Linking Grandfathered Accounts – Is It Worth it?

After extensively covering the subject of IMVU cancelling grandfathered accounts, it’s almost time for the change to take effect.

As of July 1st 2023, grandfathered creator accounts on IMVU will no longer be able to cash out money, unless they have an active VIP subscription that gives them access to the Creator Program (at the time of writing the article, the cheapest monthly option is 10$).

IMVU’s sweetheart, RigsK, who is an IMVU employee and whom I consider the guardian angel of IMVU creators, posted a thread in the discussions section in which the following is mentioned:

New Earn Money Program for grandfathered accounts

Based on the information posted by an IMVU staff member, it seems that in order to get any cents from sales, you will have to be continuously enrolled in the VIP subscription.

More precisely, you can’t decide not to get a VIP subscription and have money accumulating in your account, then one day purchase VIP and withdraw your available balance. Nope, not at all.

What apparently is happening is that if you are earning right now around 50$ a month, you must pay a VIP subscription monthly (at least 10$/month) to be able to cash out, meaning that you will invest 10$ of your own money to be able to accumulate the 50$ money you are used to.

If you do not have a valid VIP subscription, not only will you be unable to withdraw your money, but every sale will be in credits instead of money.

Kinda… not good folks, not good, at least not for the hobby creator. The professional creator and full-time creator who were making thousands of dollars monthly aren’t really bothered by this as much as small/hobby creators.

By hobby creator I mean someone that doesn’t create regularly, or who creates on the side, without taking creating too seriously, meaning that their earnings are generally small.

Linking accounts helps spare 1 or 2 maximum VIP subscription

As RigsK mentions, up to 2 grandfathered accounts can be linked to a main account, meaning that if you own 3 accounts, you can decide to pay VIP for only one account, link the other 2 through a special request (IMVU support ticket) to your main account, and then you will be able to earn money and cash out on all 3 accounts while paying just for one subscription.

Note: Linking accounts to a VIP subscription is only available for grandfathered accounts.

It seems generally like a good idea, but I am not so sure that it actually is.

First of all, it seems that linking the accounts might require a new account verification:

Grandfathered accounts that are grouped with a VIP account, will need to apply for the Earn Money Program within 30 after being grouped. If they do not, they will lose their Earn Money status.

This is not very clear, as RigsK, the IMVU staff member who has been addressing these points mentions in another comment the following clarifications:

 
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
 
Is it possible to link 2 accounts instead of 3?
Yes it is possible to link two accounts instead of three.
 
May I use a non-Grandfathered account for my VIP account?
Yes, using a non-Grandfathered account for the VIP account is fine.
 
Can the accounts I like to the VIP account be non-Grandfathered?
Only a Grandfathered account can be linked with a VIP account. You could link your Grandfathered account to one of your VIP accounts.
 
How do we verify the accounts that we are linking? There needs to be some confirmation, otherwise people will just steal other peoples’ accounts.
Our team will check each set of accounts submitted to make sure they belong to the same person.
 
If we link two accounts with a VIP account, are we required to funnel our earnings and payments into one of the accounts?
Funneling earnings is a separate ask from linking accounts, and we won’t do it if the creator doesn’t request it to be done. If you funnel your funds with two other accounts, the main account will have a new MASA calculation.
 
Do the accounts linking to the VIP account receive all VIP perks?
The two accounts linked to the VIP account will have Creator privileges, be eligible for the Earn Money Program, and Earn Money Payouts. Other VIP perks will not apply to the two linked accounts. You can choose to funnel funds to one main account. All three store catalogs associated with these accounts will remain separate.
 
Will the catalogs in the linked accounts combine into one catalog?
The catalogs will remain separate. The only things that will be combined are MASA and payouts based on the combined MASA. And of course the two grandfathered accounts associated with the VIP will keep their Earn Money and payout privileges. 
 
What if accounts with combined earnings are still at a $500 MASA? ​
If the combined accounts still have less than $500 MASA, that $500 label would remain the same. However, the actual payouts would increase. Please request payouts in accordance with your MASA.
If the combined accounts have more than a $500 MASA, the MASA label would show an increase and the payouts would increase. 
 
If we link our accounts for the payouts, would it still display how much each of the accounts earned?
You will need to check per product. All funds will automatically be funneled into the main account. Your are not required to funnel all funds into one account.
 
What happens to the earnings from before the accounts were linked?
Earnings from before the accounts were linked would remain in the separate accounts The current system for payout requests would apply to those earnings.
 
