Before you jump head
first into developing content for IMVU you will need to have
an understanding of IMVU's economy and what all the various
currencies are and what they are good for.
IMVUs economic structure
can be a very frustrating subject it is my hope here to not
only clarify what each currency is but also explain the why
behind it.
‘Why
am I not getting paid when someone buys with promo credits!’
The simplest answer
is, because your item was not purchased, it was an IMVU promotional
giveaway.
IMVU’s business
plan is to give new users a taste of what all of IMVU can
offer, so they can experience it all, get hooked on it, before
they need to outlay real cash on the site. Would you want
to pay cash on a web based social network if you could not
test drive it first?
IMVU feels that
all developers must share the burden of promoting IMVU as
all developers benefit from users that later become paying
customers.
‘Why don’t I just get Promo Credits when
some buys an item with Promo Credits?”
‘Why can’t I give away my Promotional Credits?’
In order for the
real credit to have value, promotional credits must be removed
from the system as quickly as possible. Passing promotional
credits back and forth indefinitely would create a huge surplus,
and decrease the need for anyone to ever purchase credits.
“Why is a Token only worth 10cr in fees?”
Unfortunately due
to folks gaming the system in the past. The 1-10 token value
had to be implemented to make scamming with alts to gain Tokens
for submissions not as cost effective. If everyone behaved
honorably then would we could have a 1 to 1 value, unfortunately
the past has proven that if there is a way to scam, some will
do it.
“My Product was 5000cr! why did I only get one
Token?
As primarily a
room maker myself I feel your pain here. The unfortunate answer
here is that this is another reaction to users rampantly scamming
the system for Tokens. As each high end product has the same
IMVU fee as a low end product, it would mean more scammed
tokens in one purchase, than multiple purchases of a cheaper
product for the same number of Promos.
Under this system
a user must sink* minimally 110 promos to get one Token. If
it were profit based they could scam hundreds tokens and it
would only sink* 110 promos.
‘What
is a ‘Sink’?”
A sink is a method
to pull currency out of circulation in order to counter the
influx of new currency entering the system. IMVU has several
sinks in place to remove currency.
-IMVU’s
cut of the catalog sale fee
-Promos die when used
-Tokens are only useful for IMVU fees
-Submission fees
-Shoutouts
Without sinks in
place the value of everything we as Content Creators do on
IMVU would become worthless as the credit would quickly become
plentiful and thus lose its value.