How to Set Your Virtual Currency Exchange Rate

What is a virtual currency exchange rate?

A virtual currency exchange rate tells your offerwall how many units of your currency, such as coins, points, or gems, one US dollar of your earnings is worth. The wall multiplies what an offer pays you by that rate, applies the share you pass on to users, and rounds the result. That number is the reward your user sees next to the offer and the amount your server credits.

This one setting shapes both what users feel and what you keep. Too stingy, and your wall looks empty and users leave. Too generous, and you pay out more than you earn or undercut your own in-app purchases. The good news is that it is entirely in your hands. This guide uses the settings Sharklio publishers actually have, with worked examples, so you can set the numbers once and keep them.

The reward formula: payout x rate x split

Every Sharklio app has three currency settings in its Currency tab, plus an optional bonus:

• Conversion rate: how many units of your currency equal $1 of your earnings, before the split. It must be greater than 0 and can have up to two decimals, so 1000, 250, or 1.5 all work.
• Split to user: the share of your earnings your users receive as currency, as a whole percentage from 1 to 100. You are paid in US dollars either way.
• Reward rounding: whole numbers, for points or coins, or up to 3 decimals, for dollar balances. Offers whose reward would round to 0 are not shown.
• Bonus (optional): a temporary percentage on top of every reward, paid from your own share, with an optional end date. Your payout from Sharklio does not change.

Put together:

reward = round( payout_usd x conversion_rate x (user_split / 100) x (1 + bonus / 100) )

The payout here is what you earn for the offer, the same value that arrives in the {payout} postback macro. The result is the value in the {reward} macro. Whole-number rounding goes to the nearest unit, so 16.65 becomes 17 and 12.5 becomes 13. Three-decimal rounding turns 0.0084 into 0.008. The Currency tab has a live calculator that shows the reward for sample payouts as you type, so you can check any combination before you save.

Worked examples: five configurations

Here is what three offers that pay you $0.05, $0.37, and $2.50 show under five different settings, with no bonus. The setups are chosen to show the arithmetic; none of them is a recommendation.

Three lessons fall out of this table.

Setup C loses precision. The $0.37 offer should give 22.2 gems but shows 22. That is a small difference, but at low values rounding can move a reward by 10% or more in either direction: an offer worth 1.4 gems shows 1, and one worth 1.5 shows 2.

Setup D hides offers. Any offer that pays less than $0.10 rounds to 0 and disappears from the wall, so users see fewer offers and you lose that revenue entirely. This is the cheapest mistake to fix: raise the rate and those offers come back.

Setup E needs a balance that stores decimals. If your database or display rounds 0.296 to 0.30, you pay out more than the reward you received, so store at least three decimals.

How to choose your conversion rate

Rule 1: keep small offers visible

Some offers pay very little. Click campaigns on Sharklio start from a fraction of a cent on the advertiser side, and your earning is part of that. With whole-number rounding, an offer only appears if its reward is at least 0.5 before rounding, which gives a simple floor:

smallest visible payout = 0.5 / (conversion_rate x user_split / 100)

A higher rate also means finer steps between rewards, so users can tell a $0.37 offer from a $0.40 one. That is another argument for a higher rate.

Rule 2: make the numbers read well

Users compare rewards at a glance. “450 gems” reads as more generous and more exact than “4.5 gems”, and whole numbers are easier to trust than long decimals. Unless your balance is literally in dollars, choose a rate that makes typical offers land in the tens to thousands.

Rule 3: anchor to what your currency already costs

If users can buy your currency, your store prices are the reference they will compare against. Work out how many units a buyer gets per dollar and decide deliberately how earning compares.

If your currency cannot be bought or cashed out, the exact rate matters less than consistency: offers should feel worth it next to what your currency buys.

Rule 4: for real-money balances, use a round, explainable rate

On a rewards site where points turn into cash or gift cards, users want to know what a point is worth. A rate such as 1,000 points per $1 of value is easy to explain on your cashout page. If you show balances directly in dollars, set the rate to 1 and choose three-decimal rounding, as the dashboard suggests. How to start a rewards website covers cashouts and holds.

How to choose your user split

The split is the share of your earnings that turns into currency. It works differently depending on whether that currency costs you money.

• Currency with real value, such as points users cash out: the split is your biggest cost, and what is left must cover reversals, payment fees, fraud that gets through, support, servers, and marketing.
• Currency with no cash value, such as gems that only buy items in your game: the split is an economy setting. You can use a lower rate with a 100% split, or a higher rate with a lower split, and get the same rewards. Choose whichever keeps your numbers easiest to reason about.

Publisher earnings and reversals explains how a reversal reaches you, and Stop multi-accounting and VPN abuse covers how to keep that rate low.

Bonuses: promote without changing your base rate

A bonus multiplies every reward by a percentage for as long as it runs. With a 10% bonus, a user who normally gets 100 coins gets 110. It is paid from your share, not by Sharklio, and you can set an end date and time. Users then see a live countdown on the wall, which gives you a clear reason to announce it.

Bonuses work best as short, planned events, such as a weekend or a launch, rather than a permanent state users learn to wait for.

Can you change your exchange rate later?

Yes. After you save, rewards on the wall use the new settings for results finished from then on. The reward is fixed when the user finishes an offer, so results that are already pending keep the reward calculated at that moment, and a later reversal carries the same amount as the credit it cancels.

Balances in your own system are yours to manage; Sharklio does not touch them. If you change what a point is worth, you decide how existing balances are handled, and your terms should say so. Keep in mind that raising a rate is easy and lowering it is not. Users notice cuts immediately, so if you must lower the rate, announce it in advance and explain why.

If you need a different currency for part of your audience, for example a separate website, create a second app for it rather than changing the rate back and forth. The traffic quality rules explain when a second app is fine.

Common exchange rate mistakes

1. Choosing a low rate for “premium feel” and hiding every small offer in the process.
2. Crediting a different amount than {reward}, for example by recalculating with your own rounding. Credit the value you receive.
3. Setting a 100% split on redeemable points and discovering later that reversals and fees come out of your own pocket.
4. Stacking a bonus on a high split without checking the total.
5. Storing dollar balances as whole cents while crediting three-decimal rewards.
6. Changing the rate often, which makes users suspicious and your revenue data hard to compare.

Once your rate is live, the other big lever is where users find the wall. See Offerwall placement: where to put it to earn more.

Frequently asked questions