Point-based incentive systems have long been a staple of the Weblit community: MeiLin Miranda uses them, Irk & Char use them -- there's even been a few incarnations here at GabrielGadfly.com.

What is a Point-Based Incentive System?
A Point-Based Incentive System is a system in which you award users points for interacting with and promoting your website; users can then redeem those points for prizes -- premium content, profile badges, extra permissions, etc. Point systems can be manual, semi-automated, or even complete automated, depending on what you want to do with it.

Manual Point Systems
In a Manual Point System, you keep track of user point totals manually, usually by keeping a spreadsheet. Since it requires no special software to run, a fully manual system can be put into effect on any site, regardless of platform, and it's easily extendable, since you can just arbitrarily decide what to award points for.

The problem with this system, of course, is the workload. You'll spend a lot of time every day handling point calculations; past a certain site activity level, you won't be able to maintain a fully manual system without help. I'd highly recommend against this route -- unless your site is astronomically small (i.e., 6-10 users max), you're better off focusing your efforts on other methods of boosting interaction until you can upgrade to Wordpress or Drupal.

Automated Point Systems
If you use Drupal, you have access to the wonderful User Points Module. This module keeps track of a point total for each registered user on the site, and allows you to automatically award points to users for things like posting comments, creating forum topics, and more. The core User Points module doesn't do much on its own, but a host of talented developers have created sub-modules that tie into the User Points module, allowing all sorts of things: award user roles based on point total, make content viewable only to users with certain point totals, let users easily send points to one another, etc. You can even create multiple categories of points to keep track of multiple pools.

The primary benefit of an automated system is obvious: it automates an otherwise tedious process, allowing you to keep a point-based incentive system without cutting into your writing time. The basic User Points module only automates one half of the process, of course -- the awarding and tallying of points. You can automate the other end of the process -- letting users redeem points for prizes -- but it's a bit more work. Expect a more in-depth guide soon discussing the ins-and-outs of the Drupal User Points Module. Automated systems scale easily, and are really the only workable solution for a large site with many (10+) users.

Is Your Site A Good Candidate For a Point-Based Incentive System?
Not every site needs a points system. You need to have enough free content to entice users to want to earn points, you need to be able to regularly produce premium content in addition to your main offerings, and you have to have a user base interested enough in earning points to redeem for awards.

• Do you have enough free content? I suggest you have at least 10-20 pieces of free content (available to all readers) per piece of premium content (available only to points-earning users). Remember that your goal as a weblit writer is to acquire new readers -- if you focus your efforts on premium content, you're putting a stumbling block between them and your work. Readers won't know they want your premium content if there isn't enough free content to pique their interest.
• How will you fit premium content into your workflow? If you write three free chapters a week, do you have time to write bonus stories too? If you allow readers to make requests, how will you handle simultaneous requests (i.e., three readers all request different bonus stories in the same week -- what do you do?).
• Is your premium content plot-necessary? If you write a serialized story, how does the premium content fit into the main storyline? Will readers miss out on parts of the story if they don't read the premium content? I suggest you keep your premium content separate -- use it to flesh out minor characters or settings in the world, or elaborate on otherwise unimportant prologue content, but don't punish readers that don't have the time to earn the points necessary to earn your premium content.
• Is your user base large enough and interested enough? If you don't have many readers, you're probably better off dedicating your efforts to finding new readers before you worry about a points system. You will always have less commentators than you will readers. Consider the following model (and we'll be very generous).

  Assume you have 1000 visitors. Let's say 10% of them become repeat readers. Of those 100 readers, 10% of them will comment on your site. Of those 10 commentators, 10% of your commentators will be power users, commenting frequently and engaging themselves in the forums. This means for every 1000 visitors, you'll have roughly 1 user interested in a points system. Of course, most of us would kill for a ratio like that. The actual pyramid is probably based more on a 2% scale than a 10% scale, resulting in far smaller numbers.

What Can Users Do To Earn Points?
When formulating your points system, decide what actions you want to award points for and in what amounts. You can basically award points for anything you like, but some actions may be easier to automate than others. Here's some ideas:

• Users earn points for leaving comments
• Users earn points for making forum topics / replying to forum threads
• Users earn points for writing reviews
  
  -- Consider the ethical implications of this: you are, essentially, purchasing reviews. This may turn some readers off. At the least, it's good practice to request that anyone who writes a review for points disclose the exchange in their review.
• Users earn points for linking to your site
  
  -- Can be automated with a Referral module in Drupal
• Users earn points for joining a mailing list
• Users earn points for writing fanfic and/or creating fanart
• Users earn points for tweeting about you
  
  -- Easy way to keep track of this: give yourself a hashtag and award points to users who make tweets with that hashtag. (Thanks to Valerie Chambers for this idea.)
• Users earn points for retweeting your announcements
• Users earn points for donating to you
• Users earn points for editing you (pointing out spelling errors, grammar problems, etc.)
• Users automatically earn points on a daily or hourly schedule
  
  -- A bit complicated -- involves the Rules module and cron jobs
• Users earn points in contests / games.

Of course, you can use any or all of these. The more ways users can earn points, the more users you'll have interested in earning points, but you'll also need more point sinks to keep the virtual economy from getting overinflated since there will be more points in the global pool (more on this later).

