I like the idea, but honestly, I wish there weren't referral points/a shop at all. TOO MANY CURRENCIES. Someone mentioned loyalty points, and I was like wtFloon are those, then I remembered they're the things you get for filling the reward card. Which are totally different from loyalty TOKENS. And I know all the holiday shops make things fun, but they make SO MANY CURRENCIES.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic, so yes, I would like to be able to get referral points in some other way, so GAs are as good a method as any. As for the argument that the points will get too common and lose value... I'd rather that happen than the points be so rare, almost no one has any. You can't just buy the referral shop items for sP from user shops if hardly anyone can afford the referral items to resell. Like many other users, I've referred the two people I knew who would actually sign up. One quit after a couple days and I'm not even friends with her anymore. The other just joined a couple days ago and is hanging in there.

And re advertising: couldn't Subeta do some search optimization to at least raise its ranking in Google (and Bing) results? I did that for a couple of web sites I run, and it was super easy.

Exactly. Although I think I remember a few of the referral shop stickers being released once in either the token shop or the crystal shop (for a large amount of currency). Maybe we could do that a little bit more frequently, especially for the collection items in the referral shop?

The token shop caused the stickers to go from 500 (for the bb block) and 350mil (for the raddish) to at some point as low as 60 and 45mil if I remember right. That's what falls under the category of extreme deflation. The suggestion in the first post is less drastic.

I think we have enough marketing power to get above "Goatlings" in the Google search :P

That aside, no staff member has posted on here. I'd love to hear your opinion on this if you don't mind sharing.

There's something really amusing about this thread. Maybe it's just the really contemptuous way I'm reading the word "Goatlings".

I consider us way cooler than goats of any kind

I'm actually a member of Goatlings. Have been for 3 years. Unfortunately, while it is simple and recently has been without very many updates, it has, from the start, known what it was and known what it was all about. It has one direction that it is pursuing and it makes sure the users know that. Like Speiro, I think Subeta could advertise a lot better. I think if it didn't try to make itself out to seem like this hybrid social networking, pet, dress up, game site. It doesn't really make it seem like it has everything, but more like it has no idea what it is. (Although maybe that's just from an old user's perspective more than a new member's.) Goatlings also has merchandise. Like a very steady supply of merchandise being produced. idk how, but they do and users buy it up.

I'm not sure how well those social media contests worked in garnering new users, but if they helped at all, I'd love for there to be more events that helped advertise the site if they actually work at all and maybe have Referral Points be given away as a raffle prize. Or, like it's been mentioned, when we had free offers a lot of the usable ones were just searching things to help sites go up on the search. We could do that for Subeta for a bit of sP and a chance at a referral point.

Hopefully any of this post makes sense. x_x

Well I gotta give em kudos to sticking with their theme and making that the focus of their site. Major props to Goatlings for that. Also merchandise. Come on , sell some plushies! Or some more charms. Or something. No need to go crazy like Neo did but a handful of plushies released over the years or something.

Edit: Omg I got a forum point! See Keith, you're own site is telling you to make plushies :P

Should totally make a banner for Virtual Pet List. I think they are still around. You and CPVR are such good buddies. Hell you can even put the on the banner!

Other than advertising though the rest of this thread was mainly concerning referral points. Any chance in hell those might be given out some other way, whether its linked to GAs, Loyalty Points, or whatever?

I still think the best bonus from referring friends is getting csc from their purchases. the collectible items in the referral shop are pretty challenging to find for sale, and it's just more frustrating than anything after awhile, not to mention extremely expensive. I don't really enjoy social media so I'll never really be able to refer anyone ever again, the referrals I do have were from when I was active on neo and actually talked to a few friends off site. any chance of referring people for me now would just be family members who I really don't want to play on here, and who wouldn't be active anyway.

I like referral points the way they are, it's nice to have some items that are pretty difficult to get and we don't have any immediate concerns of them being released en masse, so they can actually hold some value... Even more so with the sentiment behind the last staff post, which is a good thing :).

My only friends are the ones I found here. Again, we play on an internet pet site for a reason. Plus the ones who have MASS referral points (literally I've seen someone with 700+) I highly doubt were referring friends and I also highly doubt many of those people stayed. As said, the CSC bonus they get from their referrals buying CSC directly makes more sense (it means those people stayed and they supported the site... and in the MANY circumstances they don't, then that person doesn't get rewarded).