One of the fun parts for many ActiveRain members is the earning points part, which is especially important when you don't yet have 500,000 points. And that benchmark is important because once you reach 500K, your account becomes free.
A few days ago, someone commented that it was interesting someone else was racking up more points than they were. The person getting more points only posts occasionally and the one with fewer points posts every day. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, does it? So it might be a great time to revisit the points system in ActiveRain.
So first, here is a link to the very helpful post provided by ActiveRain Member Support (ARMS) in 2023. Points are given for everything from just logging into the system (100 per day) to publishing a post (225 per), to getting a featured post (100 more), having someone bookmark your post, receiving comments and more. You also get posts for publishing a question, commenting on someone else's post or reblogging a post. There are also frequency limits to how many times you can do something and get points, so definitely check out that link!
What I wanted to add to the equation were two thoughts regarding Participation and Math.
Participation
The points are just a fun addition to what ActiveRain is really about, and that is sharing, participating, and authentically being involved. So someone who logs on every day, posts, comments, bookmarks things they've read that they want to refer to again, etc, will gain points regularly. But those activities shouldn't be about the points, they should be about the participation.
So if you're truly reading posts, you will learn something, or wonder something, and you'll now have subject material for a post of your own. And perhaps you'll write the post really well with graphics and a feature photo and then your post is featured or it's included in Carol's Saturday post or Kathy's Sunday post and more people read it and comment and you get more points. In other words, if you post a certain number of comments a day that are all the same, or if you publish a bunch of posts every day but don't respond to comments, you are missing the point of the platform and you are missing the points!
Further, if you post every day but do not participate in any challenges, you also leave points on the floor/table/room. Every month, ActiveRain has a challenge (see the Contests link at the bottom of the page for the most recent one). The amount of points you could earn from following the directions and posting are usually at least 1000-1500 points and could go much higher than that. That's an extra 1,000+ points over and above anything you get from just posting the post.
So authentic participation matters if you want those points, but more importantly it matters if you want to get the most out of ActiveRain.
Math
And then there's the issue of math! It explains how someone who posts every single day can get FEWER points than someone who only posts two times a week. It's all math.
Let's take two different people over the course of a month.
Blogger #1 shares one post every single day, and comments on about five other people's posts daily. This person also receives about 10 comments on each of their posts. They don't participate in contests.
The second person posts two times a week and in the month in question got featured once. They comment on about 15 other posts a day, and get about 15 comments on their posts. This person also participated in the monthly challenge which was worth 1500 points.
As you can see, the number of posts shared per day is only part of the equation. And that's because points are all about not only participation but simple math!
Summary
Points are just a fun side benefit of the ActiveRain platform. They are a way to encourage participation. The more authentic participation, the more fun it is, and the more fun it is, the more points you get.
I hope this overview is helpful!
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