Ask HN: I need you but have no money. What can I offer you instead?

Karma points is fine with me, but to me the real reward for helping others is in knowing that you've helped.

'The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit'. Nelson Henderson

karma would be the best thing, IMHNO. it has no monetary value, but can have social value. the "free labour" to your site is just that - free(monetarily, anyway). it has no monetary value in and of itself. as others have pointed out, once you do start to assign monetary value to it, then greed begins to naturally take hold and people just game the system even more. someone who is a frequent contributor on many sites, though - they tend to acquire rep - on the internet, no less, and will naturally attract all the things that a good rep attracts, which some would say is worth far more than money.

think of it like this - when you play a game of Monopoly, you're playing for play money. you get rich in the game, but the money you earn there is worthless outside of the game. at best you might earn some rep among your friends for winning (more than likely tho, they're a little pissed at you for screwing them in the game in order to win), and even that is pretty worthless outside of your social circle.

take the same game and play it with real money, and now it is gambling. see the difference?

It all depends on what kind of community/website it is.

Communities like HN/StackOverflow - Why do people contribute here? Though there is reward system is in place here(karma) but I doubt if that acts as primary motivation. In such community, my contribution is your reward and your contribution is my reward. YC isn't getting any direct monitory benefits from HN but having a good successful community of hackers helps them indirectly in many ways. So, it's a win-win situation for everyone.

Products like Google, Gmail,Facebook etc. - Isn't it rewarding enough in itself to be able to use such excellent products free of cost(even if it comes with minimal text ads)?

The bottom line is that if you are using a website because it is providing some kind of value to you and your contribution is actually helping it in providing even more value back to users, you shouldn't think about monitory awards.

If it is not providing anything valuable, you won't be using it, even if it is free.

If you are getting paid for using something or contributing, it means the site in itself isn't that valuable to you. So, they lure you through monitory benefits. For example, paid surveys.

I have created http://weekendhacker.net where people trade skills. I currently have +6500 designers and developers and more than 150 projects have been posted and found help so far.

I've done some projects on Mechanical Turk (spent enough to get an account rep!) and I can definitely say that offers of money will bring in people who will (1) rip you off or (2) do the minimum work required to get paid.

The type (1)'s are easy to deal with because there are ways to check people's work. They just don't get paid. The type (2)'s are harder -- there's a population of Turks that I call Superturks that spend a lot of time Turking. If you make a histogram of how many HITs everybody did, they'll be the people who did the most.

The trouble with Superturks is that the quality of the work they do is worse than average, usually just good enough that you wouldn't feel comfortable rejecting their work. I know I could get better quality if I banned them, but I find it hard to do.