Kitely Market Payouts in KC

We’ve updated our system with a couple of improvements that were requested by our users: Kitely Market merchants can now convert their cleared USD earnings to Kitely Credits (KC); and you can now more easily share your worlds to Facebook. We’ve also added a feature to Organizations that allows users from one organization to visit the private worlds of another organization.

Kitely Market Payouts in KC

Kitely Market merchants can choose to sell their products for USD. These USD aren’t transferred to you immediately: we accumulate them, and once you have at least $10 (USD) in cleared sales we schedule them for the next weekly payout (sales are cleared once they pass the PayPal 45-day dispute period). This minimum payout amount exists because of PayPal’s transfer fees, which make transferring smaller amounts uneconomical.

Some merchants sell mostly in KC, so it can take them a long time to earn 10 USD. Previously this money was “stuck”, waiting until the merchant earned enough USD for a payout to PayPal. But now we’ve added a new option: you can convert any cleared funds your store has earned to KC, even if you have less than $10 cleared. The KC will be converted at a rate of 200 KC per 1 USD and will be added to your Kitely account balance immediately. You can then use those KC to pay for world hosting, buy items from Kitely Market, etc.

If you’re a Kitely Market merchant in this situation then you’ll see a new option in your Manage Store page:

This merchant has two options:

  1. They currently have only $5.20 in cleared USD. If they wait, then eventually the rest of their money will clear. Then they’ll have a total of $18.80 in cleared USD, and we’ll automatically transfer it to them.
  2. Alternatively, they can get their earnings immediately by clicking on the link in the highlighted box. The $5.20 will be converted to KC and added to their Kitely account balance. The other $13.60 will remain withheld until enough time passes for it to clear the PayPal dispute period (at which point it will start accumulating for a payout to PayPal as usual).

Better Facebook Sharing

The Kitely website has buttons for sharing stuff to Facebook. You can share worlds, Kitely Market products, or Kitely itself (from the homepage). We’ve switched to a new style of sharing, which lets you enter your own thoughts about what you’re sharing. (Previously you could only “Like” something, without entering your own text.)

Shared Groups in Organizations

Organizations can control who may visit their worlds. They can choose to make some worlds available to everyone (including users that aren’t members of their organization), and make other worlds available only to specific groups in the organization.

But what if an organization wants to make a world open only to some external users? (“External users” are users that don’t belong to the organization.) To address this need we’ve created a new feature, called Shared User Groups, that lets organizations cooperate: users from one organization can visit specific private worlds the belong to another organization.

For example, suppose there’s an organization called “Acme University”, and another organization called “The Egyptology Center”. Acme University wants its students to visit Egypt-themed worlds that belong to The Egyptology Center. These worlds are not open for public visits, so Acme University has to ask The Egyptology Center to allow its user group Students to visit these worlds:

Once The Egyptology Center agrees, the user group “Students” becomes shared. This means that it appears in the groups tree of The Egyptology Center, and the admins of that organization can give the group permissions: e.g., permission to visit some of the organization’s private worlds.

This feature is explained in more detail here.

Published by

Oren Hurvitz

Oren Hurvitz is the Co-Founder and VP R&D of Kitely.