Your announcement states starting July 1 we can link accounts, and starting August the new earnings can be funneled into the VIP account. How do we get paid in July while we wait for the accounts to link?
As a courtesy, we will issue your alt accounts a 30 day VIP pass so you can apply to the program while we verify ownership and link the accounts. Starting Aug 1st, you have an option to link the earnings of alt VIP accounts to your main account. This is optional. You can leave each account’s earnings separately or link them.
 
Will the MASA be based on 3 accounts or just on the main VIP account?
Funneling earnings is a separate ask from linking your 3 accounts, and we won’t do it if the creator doesn’t request it to be done. If you funnel your funds with two other accounts, the main account will have a new MASA calculation.
 
Will Grandfathered Creator accounts that link with the VIP account need to reapply to the Earn Money Program? 
Yes, your linked accounts will need to reapply for the Earn Money Program.

IMVU talks about two types of linking:

1. Linking the accounts which would merge the MASAs into a singular MASA

e.g. Account 1 MASA is 500$

Account 2 MASA is 600$

Account 3 MASA is 1000$

New MASA = MASA 1 + MASA 2 + MASA 3 = 500$ + 600$ + 1000$ = 2100$

2. Linking the accounts (just to save on VIP), and keeping MASAs separate

From RigsK’s first post, it seems that linking accounts automatically merges MASA earnings too (thank goodness it’s not the case), but it also means that the creator has to apply again for the Earn Money program – in this case, it somewhat makes sense to re-apply, as the newly merged accounts behave like a new account.

In the second post from IMVU, merging MASAs is now optional, meaning accounts can be linked so that a creator saves money by buying just one VIP subscription (instead of 2 or 3), but not required to merge MASAs. This one is the simplest, as there’s nothing else done to the creator accounts. Why would I need to re-apply to get into the Earn Money program in this case? It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to force me to get verified again for my own earnings, since there is no change in how accounts earn the money.

Why I don’t want to merge MASA from multiple accounts/funnel earnings

First of all, I have 3 grandfathered accounts in total. My main account Shiva has a MASA of over 500$, but both my other grandfathered accounts are both under 500$. Before I dive deeper, let’s take a brief look at what MASA is and why I think I would be negatively impacted if I would funnel my earnings/merge my MASAs:

MASA is the maximum amount of money you can withdraw in a month from IMVU.com. MASA is supposedly a median (what kind of median, no one knows, but naturally everyone assumes it’s an artithmetic median calculation) of the last 12 months based on your earnings. By default, every account has a maximum withdrawal request of 500$.

MASA’s actual calculation method has been a mysery ever since it was implemented. It is widely known that MASA calculation is actually below a median of 12 months of earnings.

In a hypothetical example, if I sign up as a creator today and I manage to make 3000$ in my first month by some miracle (I’m saying miracle because pulling this much money from IMVU in a single month as a starting creator is impossible), my MASA next month should grow. In theory yes, in practice MASA won’t grow at all. I know this from observing my own earnings and talking to multiple IMVU creators that have noticed the same pattern across different accounts of theirs.

These observations are actually made taking real life examples of high earning MASAs right from the beginning of the account requesting money.

If IMVU was telling the truth in what they said about MASA calculation, the actual MASA the next month should be at least ~700$, up from 500$ just the previous month using an arithmetic median calculation.

The math I did was the following:

First I will calculate how much money I would make the whole year if I earned 3000$ in my first month at IMVU. Since MASA by default is 500$, I am going to assume that every other month’s median is considered 500$ for the IMVU MASA calculation:

11 months x 500$ + 1 month x 3000$ = 8500$

Now, if I want to divide that 8500$ by 12 to get a new median for a supposedly new MASA, I should get this:

8500$ : 12 = 708$

My new MASA should be 708$.

In reality, MASA would still be at 500$, this is what I have observed across tens of accounts, especially high earning accounts.

Another calculation method

Let’s say that IMVU doesn’t consider a month worth 500$ as presumed, but rather 0$.

If I make 3000$ in a single month, we can do a median calculation and make every other month be worth 0$ (unlike 500$ in the previous example).

Here I am calculating my yearly income if my first month starting IMVU I make 3000$.

11 months x 0$ + 1 month x 3000$ = 3000$ (considering MASA is calculated at 0$ for every month)

Now, if I divide my median income to 12 months, an arithmetic median calculation, it would be:

3000$ / 12 = 250$, meaning that if my MASA was 0 from the beginning, my new MASA should be 250$ for the rest of the year if I don’t get any other sales, other than the total of 3000$ I made in my very first month.

