: The rewards you offer will really depend upon your community - obviously, SE-type sites appeal to people who want to help others, whereas other communities will likely draw different audiences.

@Cody1181609

The rewards you offer will really depend upon your community - obviously, SE-type sites appeal to people who want to help others, whereas other communities will likely draw different audiences.

The SE model of privilege restriction is tried and true: give new users only a small feature subset and grant access to additional features as the user develops a positive reputation.

In various incarnations this may be as simple as allowing the user to link to outside sites (great way to prevent spam, too), use a custom avatar (not uncommon for forums), get access to private betas (popular with software companies' user communities), et cetera.

Figure out why people are participating in your community first, whether conspicuous (i.e. avatars, titles, reputation ranking) or inconspicuous (i.e. private beta, VIP access to support) privileges matter more to them, then broadcast your program to ensure everyone in the user community is aware of it.

Be prepared to adapt your program over time as your user community's wants and needs change and you're set.

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