

Ask YC: What do you think of paying a referal fee per new member? - gommm

I'm currently creating a social networking website and to attract users I was thinking of asking university students to advertise for me and pay them for each new member they refer (around 30 cents per new member).<p>What do you think of this idea? Did anyone try something similar before? What are the caveats? (of course I will check that members are real members who log in more than only one time and I will monitor ip address to prevent the creation of a lot of accounts..)<p>Thanks...
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ScottWhigham
I don't think it's a bad idea provided you have enough cash on hand and a good
system of only accepting registrations that you want. For $0.30 a
registration, someone could easily bot it with fake accounts from all over the
world (different IPs, would login multiple times - whatever). It sounds like
you want only people with .edu email addresses? Facebook did this initially
IIRC.

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gommm
Thanks for your answer... So I guess I should put some limits on how much one
referal fees for a month and pay only accounts that stay active more than a
month...

I hadn't thought about limiting to student email addresses... but that should
limit the possibility of fraud. I'm also limiting customers to only one
country too (malaysia)...

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jimrandomh
This is a horrible idea, because it invites abuse. If someone sends spam
advertising your site, you'll have to deal with the fallout. You might think
that a few simple checks will prevent fake members, but a botnet can create
fake members and make them log in as many times as the botnet's controller
wants. Can you really afford to police a referral system?

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phil_KartMe
a couple of questions:

target market: do you want university students' friends as your earliest
members?

incentives: do you want to pay for referrals or active users (e.g., the friend
uploads a pictures, posts a review, etc.)?

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gommm
Target market: university students, young professional

In order to create an account one needs to upload a photo at least. I would
also probably only pay for accounts that are still active after a 30 days
period...

