Welcome to the Twixa blog!
As
our first post, we would like to introduce our Benevote service, which we call
"voter-directed sponsorship of content and services." The core of the Benevote
service is that readers can sponsor online content by voting.
When a reader votes using the free Benevote widget, we track the vote for the
article and publisher. At the end of our accounting period, we take the money
from sponsors and distribute it to publishers minus our cut. It's that
simple.
Voting is free,
which enables readers, who may have more time than money, esp. in this
economy, to reward publishers with feedback on article quality and
sponsorship dollars.
At a highly trafficked site, the math might look something like this:
Articles from publisher/month: 10
Unique readers for publisher:
100,000
Voting rate: 50% (if voting becomes as customary as tipping at a sit-down restaurant)
Publisher CPM: $10
Revenue formula:
100,000 * 10 * 0.5 * 10 / 1000
Gross revenue = $5000/month
Obviously, these
numbers are not typical, will vary by publisher, and will be dependent on
the quality of content, voting rate, typical CPM of the publisher, number of
articles, reader base, article frequency, reader awareness, etc. However, if the readership were 1 million users, then the gross revenue might reach $50,000/month and cover several staff. So the long term potential of Benevote to help save/sustain online journalism excites us.
Near term, we're just getting started, so we're going to be a bit rough around the edges. Please feel free to give us plenty of feedback.
If you want to sign up as a publisher or sign up as a sponsor/advertiser, then be
sure to join our private beta.