I recommended LingQ to 3 people who have joined LingQ now and I should receive 200 points per new member. Instead I have received 250 points. Why don’t I receive 600 points? Before the referrals I had 0 points.
Fasulye
I have no idea, but I am sure that Alex will respond when he has a chance to see this post. Cheers and sorry for any inconvenience.
Hi Fasulye,
Points are actually only given for referrals that have upgraded to Basic, Plus or Premium. The 250 points that you received don’t appear to be related to the referrals.
There is a table where the 3 referrals are listed and in on column under “upgraded” there is always a red letter “x” - what does that mean, Alex?
Fasulye
Are you only given points if existing members upgrade upon someone’s recommendation?
Do you not get points if you have managed to attract a new member to Lingq who would have otherwise not have joined?
@Marianne10 - It would be pretty easy to cheat the system (fake accounts, creating accounts for family / friends etc.) if it were only based on them joining.
@Falsulye - X means they haven’t upgraded.
Thanks for explaining, now I understand how it works with the referrals. When the new recommended members join LingQ, I don’t receive any points. But they will be in my list and, if any of them upgrades later on to a payed membership, I will receive the referral points in the future.
Fasulye
Exactly! As an example, I have 19 referrals, and I recently just got my first “upgraded” referral, which is a nice bonus 
I have quite a lot referrals too but only one upgraded… It would be nice to get 200 points per each referral every single month but it is kind of nonsense 
“@Marianne10 - It would be pretty easy to cheat the system (fake accounts, creating accounts for family / friends etc.) if it were only based on them joining.”
That is presupposing rather a lot. The points go towards learning languages in a fairly tight knit and small community. I dare say not many members would set up false accounts in such a context.
I agree. But it could easily be done. And I’m not saying that’s the reason they have the system they currently have, but I think it makes sense.
For every member you refer, and who pays at least $10 per month, you get $2 (worth of points) per month. How much should you get for free members? LingQ makes nothing from them (in fact I guess it costs them to provide services to them etc.), so perhaps we shouldn’t make anything from them either.
I think free members are a very important target group. There is always the prospect of potential patronage. Just look at the probable conversion rate from free to pay membership and how little effort is required to achieve this jump (it is probably pretty much automatic). This is just my guess based on my experience in customer management. It is much harder to acquire first timers and a lot will depend on word of mouth, indeed from the likes of Fasulye who has a blog. That ought to be recognised and rewarded.
It is a lot easier to retain/upgrade the customers you already have, hence loyalty schemes work so well.
Even so, free members are an important vehicle for PR. Just look at someone like JayB, whom I think is a free member. He contributes significantly to the forums and I am sure he probably also provides free PR for Lingq when he comes into contact with other potential Lingq customers. Even if free members never become paying members, they may lead others to become members. They also still offer free advice to learners and contribute with their experience, intelligence and wit for example.
We hope our members enjoy our community and encourage their friends to join. We also hope that our members think of ways to promote LingQ through blogs or other means on the Internet. We would love to see LingQ spread through companies and organisations.
It is a fact,however, that it is sometimes difficult to persuade others to join since our method of learning at LingQ is different from more conventional approaches. Newcomers have to understand our learning principles, and also to figure out how to navigate around the site. We are working on ways that will make this easier for newcomers. If more people become paying members, we all benefit, since this enables us at LingQ to continue to improve our service.
Many of our paying members are dedicated and motivated learners who understand LingQ because they have discovered in the past that a well organized and integrated method of input based learning, with rich resources, is exactly what is need to improve in a language.Ultimately, however, we hope to appeal to a larger group of learners, including those who would love to learn a language but are less confident or initially less motivated. We hope LingQ will become easier for them to use, and that our community will become even more interactive so that they will be encouraged to persevere at LingQ. These are some of the things that we are working on now.
If we are successful in this, more of the people you refer to LingQ will indeed become paying members and you will be able to earn referral points more easily.
@Marianne: What I can see from my referals the conversion rate to paying members is quite low. I’ve about 80 referals but the only conversion to a paying account is from my daughter. I understand that LingQ is not able to pay for referals which doesn’t result in a payment for LingQ.
@ Vera - The issue is that LingQ does not actually pay any real money since this is a point system. Hence they do not lose anything in acknowledging through points the traffic that has been attracted to the site and which still has a major contribution (eg free PR for LingQ), free though their membership may be.
Given that points can be used to buy services (conversations and corrections), and even converted into money, I don’t see how LingQ doesn’t lose anything. Many tutors convert their points into money, which means 75% of points used for conversations or writing corrections with such tutors will result in money that LingQ pays out.
Peter- Ok I was not aware of that.
My point here is merely that we are a lot of people recommending LingQ for free. Some people would like acknowledgement for that and frankly I can understand that. I have often been asked by other people who hear me switching between languages if I can recommend websites for language teaching. And in fact LingQ is one I often recommend though I do not use it myself for learning languages. Now these people who come here as a result come because they want to achieve what I have achieved. Is that not worth something?
@Marianne10: “…I have often been asked by other people who hear me switching between languages if I can recommend websites for language teaching. And in fact LingQ is one I often recommend though I do not use it myself for learning languages.”
Marianne, if you don’t use LingQ yourself, is it really fair to advise other folks to use it? :-0
Why not recommend the methods which you have actually DO use? These must be effective methods, because you have an excellent level in your foreign languages!
(BTW: On the basis of my own past experience as an active user of LingQ, I would never recommend it to a complete beginner. I would, however, advise a person at intermediate level to give it some serious consideration.)
JayB - Why not? I have tested it out and if I deem someone is a learner to whom this method would be suitable, I would recommend it. I always ask people what kind of learners they are. I usually end up having lengthy discussions with people about languages in this context (ie they want to achieve the same). The methods I have used are not useful to these people mostly… Most people cannot just go off traveling all time and I have lived in a range of countries. It is not a fair comparison so I downplay this point.
@Marianne10: “…I have lived in a range of countries.”
Yes. (Ich auch.)
I have always had a feeling that this is imperative in order to get to grips with speaking a foreign language. Perhaps I am wrong? I hope that I am wrong. But I do rather suspect that for most people this would be the one vital link (no pun intended) in the chain…
But, as I say, I would really love to think that I am wrong about this…