Rev-sharing platform: see Crowdsourcer.io

Sounds very sketchy. No thanks.

1 hour ago, xaviersythe said:

Sounds very sketchy. No thanks.

Hey Xaviersythe,

I'm the creator of the site. I'm sorry you think it sounds sketchy. Is there any particular concerns you've got or a specific element of the platform that doesn't add up?

Building the site has been a massive labour of love, and it's something I made so people have a better chance of making a game (or whatever) without having to spend money, quit their day job etc. etc. I appreciate this model is a little different to how people currently work (though it's not a mile off the open source methodology) but I genuinely believe the model can work and benefit developers.

Cheers,

Mike

2 hours ago, xaviersythe said:

Sounds very sketchy. No thanks.

You also realize the gamedev's administration put the advertisement up, right? I'm fairly certain they would check something out before promoting it.

13 hours ago, CrazyCdn said:

You also realize the gamedev's administration put the advertisement up, right? I'm fairly certain they would check something out before promoting it.

Yea, I've been in discussion with Kevin for a while now. He's a very generous person and I was grateful for his empathy and understanding towards a new platform like this one.

This is amazing! But what are you actually looking for?

On 4/25/2018 at 11:18 AM, CrazyCdn said:

You also realize the gamedev's administration put the advertisement up, right? I'm fairly certain they would check something out before promoting it.

You realise the current gamedev administration think the current buggy, mobile-focused, ad-ridden forum engine is the best thing since sliced bread?

Yeah, this thing rings as off-colour to me, as well. Right behind the fact I cannot find any information about how payout and revenue collection is orchestrated (e.g. what publishing platforms are supposedly built-in? What payment systems are supported? What is the site's own share of revenue?), but on top of that, this section from the "About" page rings all my alarm bells:

Quote

To tackle the biggest problems of the startup world

The chart to the right depicts the most cited reasons for failures in startups. The highlighted problems - in colour - Crowdsourcer.io directly tackles. Crowdsourcer.io works by swapping out financial investment for time and talent investment. By taking the focus away from huge wads of cash, you encourage sustainable business practices, low burn rates and allow more people to start businesses.

• Running out of cash: with this new model, you'll always be able to create products for free using manpower alone.
• Not the right team: many startup founders don't have the right skills to build a Minimum Viable Product, but with Crowdsourcer.io teams are only ever built around valuable expertise.
• Outcompeted: markets are saturated and many businesses struggle to be seen on the Internet of Things. Crowdsourcer.io aims to provide a marketplace and selling tools so you don't have to compete with the big players.
• Cost issues: by focussing on time investment there are no costs for developing your product, and by avoiding the Silicon Valley mentality, burn rates are next to nil.

Free. No costs. Manpower alone. Alarm bells a-ringin'...

And either they will provide their own yet-another-bespoke-marketplace which will itself have to compete with all the others, or your products through this platform are going to have to be put on an existing marketplace (in some unspecified way), and compete with everyone already on that marketplace.

All of it rings as though someone read an open-source manifesto a couple years ago, thumbed through an Economics 100 coursebook last summer, then put this together as a 4th-year university project.

37 minutes ago, Wyrframe said:

Yeah, this thing rings as off-colour to me, as well.

2

Hi Wyrframe,

Thanks for the feedback on the site. I was wondering if you could elaborate on why it feels off-colour? It's something I'm directly trying to tackle as so many people's gut reactions are that it's shady. Perhaps people thought the same about Kickstarter or Indiegogo at the outset of crowdfunding, but then again, perhaps not, and if not, I want to get down to the crux of why the first impression of Crowdsourcer.io is one of distrust - so perhaps you could go into it a little.

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Right behind the fact I cannot find any information about how payout and revenue collection is orchestrated (e.g. what publishing platforms are supposedly built-in? What payment systems are supported? What is the site's own share of revenue?)

The main reason for this is that the payment processing side of things is not live yet and even when it is live it's going to be a gradual rollout of more and more features. At the moment, I'm not entirely sure exactly what features will make phase 1 in July. What I've built so far are widgets (like Paypal 'Add to cart' and 'Buy now' buttons) so you can sell through your own website, product and inventory management, sales through Crowdsourcer.io itself, the payout system (how people get paid), account linking (Stripe only currently) to receive money and a couple more bits and bobs. What I'm certain will make it in for July is also the ability to run 'Payroll' which allows people in a project to pay out any money collected externally - though the technicalities of this could well change. Lastly, logging, creating and tracking expenses is something I'd like to get in, but can't be certain of finishing it in time.

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Free. No costs. Manpower alone. Alarm bells a-ringin'...

What exactly rings alarm bells here? Going back to my earlier point, this could be really helpful for me when writing further copy for the platform and understanding what peoples' gut reaction is when looking at the site. Does Open core/open source ring alarm bells for you? What about crowdsourcing in general? And if not, what's different to cause a disparity between those and this, other than the fact that they've been in use for a while now?

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All of it rings as though someone read an open-source manifesto a couple years ago, thumbed through an Economics 100 coursebook last summer, then put this together as a 4th-year university project. 