But, IMVU does guarantee a MASA of 500$ monthly, meaning that on top of the 500$ I am getting by default, I should be getting the default + my median from the money I made in my first month (3000$ in our example), which we calculated above that should be 250$, meaning that the second month, MASA should actually be 750$.

But it’s not. In fact, it won’t even grow. This is very, very, very strange considering that if the default MASA was 0$ and the algorithm was doing arithmetic medians, my MASA should be at least 250$.

The worst part is that the third month you can make again a huge amount of money, but MASA might still stagnate. This can be easily checked if you have a full year of over 500$ sales. No matter what median you would make, or what mathematical impossible equation you would try to come up with, you will never actually calculate your real MASA because the way IMVU calculates MASA is different than what they tell us.

The reality is that MASA forces a creator to be a high earner over a long period of time (more than 12 months), with growth being extremely slow month by month, yet once your earnings start going down a bit, your MASA will start decreasing immediately, even if you might have 10,000$ pending in your account balance (known as the “available balance”).

The “available balance” is the amount you can cash out. However, if you earn 600$ this month, you can only cash out 500$, meaning that 100$ will be stuck in your “available balance”.

With MASA being an actual enigma, one that is the sole downfall of the creator community, one might argue that if I link all my earnings from all 3 of my grandfathered accounts into one MASA, my new MASA might actually go down. By a lot.

For example, if I regularly earn 200$ on my account X and 250$ on my account Y, due to the fact that both of these accounts are under 500$, I am under no pressure of money being stuck in my available balance, since there is enough room for my balances to grow. However, this is the case right now when each account is still under the default 500$ MASA. My fear is that if I merge these 3 accounts, MASA will not be calculated with 500$ from account X + 500$ from account Y, but rather that IMVU will take the actual balances into consideration which in this example would be 200$ + 250$, or worse, IMVU might just take random numbers even smaller than my actual earnings (considering they are both under 500$).

Now, it’s true that RigsK, the IMVU staff addressing our concerns, does mention this fact and says the following:

What if accounts with combined earnings are still at a $500 MASA? ​
If the combined accounts still have less than $500 MASA, that $500 label would remain the same. However, the actual payouts would increase. Please request payouts in accordance with your MASA.
If the combined accounts have more than a $500 MASA, the MASA label would show an increase and the payouts would increase. 

It’s true that apparently IMVU thought of this situation and they want to make the minimum calculation on 500$ per account, meaning that it would actually be useful if I have a positive balance in other accounts. However, I do not believe this for a second. Why? The whole MASA calculation is simply a lie. What IMVU states in their Terms of Service about MASA and what IMVU has publicly declared over and over again about MASA on the discussions threads has never been a real reflection of what creators see when they check their money. In fact, it’s always less than what creators would expect it to be.

Truthfully, MASA’s calculation formula has not been disclosed at all.

This is my personal opinion, but based on all these factors, I am reluctant to merging anything regarding MASA, as one thing I have learned over and over again is that IMVU would rather take money away from you than give you money.

To understand what I mean by “IMVU giving you money”, consider the following example:

Account X earns 200$ a month (MASA is by default 500$).

Account Y earns 300$ a month (MASA is by default 500$).

Account Z earns 2000$ a month, but has a MASA of 1000$ (meaning out of the 2000$ earned, only 1000$ can be cashed out).

In RigsK’s example, she is saying that because accounts X and Y are below their 500$ MASA, it would leave room to request more money from an account like Account Z which is over its MASA, meaning that the new MASA IMVU implies it would do would be:

500$ + 500$ + 1000$ = 2000$ new MASA, whereas before this, the same creator could only cash out 200$ + 300$ + 1000$ = 1500$.

Do I believe this? Not at all. I think IMVU is very much aware of this and how some people can easily expand their MASA up to a maximum of 1000$ extra dollars. I would be very happy if it was this way, but only from the perspective of withdrawing the money. I think IMVU would create the new MASA similar to how much the creator could have cashed out initially (around 1500$ in this example).

IMVU’s not dumb, especially since they forced VIP on grandfathered accounts to make more money. There’s no way they would allow this loophole in MASA for specific cases like the one mentioned (1-2 creator accounts under MASAs and one account over its MASA = more money when cashing out).

Should I link my accounts to save up on VIP?

