[criddell]

Have the writers whose work you are monetizing opted in to being visible through Readup?

My first impression is that a 50-50 split doesn't seem very fair to the writers. You created the platform but most of the value comes from the writers.

[jacamera]

No, writers do not opt in. The Readup extensions and mobile apps work on articles that are freely available on the internet. Writers do not have to share their premium subscription-only content with us or do anything differently. The Readup extensions and mobile apps work similarly to other "reader mode" utilities except that we track reading progress on a word-by-word level and we want to pay writers when users actually read their articles to completion. Please see my reply to @bgroat regarding the 50/50 split.

[criddell]

> writers do not opt in

That doesn't feel great. Telling creators that people are paying you for their work but they have to create an account to get paid feels shady. Do you make it clear when something I read is from a creator who has signed up and therefore will be paid?

If one of your users were to read something I published, would they see it exactly as they would if they visited directly? Same ads, same layout? Will the reader look any different to me as far as my analytics go?

Edit: Also, how do you manage abiding by all the crazy terms and conditions on different sites? For example, on your homepage is a link to an Atlantic article and their terms and conditions prohibit the use of their RSS feed for commercial reasons or selling access to their site. Do you have a deal with the Atlantic? Have they signed up with you?

[jacamera]

> That doesn't feel great. Telling creators that people are paying you for their work but they have to create an account to get paid feels shady.

I get that, but isn't it better than paying for a utility like Pocket or Instapaper that strips ads from writers' articles and doesn't offer them any compensation? Those companies aren't asking writers to opt-in to that. We're trying to do the right thing in a financially sustainable way.

Also just to be clear, writers won't be required to sign up for a paid Readup subscription in order to collect their revenue share. If they don't want to use the platform they can just verify with us via email.

> Do you make it clear when something I read is from a creator who has signed up and therefore will be paid?

Yes! There will absolutely be some sort of "blue checkmark" verification indicator. (To be clear we have not yet started charging users. We're still in the building stage!)

> If one of your users were to read something I published, would they see it exactly as they would if they visited directly? Same ads, same layout? Will the reader look any different to me as far as my analytics go?

On the browser: Initially yes, before activating the extension which will strip ads and enter the "reader mode" layout.

On mobile: No, javascript and stylesheets are not executed while rendering the article.

For your analytics: It depends. If you're looking at server logs then everything will look the same. If you're relying on client-side javascript for analytics then you don't see it at all for our mobile users and the results might be different for browser users depending on how your scripts are interacting with the page.

> Also, how do you manage abiding by all the crazy terms and conditions on different sites? For example, on your homepage is a link to an Atlantic article and their terms and conditions prohibit the use of their RSS feed for commercial reasons or selling access to their site. Do you have a deal with the Atlantic? Have they signed up with you?

We don't crawl any publisher websites or use their RSS feeds. All article curation on our site is crowdsourced from our users - 100% organic human spidering. We just track their reading progress and use that data to rank the articles so that everyone can find the best content. We'd love to eventually partner with publishers but especially larger ones probably won't want to talk to us until we have millions of paying users and can offer them a significant revenue share.

[criddell]

> We'd love to eventually partner with publishers but especially larger ones probably won't want to talk to us until we have millions of paying users and can offer them a significant revenue share.

So until then, is the revenue share that you owe to them a permanent liability on your balance sheet?

[jacamera]

Possibly! I'm not sure if writers who write for a publisher like The Atlantic would be able to claim any sort of compensation for something that I imagine the publisher owns the rights to. But on the other hand, it's kind of like a tip from the readers to the writer for writing a good article so would that be allowed?

Lots of questions here, but as I stated in another answer on the topic we're committed to keeping all payments open and transparent. This can only work if everyone has insight into who's getting money for what.

[_b8r0]

How do I block you from monetizing my content? "You can't" isn't the right answer.

[jacamera]

I'm not sure I understand. If we had paying subscribers that were reading your content and we reached out to you and you didn't want anything to do with us we would certainly respect that and not bother you again.

The only way to prevent our users from reading your articles though would be to require some sort of authentication to access them. Same way you block anyone from accessing your content through any web browser or extension.

[_b8r0]

So just to be clear:

1. You are taking money directly from customers 2. To serve content that you do not have the right to sell access to.

> If we had paying subscribers that were reading your content and we reached out to you

That sounds like a lot of ifs. It sounds like you're making money directly off access to my content which makes me deeply uncomfortable. If you reach out to me, and you're unsuccessful in contacting me, you're still making money directly off my content whether I chose to monetize it or not.

[jacamera]

1. Yes. This is the plan.

2. No. We are not serving content. The user's device makes a GET request to your server and you serve the content. Readup just displays the metadata and a link to the article just like reddit or Hacker News.