❗New folks: ❗How to easily get likes and the benefits of doing so

Over my time here and seeing the periodic comings and goings of new members, I've noticed a couple trends that I thought I'd address for the benefit of all members, but especially new members who get frustrated and flame out of the group quickly.

This group only works to its ability when everyone has a mindset of "contributing what you can." Some of us seem to have a never-ending supply of interesting courses or products available and money to purchase them, so it may seem at first that those are the only people who have anything of value to add to this group, but there is a whole other cohort that has value to add: those who can't afford all these purchases but can still do their part to keep the group healthy with just a little bit of time. Your reward for contributing your time is likes, and it may not be obvious why that matters. The likes system has a dual purpose: it provides a reasonable amount of protection from people whose goal is to abuse the group, and it provides incentive to contribute. I enjoy this group and appreciate the admins, but the onboarding leaves a bit to be desired, and some things may not be very obvious unless you really take the time to dive in.

Why should I care about likes?
First, you may have noticed that, apart from spending money on a gold membership, the like system is a type of alternate "currency" in this group. Likes are not a vanity metric, collecting them affords you with certain privileges. If being part of a thriving community is not enough reason to want to contribute to the group, here are some additional incentives :

• First, collecting 100 likes removes your daily limitation for liking other people's posts to gain access to download links. This means that you're no longer "stuck" at 25 likes per day. It can be very frustrating to go through old posts and use up all your 25 likes only to find those old links have expired. The easiest and quickest way to address this is to get 100 likes yourself. Don't complain about this system. We've all been through it, and it helps keep some of the worst spammers at bay. You'll see the "No Limit" label added to your avatar once you've achieved this.
• Secondly, earning likes allows you to earn trophy points. Trophy points can be spent on a Gold membership so you can access Gold content without spending any money. The rate is currently 10 Trophy Points per 100 likes and periodically - usually twice per year for a month at a time - admins will "discount" the gold membership so it costs less trophy points.
• Thirdly, earning 1,000 likes gets you something special. That's all I can say about it, as we've been asked not to discuss it, but suffice it to say that you'll enjoy your reward for collecting 1,000 likes.
• And lastly, earning 10,000 likes means you never have to pay for Gold again - you become a "lifetime" Gold access member. You'll see the "Lifetime Gold" label added to your avatar once you've achieved this.

But... getting likes is so HARD!
It isn't, not really. And it doesn't even take a long time to reach the first major threshold (1k likes). When I first started in this group I figured out something that's not explicitly stated anywhere and which that allowed me to gain my first 1,000 likes in just a few months: providing quality mirrors is an easy way to quickly get likes.

Even if you don't have a pile of fresh content of your own to contribute, you need to realize that, for the prolific sharers in this group, keeping up with all the various threads and keeping links alive is an impossible job. It's just the nature of the type of content that's being shared here. By the time members reach 10,000 likes or so, they've probably shared hundreds, if not thousands of links and there's no way to keep track of it all. Not to mention all the takedowns that various file hosting platforms will do. This is why I ask people in my signature to @mention me if one of my links has died - it sends me a notification of an issue I would never have been aware of otherwise.

The easy way to get likes, even if you can't afford to purchase courses.
If you've downloaded something from a thread, make sure you follow that thread (either by clicking the follow button or by making a comment), and when someone inevitably asks for a refresh on the link, you can jump in with a mirror. You can also use the search function for terms like "refresh" to identify comments from people in threads that need mirrors. Decorum dictates that you should wait a little bit (maybe a day or two) to see if the OP can address the issue, but if they're unavailable, provide your own mirror. This will keep the thread alive, people will be appreciative, and you can rack up likes, and most importantly, it vastly distributes the burden of keeping thousands and thousands of product offerings available for people to download. Make sure you follow the rules, of course (for instance, make a mirror Gold if the original post was Gold), but you can do this over and over ad nauseum with free, reputable file hosters (also mentioned in the rules section) without ever having purchased a course of your own - contributing new, purchased content will get you more likes, of course, but not having the money to spend on courses isn't an excuse to not participate.

Even if you only post one or two mirrors a day, you'll reach your first 1,000 likes in a matter of months instead of the years that it takes some members.

Anyway, if you stick around this group long enough, all of the above is probably something you would have figured out on your own. I just thought I'd save you the time and the trouble Enjoy all the free content and don't forget to contribute in your own way back to the group!