Comment by VierScar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VierScar | Hacker News Reader

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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).

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.

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! :-)

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.

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