

Show HN: Blog Exchange – Sell Or Promote Articles To Earn Money - VierScar
http://bx.freshte.ch/p/about/

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mryan
> Bloggers post content which is sold to readers, and readers can profit by
> promoting the good content to other people.

One of the problems with this model is that the incentive for sharing content
is to get paid, rather than to share genuinely good content. The system will
be gamed by people who are sharing as much as possible without regard for
quality.

At the risk of sounding elitist, the types of people you want sharing your
material are not the same types of people who will be excited about earning a
few cents by sharing an article.

> This model has proven to work, and it is now time to bring this model to the
> greater online community.

This model (paying for access to content) is already available to the greater
online community in the form of paywalls. They are not popular unless the
content is very good and can not be accessed elsewhere.

> Good content is a commodity worth paying for.

I agree with this, but who is paying? It appears that you will buy articles
from bloggers and pay readers to promote them. So where does the money come
from?

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VierScar
I aim to reduce promotion just for money, by incentivising sharing only good
content (eg. sharing content that gets flagged/bad rating, or simply lots of
links will make you worse off)

Yes, paywals suck, but I'd say mostly from having to register on each site
etc. If it was more centralised, then perhaps people would be more accepting -
like music stores (iTunes/Spotify/etc).

> I agree with this, but who is paying? It appears that you will buy articles
> from bloggers and pay readers to promote them. So where does the money come
> from?

I don't pay bloggers - bloggers are paid from readers that buy an article.
Readers can (potentially) make more money than it cost them by promoting good
content and taking a cut of the purchases (think affiliate).

~~~
mryan
It sounds as though your model is based on a Ponzi scheme. I don't mean to be
offensive when I say that - I'm not suggesting you are trying to scam people,
merely that your early "investors" (the first person to pay to read an
article) will only get paid as a result of later readers purchasing articles
they promote.

These later readers will have to find further readers in order to recoup their
costs and perhaps make a profit.

The business model is decidedly pyramid shaped, which is usually only a good
thing for the people at the top of the pyramid.

~~~
mryan
PS: After re-reading my post it looks overly negative. I'm not saying this is
a bad idea, just raising some concerns I would have as a reader or author.

Props to you for a) having a solution to the problem and b) getting the
landing page launched. Both of these are a lot harder than picking holes in
someone else's idea! :-)

~~~
VierScar
Hey Mryan, it doesn't necessarily benefit "early readers" more - it benefits
those that can get more traffic to convert. I don't believe that quite makes
it a "pyramid scheme" \- especially as the exact same scenario is occuring
with Amazon: (1) Seller bob creates a product. (2) Amazon lists it in their
stock. (3) Promoter joe posts about the product, adding an affiliate link. (4)
If a viewer buys the product with his link, he gets a cut.

