Monetize your website and Apps with CometChat: Credit based deduction

For long, making money from your website/app has been a myth.If you ask me, it’s doable by almost anyone; of course with the right tools and tricks.

While the traditional ways like affiliate marketing and Google Adsense could still be taken up, I think we would all agree to the fact that these methods are time-consuming and yield results only in the long run.

As stated earlier, generating money out of your website/app isn’t a myth, but it’s no easy task as well. That being said, this article talks about all the right tools and tricks that can help you maintain a continuous stream of revenue from apps/website.

CometChat offers various monetization features like Role based access control, credit deductions, in-app advertising and so on.

Unlike other methods requiring hours of developer time and thousands of line of codes, these require only 5 minutes to set up on your website/app and will start bringing in the money the moment users come on your website. Best part? You require zero technical language or lines of code to set it up.

Let’s begin.

How can CometChat help you in Monetization?

CometChat offers numerous features with which you can monetize the user-base viz. Role Based Access Control, in-app ads, and credit-deduction. While we discussed role based access in our last article, in this article we’ll be focusing on credit deductions and in-app ads.

There are many websites/apps that can’t monetize their user base even after getting huge traffic for either of the two reasons:

• User engagement strategies are not engaging enough
• Visitors are unable to interact collaboratively

Thanks to CometChat, it helps you overcome these challenges and works for you on two fronts:

• It has features which will significantly enhance user engagement on your website/app.
• You can monetize your growing user base by making them pay for what they use.

With CometChat, your website/app users will be able to interact in multiple ways. Using communication and collaboration tools, real-time text chat, voice and video calling, file sharing, collaborative document, collaborative whiteboard etc. they can express, find answers, see product demos, negotiate prices and so much more!

This will lead to a surge in user engagement and user retention and will help you bring in the revenue using your website/app. You can cash on these using various monetization features of Cometchat one of which we will be discussing in this article, i.e., Credit Deduction.

The most amazing part of all this is that these solutions can be implemented in your website in a matter of minutes.

So what is Credit Deduction in CometChat?

It is the feature that allows you to deduct credits from the user accounts if and when they use any feature e.g. Audio, Video, Text Chat, Whiteboard, and so on.

Simply put, this feature allows you to charge credits for ‘per minute usage’ of various other CometChat features. Your users can buy these credits and spend them on using the features they like.

For instance, you have a website/app wherein users come from the web, mobile, and desktop. While anyone can use your platform to browse, but they will not be able to use CometChat’s features (text, audio, video, whiteboard, whiteboard and so on) for free to interact with other users.

To make an interaction they will have to buy CometChat credits first. Once they have sufficient credits in their account, they can use desired features and the credits will be deducted as per the usage and charges decided by you.

How do you configure Credit Deduction into your Website/App?

Let’s go through the steps you need to follow while setting Credit Deduction via CometChat Admin Panel:

• Step-1: Log in to Admin panel using Access Credentials.
• Step-2: Click on Settings -> Role Based Access from left side navigation. Now you can see all your User Roles. Select a role and have a look at “Charge Credits when using certain features for this role”. You can use the same panel to create the role of subscribers. One such example would be creating a tiered structure for subscribers e.g. Administrator, Editor, Author etc.
  

• Step-3: Modify the number of credits you would like to charge and hit Save! Using this credit-based-system you can decide the usage charges/minute for different features.
  

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  These charges may vary depending on user demand of these features. Once done hit save and now whenever a user uses CometChat’s feature the set number of credits by you will be deducted from his account.

Credit Deduction Feature In Different Industries

Dating Industry

Gone are the days when finding a suitable partner was time-consuming. Dating has evolved with dating websites and apps in vogue amongst youngsters as well as mature seekers.

How can Credit Deduction be used in the dating industry?

Dating Websites and Apps now provide many value-added services, and implementing a solution that monetizes them effectively can be a challenge.

But with CometChat’s Credit Deduction, you can set credit values to all or some of the features and deduct credits whenever a user uses any of these CometChat features.

How to set up credit deduction for the dating industry?

Users can purchase credits from your website/app to use on CometChat. Another way is to tie Credit Deduction into your subscription plans.

The users can buy desired plans and set amount of credits will be credited to their account. For e.g. PlanA gives users 1000 credits PlanB gives them 5000 credits and so on.

How to implement the solution?

You can set the charges for credit usage in the admin panel. For instance, Rahul and Janvi are dating online and decide to jump on a video call.

As soon as Rahul attempts to initiate a video chat, 150 credits get deducted from his account. When he consumes all the credits, he will have to buy more credits to keep the conversation going.

E-Learning Industry

Online education has become a preferred mode of learning in India. It is evident by the increasing number of institutes which are offering online courses to the students.

