Tiers, An Explanation of IMVU’s Tier Rewards program
IMVU’s Tiers system is a motivational system intended to inspire developers to have a broader participation in IMVU.
The System has seven levels of advancement, each level gaining the developer submission discounts and increased credit transfer limits. Those who are currently at tier 5 or higher will have the ‘Pro’ tag on their products.
Once a month IMVU samples its developers over a three month time period. It takes those scores against how all developers performed on IMVU and arranges them on a curve. Developers are then graded against their peers in several categories, each individual category earning them a maximum of three points for a total maximum of twenty one points.
The top most performing percentile of developers earn 3 points per category
The good to high performing percentile of developers earn 1 and 2 points
The Majority of developers will earn 0 points
There are no set benchmarks to hit. As the system is graded on a curve your scores are directly related to how your peers perform. If sales drop overall the points ‘to hit’ will drop, if sales are stronger the ‘to hit’ numbers will go up. As IMVU’s developer population grows the numbers of those earning top scores will increase to reflect the increased population.
Your sales and participation numbers will not be cumulative, they will only reflect the three month period of the sample, this is so newer developers can compete with established developers.
Percentage of developers allocated to each Tier Level
numbers as of 2008 provided by IMVU
0.03% of Content Creators are Tier 7
0.38% of Content Creators are Tier 6
0.53% of Content Creators are Tier 5
0.78% of Content Creators are Tier 4
1% of Content Creators are Tier 3
3% of Content Creators are Tier 2
10% of Content Creators are Tier 1
83% of Content Creators are Tier 0
How to understand the points breakdown
Tier points are in two schools, Core and Unique
Core Metrics (performance)
Core Metrics are the bread and butter (Core) of developing, sales made and earned income. Bottom line, product popularity is singly the best ear-marker for performance. If you made the best thing ever on IMVU but no one ever buys it, it is not a successful product.
IMVU has broken the Core area down into four areas worth 3 points each, for a maximum of 12 points.
Sales (derived) The number of products others have derived from yours that have sold.
Income (credits) The number of credits you have earned.
Income (promo credits) The number of promos that were spent on your items. (though you get tokens per sale instead of promos)
Sales (direct) The number of product sales you’ve had.
Unique Metrics (participation)
Unique metrics are NOT performance based, one can max out all of these with only ever having sold one product. These are not at the ‘core’ of developing but are additional points awarded for productivity, community participation, and how your products were received (product reviews).
IMVU has broken these down into five four unique areas. Each area is worth 3 points. Only the top three of these Unique categories are used for a maximum of 9 points, the other score will be listed as ‘Unused’ and not count to your total, therefore the categorizes used for the total will vary from person to person reflecting their personal strengths.
Products recently submitted: New products added to the catalog.
Products in the catalog: Overall quantity of products in the catalog.
Peer Review activity: How many ‘accurate’ peer reviews you did
CC Forum posts: Number of posts you made in the CC sections of the forums. (This Metric Is being phased out as of2/28/17)
Average product rating: Average of your own product’s review scores
Your Tier Scorecard and How to Read it
When logged on to IMVU’s website on the Creator Center Page you will have the option to view your tier scorecard. (There is also a secondary navigation to this same information on your Account Page near the bottom of the right hand column.)
The first thing to note is the time of the sample. This is the three month period that these points are calculated for. On about the first of the month a new sample is taken.
-The First Section is your core scores, these are based on how well your catalog sales did compared to all creators on IMVU.
-The Second Section is your top three scoring unique metrics, these are based on how much sundry stuff you did compared to all creators on IMVU.
-The Third Section is your bottom two scoring unique metrics, these scores are not counted.
-Add up Section One points and Section Two points and you have your Total Tier Points.
How many points do you need for each tier level
numbers as of 2008 provided by IMVU
0 points = Tier 0
1-3 pts. = Tier 1
4-6 pts. = Tier 2
7-9 pts. = Tier 3
10-12 pts. = Tier 4
13-15 pts. = Tier 5
16-18 pts. = Tier 6
19-21 pts. = Tier 7
Creator Tip! IMVU does not keep an accessible history of this information so at the beginning of every month remember to take a screenshot of this page and keep it for your records. While your tier points are pretty useless at jugging your performance the metric value amounts are a great way to personally tack your overall sales history and personal growth.
What Tiers Get You
‘Bling’ Badges. Level badges are fun to have but have no intrinsic value beyond badge fun. Some may find advertising their actual tier level of value others will not, it’s a personal choice to share it or not.
Submission Fee Discounts: As you advance up the ladder your submission fees will reduce 50cr per level achieved. While this is a great perk at the lower and mid levels at the higher levels Tokens earned tend to well more than cover all submission fees so this perk will become less valuable as you get more successful.
Submission Fees at each Tier Level
Tier 0 500cr
Tier 1 450cr
Tier 2 400cr
Tier 3 350cr
Tier 4 300cr
Tier 5 250cr
Tier 6 200cr
Tier 7 150cr
‘Pro’ tag on products for those tier 5 and up. If your Tier score is in the top .94% of all those who are registered as devs and have submitted at least one product you will have a ‘Pro’ Tag. Roughly just under 1 in 100 devs on IMVU will have the ‘pro’ label on their products.
Increased Credit Transfer Caps & Credit Transfer Lock Immunity: This perk used to be a must have when creators sold credits to 3rd party Resellers but today it is no longer a necessity to achieve since IMVU now pays its creators directly. While you may occasionally need to send credits to friends or alts the need creators to transfer very large amounts of credits is not a daily need in today's IMVU.
What Tiers is Not
Please do not confuse the ‘Pro’ label with Professional. One can have the Pro label and not be profitable, while others who don’t have the label can be doing very VERY well indeed. Tiers and the Pro label while may be a fun challenge to earn and maintain are not a benchmark of professionalism or fiscal success. Always judge a dev by their work, not their label.
A Personal Note on Tiers:
Tiers are a motivational tool no more no less.
The Tier Rewards system rewards those who have a more broad participation on IMVU. They are intended to inspire participation in IMVU by the masses, not to just reward those who have successful catalogs. Non sales related activities such as mass product submissions, the number of products one has in the catalog, Peer Review participation, all count to tiers as much as having actual successful products. In fact you can max out your Unique Metrics without ever selling a thing! Therefore, your final Tier score, while giving a few nice perks, should not be looked on as a barometer for true sales success on IMVU as they place an equal value on unrelated participation based activities as they do a catalog’s sales performance. Only the Core Metrics are a reflection of actual sales success.
If you are seeking to make an income of IMVU do not get preoccupied by focusing on Tier levels as they do not reflect the skills and things needed for true fiscal success. Instead just focus on making good quality items and marketing those items so that they sell well, period.
The Tiers system actually minimizes the efforts of some of the top most performers on IMVU, the specialists. Those who focus on one aspect of developing and do it exceptionally well and are exceptionally profitable at it will NOT be counted as tops in this system. Those who specialize purely in Mesh Making, Texturing, or Poses/Animations and have far superior product and sales than the majority of IMVU’s developers are not recognized by this system. My advice for those who ‘just’ mesh or ‘just’ texture is to simply pay no attention to your tier level score and use your sales volume as your personal barometer for success. You are the backbone of the IMVU catalog, don’t let not being top score because of what arbitrary things are counted discourage you.
In short, try and keep Tiers the fun motivation tool they are intended to be, they should not be something to fixate on and fret about every month. Please do not get focused and worried so much on your Tier score that you get sidetracked from the reason you wanted to develop here in the first place. Whatever that reason is, your Tier score should ALWAYS be incidental to it.
