> I have a few journalist friends (as no doubt do you guys) and pointed a couple of them at this.
Thanks for doing that. I hope you'll point them at this comment too.
> [...] you'll probably find that a lot of your target market quite bitter and resentful that they've been reduced to this. [...] they just want someone who'll give them a honest day's pay on a stable basis to get on with what they love doing, writing well-crafted stories.
Yes. We talked to a ton of journalists before we got to this. Everyone had the same story (many bitter) that you outlined above. We are honestly not trying to screw anyone. We should have outlined the financials a bit better: 80% of all revenue goes to the content producers. This is a platform for journalists to earn a good living, not for us to exploit anyone.
We want to provide a good living to people who write good content.
> Not all journalists will necessarily be entrepreneurial sorts, and the ones that are will often be able to seek out geeky friends to help them out online anyway.
We're trying to add value for both kinds, not just the ones who can't work the internet.
> With that in mind, there are a lot of sites out there on the internet with too-good-to-be-true sounding propositions on how they can help you make money online, build an audience etc. Once burned twice shy with these sorts of operations - often it turns out they pay you peanuts to be a cog in the wheel of a SEO-spam factory which profits them more than anyone else.
We have come across a number of these - we dont want to name names - but we are the opposite. I guess the fact that we were trying to keep on the down-low made it seem sinister. Just the opposite - we are open sourcers and believe in transparency. It will be trivial to calculate how much revenue your content has brought it: multiply by 1.25.
> Even with the best intentions just to offer people better tools on a win-win basis, it's hard to avoid coming across as scammy or profiteering when dealing with people who're feeling unemployed and vulnerable career-wise.
Right, this is an important point. We'll work hard to make it seem like we aren't scammy at all (cause we aren't!).
> So, I guess what I'm saying is you might really want to make sure you stand out from the crowd of "join our SEO-spam-factory"
Noted. We had hoped the YC brand would make us stand out from spammy-bastards, but I guess not.
> [...] if the tools being offered lock you inextricably into some company's hosted ecosystem, I'd be a bit skeptical
[...]
We are wary of this. We will build tools to automatically move off our platform. It wont be our first priority of course, but if people want to move off we will help them do it.
> Anyway hope that didn't come across too negative, I'm glad more people are taking on what's such a tricky problem!
Positive people won't tell you that you may be coming across as a spammy bastard :) Thanks!
Thanks for doing that. I hope you'll point them at this comment too.
> [...] you'll probably find that a lot of your target market quite bitter and resentful that they've been reduced to this. [...] they just want someone who'll give them a honest day's pay on a stable basis to get on with what they love doing, writing well-crafted stories.
Yes. We talked to a ton of journalists before we got to this. Everyone had the same story (many bitter) that you outlined above. We are honestly not trying to screw anyone. We should have outlined the financials a bit better: 80% of all revenue goes to the content producers. This is a platform for journalists to earn a good living, not for us to exploit anyone.
We want to provide a good living to people who write good content.
> Not all journalists will necessarily be entrepreneurial sorts, and the ones that are will often be able to seek out geeky friends to help them out online anyway.
We're trying to add value for both kinds, not just the ones who can't work the internet.
> With that in mind, there are a lot of sites out there on the internet with too-good-to-be-true sounding propositions on how they can help you make money online, build an audience etc. Once burned twice shy with these sorts of operations - often it turns out they pay you peanuts to be a cog in the wheel of a SEO-spam factory which profits them more than anyone else.
We have come across a number of these - we dont want to name names - but we are the opposite. I guess the fact that we were trying to keep on the down-low made it seem sinister. Just the opposite - we are open sourcers and believe in transparency. It will be trivial to calculate how much revenue your content has brought it: multiply by 1.25.
> Even with the best intentions just to offer people better tools on a win-win basis, it's hard to avoid coming across as scammy or profiteering when dealing with people who're feeling unemployed and vulnerable career-wise.
Right, this is an important point. We'll work hard to make it seem like we aren't scammy at all (cause we aren't!).
> So, I guess what I'm saying is you might really want to make sure you stand out from the crowd of "join our SEO-spam-factory"
Noted. We had hoped the YC brand would make us stand out from spammy-bastards, but I guess not.
> [...] if the tools being offered lock you inextricably into some company's hosted ecosystem, I'd be a bit skeptical [...]
We are wary of this. We will build tools to automatically move off our platform. It wont be our first priority of course, but if people want to move off we will help them do it.
> Anyway hope that didn't come across too negative, I'm glad more people are taking on what's such a tricky problem!
Positive people won't tell you that you may be coming across as a spammy bastard :) Thanks!