Michael Elliott 

I for one, do not even have 500,000 points, I first join some time back in 2009.

In the beginning I was trying to figure out what the rain was all about. I continue because of the great and wonderful people in the rain. So many great minds, the points are not relevant🙂

I do watch my points (I mean come on... we're in sales... we all watch our numbers whether we admit it or not)...  

When I had so few points I was point motivated,  Climbing the leaderboard was something I was focused on. 

Things are much different now here in the Rain.  The landscape has changed. Many of the original people have "left the building".  

I am far less active today than I was when I first got started here. 

Michael, the answer for me is "no".  

However, I was very motivated to comment and earn points when I was below 500,000 points as that was the point where a paid Rainmaker account became "free".

Good morning Michael Elliott Candice is correct about the early days.  As you can see I have yet to hit this millionaire threshold.  I can say I received a telephone call from a buyer who wanted to purchase an apartment building in Fort Lauderdale.  When I probed him to share with me how he discovered me, it was Active Rain.  SEO was b i g back then before the trauma we suffered through different companies buying and selling this site.

When we hosted live meetups and met other Rainers in person, I would look at their points versus mine.  I actually met Lou Ludwig several times before his demise.  Carol Williams always begins her Second Chance blog post with one of his quotes.  

  I was never a blogger until recently with market reports. I was apprehensive because of infographics and technology on the how to.  I occasionally joined in the contests.

I am now number 2 in my County, number 2 in Fort Lauderdale and number 46 in the State of Florida.  I am active while many others no longer participate.  This does not mean that others evergreen points will fade into the sunset.  Merely, opportunity to get to the top.  

In my case Gabe Sauders in a multi millionaire and no longer participates. Position #36 up to #11 are millionaires.  Just for fun.

SEO has yet to be restored to yester years days so the flavor of points may have diminished for many.  

For the Newbie's who have to pay until they reach the 500 point threshold😎 it has value.

I was super points motivated (on top of being results motivated) when I first started out. Once I reached the 500K milestone, however, I started blogging less. The incentive of a free AR account really pushed me to stay consistent. Many years later, I am not as consistent as I used to be, but AR is still an integral part of my day and my business. I do look forward to joining the ranks of the AR millionaires. It's within reach! 

I ummm, push my not very motivated, part time real estate husband, so go on AR at least to log in, and answer a few questions as often as I can.  Right now, I don't care that he doesn't care.  But when he retires from the day job and transitions to real estate I want him to have 500k.  He's in the 300's currently with just a few years to get to a public posting free account.

I realize I'm not who you were asking HOWEVER I can say with certainty I never cared about points in 18 years here! 
Points don't bring business. I never correlated points with actual dollars. THEY'RE NOT! 
HAVING SAID THAT . . . for the folks who pay (old timers were grandfathered in . . .) I'd care! 

This is a points-based forum and they do drive many people. Getting to 500,000 points for a free account was a challenging, fun ride, Michael!

After you reach 500,000 points for a free Rainmaker membership, the rest of the efforts are to satisfy your ego. Further, the Leaderboard is very misleading.

I've offered to give my away many times to people who feel they've been cheated somehow.

I'm saving mine for that unique AR toaster oven when it comes back in stock.

FWIW, I think the founders of the site did a genius move by using a point system to engage people from the competitive world of real estate (couldn't resist).  But at the same time, points can be the bane of the community.

It's not the points themselves, but what we are willing to do to earn them that matters.

My phone rings not because I got 225 points for a blog post, but because I wrote a blog post that satisfied a need by home buyers and/or sellers in my local market, or helped me build a relationship with other Rainers that led to a referral.

By itself, being #1 on the Ohio Leaderboard does zero for my business.  If someone wants to pass me, they're welcome to the spot.  I'm not going to start writing more posts, leaving more comments, etc. to fend them off.

Did points matter to me at the beginning?  Of course they did.  But at some point I transitioned from chasing points to a focus on doing the things that helped me put out evergreen posts, learn from other Rainers, etc.  It's a pretty good feeling when a 10+ year old blog post causes someone to call me to help buy a condo in Sailboat Pointe, or Beacon Hill, or Heritage at Miami Bluffs.  I know what caused them to find me, and it wasn't my spot on the Leaderboard.

After 500,000 points, it doesn't matter (until the AR point store opens). It was fun to become a millionaire, though.

Point discussion can vary deeply within a person's belief if it can get past all the point defenses. What drives it is the universal appeal to the ego using the FREE enticement. This activates want & need dynamics. I remember refusing a free gift one day simply because I didn't want it and the enticer, the giver of it, was perplexed and unnerved by my refusal. FREE is powerful, but the REFUSAL is even MORE powerful...

I used to care about points. But why? What do all these points do for me?

For me, AR is for networking, meeting other real estate professionals. The number of points I have irrelevant

I am now retired, so that answer is a hard no! lol

I have 1.5m points.  I'm not points motivated.  I used to be.  Very much so.  I was motivated and got the maximum daily and weekly points possible through blogging, commenting, and answering questions.  That was to get the free status, which I did in under a year.  We also used to get points for answering questions and there used to be ten or more questions a day.

Climbing the leaderboard was an obsession for a while.  I'm fine with where I am on there now.  No desire to go back to ten market blogs a week for rapid point gains.  I got very burned out with blogging from that.

Right now I'm:

#1 in my city, by 1.45m points

#1 in my county by 700k points

#22 in my state and the top five people all over over 4m points

and #145 in the Rain.

I'm here more for the interaction in the "water cooler" that is the Q&A section, than anything else at this point and my last blog was just shy of two years ago.

Funny I still care about points and look at them once a week.

Michael- if you threatened to take away of my purses etc, I still could not tell you how many points I had. When I started, I had no idea that points were involved. I understand those aiming for a free account to hit 500K. 

I have more than 1,000,000 but I am going to chime here just the same.  Everyone has their own opinion on how this works.  I participate in this forum for reasons beyond the points.  BUT points are something I check on a regular basis to climb the "points ladder"  It is part of my daily routine and i think it makes me more productive in my business, learning from other agents here on Active Rain.  

Well, I have over 5 million points and am not points motivated. I was motivated to get my first 500,000 points to get a free account.  But I didn't even know I got a free account after 500K points until I had already amassed more the 250K points.Then I was motivated to hit 1 million points. After that... not so much. Afterall, it's not like we can trade them in for something of value.

After being a member for 2 years without any real participation, I started blogging and working my way up to 500,000 points. After that the points meant less than the lessons learned from participation.

Points serve an important purpose in training members to do the daily tasks that improve their blogging habits.

Keeping up those habits, flooding the internet with more and more material is what keeps our name out in the public and cements ourselves in their minds as the authority in our field.

I’ve always been a Point Junkie . I’m #77 overall , #3 in PA & #1 in my Co.

While points are a nice bonus, it’s the enhanced online visibility and ‘Google juice’ that come from being active on platforms like ActiveRain that truly motivate me and add value to my efforts.

Points are fun but I'm most interest in the exchange of ideas.