We believe that one unique aspect of Just About is the business model.

We are of course trying to create a beautiful platform, with low toxicity, that gives you better control over what content you see, where and when you want to see it. But we know there are already plenty of places on the internet where you can create, discuss, and share your passions.

But there are very few platforms or media businesses that genuinely value their audience, and try to bring them into the core of the business model.

What’s the (business) plan?

As Just About members already know, we’re paying out rewards with real money for your positive participation and engagement on the platform. We’re already seeing encouraging signs and data that shows that the financial rewards are leading to new and differentiated content creation, both on and off the platform.

The sense of collaboration and co-operation resulting from everybody having a vested interest in the success of the platform and the communities we host is fantastic, too.

Equally, we’re very much going through a period of experimentation: How difficult should bounties be to complete? How many winners should there be? How valuable is the content being created for the community? How can we encourage people to do more? What bad behaviours might emerge as the reward pool grows?

Bounties are working well and are a great way of prompting specific activity, but longer-term we don’t want to be responsible for ‘forcing’ people to create or engage in a specific way.

That’s why we’ve implemented a very basic version of Organic Rewards as well. So that over time, rewards flow to those who create the most interesting and valuable contributions, as decided by the community.

To that end, we’ve seen great success with our ‘Suggest a Bounty’ bounties, as well as our first Guest Bounties. We think that these will give way to member-created bounties soon, so that more of the process is in your hands.

But as you can tell, we’re still figuring out what works for you, for us, and for the brands that support the platform.

Brands?!

That’s right. There’s no magic money tree! The dollars are real, and they have to come from somewhere. When companies do get involved with Just About, the majority of their money goes straight to our members, while we keep a platform fee to help keep the lights on and develop the platform further.

We were fortunate enough that CCP Games funded the Just About EVE Online community right from the very beginning. Plus we received some investment into the business, which is giving us the time and space to build the technology and experiment with rewards. But to build a sustainable platform, we’ll need to bring in more partners to fund the rewards.

The key will be keeping the balance right. With a traditional media business, a brand pays for exposure to an audience. With ours, we see partners as supporting the audience. By providing funds to encourage people to further their passion and fandom for a given topic, there is a natural alignment between all of the stakeholders involved - the brand, the platform and the members. This is what Al spoke about in his commercial deep dive.

How else might the business develop?

The reason the social media giants are such huge businesses is the massive amount of value being generated by - and mined from - their audiences. For them, you are the product!

We are attemping to correct that value exchange. By recognising that a platform is nothing without its members, and sharing that value (money!) back with the people who are creating it. Fairly, and in a way which encourages authentic engagement.

To that end, bounties and organic rewards are the beginning, but they will continue to evolve as we learn. And we’ll supplement them with other roles and rewards. For example, rewards for your knowledge via market research surveys? Rewards for moderators? Rewards for content curators or bounty setters? Do we introduce ads and share that revenue back with the community? There are so many potential avenues we could go down, and we’re going to keep experimenting at pace to find out which works best.

Let us know what you think below!