E-learning websites and apps enable institutes to reach to students and offer them more updated courses. Students can apply for courses and access course material from even remote locations giving them the freedom to learn as per their pace and convenience.

How can Credit Deduction be used in e-learning industry?

Suppose, a student enrolls for a particular course, and he wants to seek help of the trainers. He can do so by using various features of CometChat and credits will be deducted as per the usage charges.

How to configure credit deductions for e-learning industry?

There are two ways to do it. Students may purchase credits to explore how your e-learning platform functions or they can register for a course on your website and along with their subscription; a certain number of credits are credited to their account.

How to implement the solution?

A student enrolls for a web development course for one month. Once he completes the registration, he takes the classes for free for 10 days..

After this duration, he will have to buy additional credits to interact with trainers for doubt clarifications, additional classes.

Healthcare Industry

Online healthcare websites are changing the way healthcare services are being delivered to patients. Whether it is basic care or critical care CometChat can play the role of a savior.

It can reduce waiting time significantly, and help patients get medical care even when they are unable to travel even to the nearest clinic. In fact, they can even buy medicines online as well.

How can Credit Deduction be used in healthcare industry?

Your patients can buy credits to access your website’s healthcare experts.

When they make audio calls, video calls or send messages, the credits are deducted from their account according to the usage charges predefined by you.

How to configure credit deductions for healthcare industry?

A simple way is to offer credit plans. For instance a user may buy a plan that offers 5000 credits. He can use these credits to make audio calls, video calls, file sharing or any other feature offered by CometChat.

Another way may be to offer subscription plans of specified durations along with credits which can be used by the pateints to get access to consultants via CometChat and its features.

How to implement the solution?

A patient wants to get consultation for his back-pain. The patient can buy 1000 credits from the website.

He can use these credits for sending text and audio calls to connect and get the advice from healthcare experts. Once the credits are consumed, he’ll have to buy more.

Banking & FinTech Industries

More and more people prefer to get financial advisory services online as they don’t have time to meet an agent personally.

Multinational banks are increasingly adopting chat integrations to make sure that their representatives are available to serve valuable customers round the clock.

In fact, some of them have already started to integrate video communication on their websites to give a more personal experience to their customers.

How can Credit Deduction be used in banking & fintech industry?

A user wants to interact with a financial advisor on your platform. In order to contact the advisor he’ll use credits from his account.

You can assign credit values to every feature and the credits will get deducted accordingly.

How to configure credit deductions for banking & fintech industry?

You can assign credit charges for every feature and also offer credit plans on your website (Plan-1: 2000 credits). The users can buy these plans and use the desired CometChat feature until there are credits available in their account.

How to implement the solution?

For instance, a buyer wants to consult an adviser before investing in mutual funds. He buys Plan-1 from the website.

Users can purchase and spend credits on CometChat features to connect with financial experts.

He uses these credits on live video calls to get advice for which credits are deducted at 10 credits per minute. So the buyer has 200 minutes of consultation with him. After this, he’ll have to buy more credits from the website.

Marketplace Industry

Marketplace websites & apps have been in existence for long but customers these days are looking for more personalized shopping experiences. This is where chat integrations have a role to play.

Buyers can use chat to get more information about the product and negotiate prices before buying. Sellers can use it to discuss the product, share pictures, invoices and try to influence the buyers purchase decision.

How can Credit Deduction be used in the marketplace industry

Online marketplaces are offering many value added services but implementing them is difficult. CometChat makes the job simple by allowing you to set credit values for the usage of features.

With them buyers can interact with sellers in a less interruptive manner, may it be negotiating prices, asking for product pictures and so on. However, they will have to pay for the usage of these features.

How to configure credit deductions for the marketplace industry

Using Credit Deduction feature you can fix charges for credit usage of features. You can create different tiers; one for buyer and other for seller and separate credit values can be set for these tiers.

How to implement the solution?

For instance, a buyer has some queries, or he wants to negotiate, with seller before buying the product, he may go for plan that fetches him 5000 credits. He then makes a video call to seller which is charged at 20 credits per minute.

This way he has 250 minutes of video calls with him which he can consume in the way he wants. After this, he’ll have to buy more credits from the website.

Sellers can also buy credits and when they do so a ‘chat with seller’ button is placed on their product listings using which buyers can start an interaction. Buyers can then spend credits on different CometChat features and chat with the seller to ensure that they purchase the product.

Takeaway

CometChat’s inbuilt monetization features are designed to save precious development hours and enable effective monetization of your websites and apps.

These inbuilt monetization features like Credit Based Deduction are easy to implement into existing products and their diverse nature allows them to fit into your current revenue model and exponentially boost revenue.

Thus monetizing your website/app is easy and simpler than ever. And not just it enhances user engagement, but you grow the business by rendering excellent services to your subscribers/members. You can also go through our article on Role based access control to learn more about monetization with CometChat.