I think it would be a good idea, but I can also see why some people would not want to do it. On one hand, people might be a bit paranoid like I am with merging MASAs, in the sense that they might not want IMVU to consider 3 accounts as one in case of abuse.

For example, what happens if one account gets disabled while being linked/funnelled to other accounts? No one covers this situation. Does the funnelled MASA stay on hold? The way it is right now is that if you earn on multiple accounts and get banned on one, you only say bye-bye to that account that gets banned. We don’t know what would happen with linked accounts and/or merged MASAs.

On the other hand, people might simply want to keep accounts separate for various reasons, maybe such as tax purposes.

IMVU had an account linking in place already – they don’t care about it though

It’s not the first time IMVU implements the account-linking idea. In fact, they do actually have a system in place, but that system is simply there just to exist. For example, if you linked your main account to your second account and went to live chat from your main account to ask something related to your second account (such as to change your age, or to get help passing a product through Peer Review, IMVU would ask you to verify your identity again).

Idiotic. What was linking the accounts even for? Even linked, both kept their MASAs separate, both went through the verification process separately for any type of action. I don’t know why IMVU implemented this system in the first place, but I can tell you that it never had any benefits. Mine were linked and I still had to go through all the hardships of an unliked account. It was a waste of time. At the time, I actually believed that linking them would make part of my job easier – or at least I was hoping it would help in any way. It didn’t.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

Linking alt accounts looks like this:

I went through a full verification process to link Kirry to Shiva, but I bet it won’t matter at all, since IMVU is notorious for implementing things that are uncalled for, or that simply don’t work.

Conclusion

IMVU decided to make big changes to some long-lasting creators by forcing them to pay a monthly fee of at least 10$ to be able to earn money and cash out their earned money, didn’t fully think about this change and now a bunch of people are upset (as they should be).

I don’t recommend diving just yet into implementing changes. I get that many of you have a lot of grandfathered accounts and want to be safe, but at the same time, consider all the unknown answers to legit questions about both linking accounts and merging MASAs:

• What happens to linked accounts if one account gets disabled?
• What happens to merged MASAs if one account gets disabled?
• What is the verification process? What happens if the verification process takes a lot longer than July, forcing all accounts which are pending verification to switch to earning credits until IMVU can validate the linked accounts?

…aaand lastly, but very important for many people:

• Do I really want to bother with hobby creating?

And that is a question many small creators should ask themselves if they were sticking around to make a few bucks every now and then. Remember that IMVU apparently says that to be able to earn cash, you must have an active VIP subscription (either Diamond or Platinum). Meaning that if you were making around 100$ a year, you’d have to pay 120$ a year (or 75$ if you buy year-subscription) to be able to earn cash and not credits. In such a case, it’s not worth paying for VIP, as your balance would actually be negative.

To sum it up, the whole process is both messy (linking, buying reduced VIP, verifying accounts etc.) and still very much a mysery (what happens to accounts? does MASA grow/shrink with merged accounts? etc.).

To end on a positive note, creators DO have a guardian angel

I would still like to be very thankful and show my gratitude towards RigsK, who is an IMVU employee and has always had the courtesy and the respect to address us, the creator community, directly. Before RigsK, IMVU has always hidden behind “read the Terms of Service” type of replies. Although RigsK is currently on holiday while this madness is going on, she is still working from the shadows to keep up with the creator community to report back to IMVU and to find common ground.

Not only has RigsK been active in listening to creator feedback, she has also made sure that IMVU followed its own word.

I do not personally know RigsK, but as a mentor and a friend to a lot of the highest paid and most popular IMVU creators, I know that the good this person has done stretches far beyond just listening to the creator community.

Many creators reading this article would not be here if it weren’t for RigsK to really look out for creators. And trust my sincerity when I tell you this – RigsK does look out for a lot of us and we will almost never know it. I know it because I have eyes in all the right places, but you know it too. Without spoiling too much of the hidden good RigsK has done, ask yourself whether the creator community is being punished as severely as it used to be years ago. If you don’t know the answer, which is just one, it’s no, the creator community is nowhere near as punished as it used to be. By “punished”, take it and make of it what you will. Yeah, forcing grandfathered creator accounts to pay for VIP might not be the best thing, but that’s corporate greed. Whatever RigsK could do that was in her power (and many times even above her), she did.

Remember this when you think of IMVU. Not everyone’s a bad guy and that maybe we should really look out more for each other in any way that we can.

♥