this two intervals are directly succeeded by each other.
All user access will be collected for a time and finally evaluated. If there is an average of two "HITs" in the 720 different time intervals for one of your articles in april, you will receive 1.440 "credits" for the 1.440 "HITs". And this are only the "HIT credits" for one article!
Where can I see how many "credits" I have collected?
You can reach your "credit" account from your profile or from the link "Credits" on the right side navigation menu (under "Create content"). There you will find a detailed list of all "credits" you have collected for posting articles ("POST credits") and for the "HIT credits" you have already collected. There you will find also a link to a complete list of the TOP articles (most "HIT credits") and a link to the TOP shareholders of openCards.
How much money will be distributed to our members in each accounting period?
That depends on our commercial incom. The more money we earn, the more we can give to our shareholders. But our commercial income depends upon the number of users we have and from thier actions on openCards.
Actually we have a minimally active and samll community on openCards and because of this our commercial incom is near zero. But we plan a continous growth with new games and functions to increase the number of users on openCards (and depending on this our potentional commercial income).
Yes, you can! There are three cases how you lose credits fully or in part.
- First, if you discharge your membership, all your "credits" will expire.
- Second: you delete one of your articles. In this case you lose the "POST credits" but not the "HIT credits" from this article.
- Finally we keep the authorization to delete "credits" of a member in case this member offends our Terms of Service in a massive way.
Since when is the openCards "credits program" active?
The official start of this program was in Q1 2009. However we consider all articles since the start of openCards (Beta-phase) since 2007. We collect all necessary data since this time to support the openCards "credits program".
Therefore all data about the collected "credits" is available for you. On the other site the functions for the accounting of real money will probably available at the end of 2009 (we are planning user accounts in cooperation with Pay Pal accounts). If you wish ti collect a real money deposit from your"credits" in the meantime, we will collect it for you. Because of the low number of users at this time, the commercial income of openCards is nearly zero. So, at this time we have no high priority on this function (if necessary we can handle this manually).
How exactly was the user share build?
We will collect our income primary by commercials that we integrate into our site. We cooperate here with companies that provide a wide scale of advertising partners.
50% of this income defines the so called "user share" and will be distributed as profit to our members. The other 50% are held back for the advancement and for the current costs of openCards.
Your share is defined by your "credits share" on openCards. If your "credit share" e.g. averages 2,73%, than you recieve 2,73% of the "user share" in real money! It is that simple. For this always keep in mind the day of the accounting. We are planning four accounting days each year (30.03. / 30.06. / 30.09. / 30.12) . So your "credit share" is relevant for this accounting e.g. exactly at 30.06.
At this time we are not planning other types of commercialisation of openCards e.g. like a premium user model. If there are good reasons in the future to change this, we will integrate this business into this model (e.g. by simply excreasing the "user share").
How and when do we draw up your account?
We are planning four accounting days each year (30.03. / 30.06. / 30.09. / 30.12) . All users will receive thier share of real money on a personal openCards account. Only restrictions: your "credit share" must be equal min. 0,01% of the "credits share" and must be worth min. 0,05 € (5 Cent) (the accouning was made in € Euro). You can collect your deposit over mutiple accounting periods (e.g. to reach the limit of 5 € explained later on) on you openCards account (but you will not get interests on this account).
If your deposit on your openCards account is at least 5 € you can transfer this money via Pay Pal to your personal bank account. If the deposit you like to transfer is smaller than 100 €, you must pay the Pay Pal fee for this transfer. Otherwise (if its larger than 100 €) you have 5 free transfers per accounting period.
Because of the 5 Cent limit and because of rounding differences it is possible, that not the complete "user share" could be shared with our members. If this is the case, the complete rest would be transfered into the next accounting period as increase of the new "user share".
