A bounty campaign is an offer made by many startups, websites, and software developers which enables individuals to receive recognition and compensation for performing marketing tasks, reporting bugs or improving a product/service. ICO startups and the token economy in general are excellent environment for bounty campaigns.

In this informative article, we will discuss 5 key points regarding ICO bounty programs.

• Types of bounties in the ICO space.
• Challenges of a bounty campaign
• Benefits of a bounty campaign.
• How much the average bounty campaign costs.
• Some examples of successful bounty campaigns.
• How Bounty0x.io can help you with your bounty campaign.

Types of bounties in the ICO space

Generally speaking, there are two types of bounty programs in the ICO space: Pre-ICO bounties and Post-ICO bounties.

1. Pre-ICO bounties

The main objective of pre-ICO bounties is to generate hype and awareness about the token offering of a blockchain startup. Therefore, pre-ICO bounty campaigns are often exclusively focused on marketing tasks.

At Bounty0x.io, we (currently) offer the following Pre-ICO bounties:

• Twitter bounties
• Facebook bounties
• Articles bounties
• YouTube bounties
• Bitcointalk signature bounties
• Meme and infographic bounties

2. Post-ICO bounties

Post-ICO bounties are aimed at improving the product or service of a startup by getting direct feedback from the crowd. These bounty campaigns often reward bounty hunters with currency instead of tokens. At Bounty0x.io we offer the following Post-ICO bounties

• Translation bounties
• Bug bounties
• Improvement bounties
• Community management bounties

Please keep in mind that the pre-ICO/ post-ICO category is just a concept that we thought of for advising blockchain startups. This is by no means a ‘rule to be followed’ and many startups actually mix both categories in their bounty program.

Challenges of a bounty campaign

If a bounty campaign is promoted correctly, it will receive thousands of submission. It can be completely overwhelming for a startup to review every single submission manually and to later distribute the rewards to all Bounty Hunters. Furthermore, bounty campaigns are an easy target for scammers and hackers if proper security measures are not taken.

Benefits of a bounty program

Many startups lack liquidity prior to their ICO. Therefore, expensive press releases and banner ad campaigns are often not the wisest usage of funds. That’s where bounty campaigns come into play.

In order to launch a bounty program, startups only need to set aside a tiny percentage of their tokens, usually between 0.5–1.0 percent. No need to spend thousands of dollars in expensive, and often ineffective, marketing campaigns.

Additionally, bounty campaigns have proven to be an excellent way to build a loyal community around a product or service. Startups can use bounties to engage with potential clients and brand ambassadors in a very interactive and fun way.

Costs

The costs of managing a bounty campaign vary greatly. Some of the most important factors are the duration of the campaign and the offered bounty tasks.

Bounty campaign managers usually charge between $3–6k in currency together with a token allocation for a bounty program that lasts 4 weeks 1 month. The reason why it is so costly is because they need to manually check every single submission manually and to constantly engage with the community.

At Bounty0x.io, we have built a platform to automate the whole bounty management process. This has allowed us to slice the cost down to $0. Our only payment is a tiny cut of the tokens a start-up allocates to the bounty campaign.

Examples of successful bounty campaigns

Wildly successful ICOs like Status, Bancor and ICONOMI have all launched a bounty program prior to their token sale.

How Bounty0x.io can help you

Bounty0x.io is a decentralized bounty management platform enabling companies to manage bounty programs and users to receive payments for completing bounties. We plan, launch, promote and manage bounty campaigns.