What Incentives Can Users Earn?
I like to think of premium content as being in the same vein as the bonus features that come with most DVDs these days. They include things like deleted scenes, bloopers, behind-the-scenes, character bios, interviews, and more. A lot of these ideas are easily translated into the weblit world, but really, you can offer anything you like as an incentive, so long as you can convince users that its worth the point cost. Here's a few ideas.

• Bonus stories
  
  These are short stories that fit into the same world as the main work, but don't have a major effect on the primary storyline. Readers like these because they can get additional information about people, places, or objects that are mentioned in the primary storyline, but that you didn't have the time, space, or interest to detail the first time around.
• Bonus chapters
  
  Bonus chapters differ from bonus stories in that they do fit into the main storyline. Basically, you offer the reader the chance to get the next chapter early in exchange for their points. Readers like these because it means they don't have to wait as long to get the next chapter, but only useful to readers that are caught up with the story.
• Character Bios
  
  Offer additional information about your characters that maybe doesn't have a place in the main story. Can contain any of a number of details: physical description, background history, likes and dislikes, relationships to other characters, even a list of chapters the character appears in. If you have the art skills (or can hire/bribe/guilt-trip an artist into doing it for you), show a picture of the character. Good idea to put spoiler warnings on these if you include any content that might ruin a plot point.
• Downloadable Audio
  
  Record readings of your story and offer them for download in exchange for points. Lets users take your story with them. Works better for poems and short fiction. You could also record audio of an interview.
• Coupon Codes
  
  If you sell merchandise or print versions of your story, let users earn coupon codes in exchange for points. If your readers can earn a 10% discount on a t-shirt by turning in points, you encourage your readers to both earn points and to buy a t-shirt, killing two birds with one stone.
• Notebook Scans
  
  If you're like me, you probably have a few pages of notes about your story -- I've got about 20 pages of random scrawling handwritten notes about Courier's Creed. Scan those pages into a computer, and let users earn access to them. If you're artistically inclined, you probably have concept sketches. Same principle applies. This gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at your writing process.
• Tabletop Gaming Stats
  
  If you're a tabletop gamer, consider creating stats for objects and/or characters in your world. How would that magic sword in chapter 5 translate into a magical weapon in Dungeons and Dragons? What are the combat statistics of that vampire the characters encountered in chapter 12? Tabletop gamers seem to be attracted to weblit (they're used to encountering stories in periodic installments), so this is often a good fit. Most tabletop gaming systems have a website with a forum for homebrew content if you want help balancing your creation with the main game.
• Theme Music
  
  Find a music student and commission them to compose some theme music for some locations or people in your world (or do it yourself, if you have the skills). Offer downloadable MP3s of this music to your readers in exchange for points.
• User Badges
  
  Let your users buy special graphical badges that show up on their profiles or beside their comments. If you don't have the artistic skills to create your own, commission an artist to do it for you, or search online -- you can find a lot of free badges online. Easily implemented with a Drupal module.
• Cheap Tangible Items
  
  If you have the funds to support it, consider letting users purchase small tangible items like stickers or buttons using points. You lose money since you're funding the production of the stickers/buttons yourself, but you get a big boost in visibility once readers start putting stickers and buttons promoting your content all over themselves and their belongings.
• Private Forum Access
  
  Let your users purchase access to a private forum. For this to be worth it, you want to make sure the forum is populated with regular topics of interest (and ones that can't be found elsewhere). For example, if your readers are interested in forum-based roleplaying, offer a basic PG-rated roleplaying forum to everyone, but allow users to gain access to an adult-content or mature-only roleplaying forum in exchange for points.
• Private Forum Ownership
  
  Let your users purchase a private forum of which they become a moderator. Again, useful mainly to communities with a lot of interest in roleplaying, but this allows a specific user to purchase a private forum to host their roleplaying topics. Works best if you can grant the user the ability to restrict their forum only to invited and/or approved users.
• User Roles
  
  Let users purchase (or automatically earn when they reach a certain point value) special roles that grant them various permissions. For example, let users purchase a role that lets them view the website without ads or a role that allows them to attach files to their posts.

Again, these are only suggestions. There are plenty of other possible incentives you could allow users to earn.

Balancing a Virtual Economy
The challenge of a virtual economy is ensuring that points are easy enough to earn that users can get the points they need to purchase the incentives they want, but not so easy to get that you have users accumulating tons of unused points. If it's too easy to get points, users will quickly purchase all incentives and have nothing more to look forward to. If it's too hard to get points, users won't bother trying.

Monitor your economy carefully. Drupal's User Points module easily allows you to check any user's point total. If you start seeing a lot of users with unused points, find out why. Maybe they're saving up for a high-priced incentive (hint: offer a discount). Maybe they've already earned all the incentives you've offered (hint: come up with some new incentives). If you don't think users are earning points quickly enough, offer a special bonus (for example, double the point awards for commenting for a week) or create new ways for users to earn points.

More Coming Soon!
Check back tomorrow for the next article in this series, A Basic Guide To Drupal's User Points Module For Weblit Writers, in which I'll describe the process of installing, using, and managing Drupal's answer to the point-based incentive system.