I wish I had only spent as much time as that thinking about the site. But alas, it's years in the software industry (as a project manager) watching the exploitation of technicals, a degree in finance and lengthy research into finance in new ventures (of interest to me, in particular, is VC backed ventures). Had it been just a flick through of a coursebook for students, perhaps it would matter to me less what people thought of the site.

Thanks, and again, I'd be grateful for your thoughts.

Mike

5 minutes ago, MikeDiz said:

The main reason for this is that the payment processing side of things is not live yet and even when it is live

5 minutes ago, MikeDiz said:

sales through Crowdsourcer.io itself, the payout system (how people get paid), account linking (Stripe only currently) to receive money and a couple more bits and bobs.

9 minutes ago, MikeDiz said:

What I'm certain will make it in for July is also the ability to run 'Payroll' which allows people in a project to pay out any money collected externally - [...] Lastly, logging, creating and tracking expenses is something I'd like to get in, but can't be certain of finishing it in time.

I'm not as concerned with the fact these features aren't implemented yet, as I am with the fact you have laid out no outline, roadmap, or plan for how they will work, nor how the system will provide checks and balances between project controllers and project contributors. How would you feel applying for a job or contract position at a company who freely admitted during interviews, "We don't know what a payroll system is, how it works, or what our legal responsibilities within it will be, but I'm sure we'll figure it out before it becomes important to you. Can you start tomorrow?"

9 minutes ago, MikeDiz said:

What exactly rings alarm bells here?

10 minutes ago, MikeDiz said:

VC backed ventures

1 hour ago, Wyrframe said:

markets are saturated and many businesses struggle to be seen on the Internet of Things. Crowdsourcer.io aims to provide a marketplace and selling tools so you don't have to compete with the big players.

11 minutes ago, MikeDiz said:

Free. No costs. Manpower alone.

Your messaging is pulling me in two directions at once.

• "Free, no cost, produce a product using manpower alone" screams "no barriers to starting a project and getting people to put their own time and money into it, instead of you".
• "Less competition to deal with" is an impossible promise (that's not how markets work), but you still make it as though it's a given.
• Meanwhile, some of your other messaging and your comments here are trying to make us think it's about making project controllers accountable to their contributors (whether fiscal or material), and yet also about open source ideals (contribution is its own reward).

And as the last alarm bell, your own business model (how does the system support itself, and how does it reward its own maintainers) is completely undiscussed. Even just a simple summary, like Patreon's "5% take plus payment processing fees", would be a good starting point.

50 minutes ago, Wyrframe said:

I'm not as concerned with the fact these features aren't implemented yet, as I am with the fact you have laid out no outline, roadmap, or plan for how they will work.[...] your own business model (how does the system support itself, and how does it reward its own maintainers) is completely undiscussed.

First off, thanks for the reply. It means a great deal and I'm relieved to see you've come up with genuine and specific criticisms that I can actually address and remedy. I can see how the above is a real problem and it was largely, originally because I honestly didn't know the specifics myself - but now that I do know, it's ridiculous for me to hope/assume people will commit to the platform without this information. For the record, I'm currently aiming to take 15-20% (inc. all costs) of sales that occur through the platform and 5% of payments into the platform from external sources (again, inc. all costs.).

Quote

Your messaging is pulling me in two directions at once.

• "Free, no cost, produce a product using manpower alone" screams "no barriers to starting a project and getting people to put their own time and money into it, instead of you".
• "Less competition to deal with" is an impossible promise (that's not how markets work), but you still make it as though it's a given.
• Meanwhile, some of your other messaging and your comments here are trying to make us think it's about making project controllers accountable to their contributors (whether fiscal or material), and yet also about open source ideals (contribution is its own reward).

As for these, it's incredibly astute of you to pick up on this and again the confusion caused by all these messages is an oversight on my part.

The first bullet point regarding getting people to put their own time and money in instead of you is one that's present in all open source and crowdsourced and even crowdfunded projects. The solution has always been to offer something back to the public in return for this. With this model, what's given back is a pseudo equity/proportionate share of the profits in a business, which is a lot more than all other models out there. As for barriers to entry, I believe it creates a meritocratic process for creating new products. You as a contributor are essentially an investor (of time. I want to emphasise that it's not an investment of money as you suggested) and if you don't think a project is good enough, as an expert in the field, you move on. In an ideal world that's the perfect barrier to entry, not personal wealth, not network & connections, but the quality and execution of an idea. Having experienced individuals appraise an idea is substantially better than going to a VC with a wealth of cash, cash that you convince them to give to you after showing graphs of exponential growth, complete market capitalisation and zero cash flows. Of course, in some cases, this can work for a project, but as a way of building meaningful and sustainable businesses in the tech/software sector, I'm yet to see this work out as well.

The idea behind "Less competition to deal with" is all about not having to compete directly with the big players in a market, and this I do believe (again) to be true, though I concur that it's not applicable in all situations (e.g. iOS apps where you're forced to deal with the App Store). I'm not implying that Crowdsourcer.io is going to reduce market saturation - not by a long shot - and I can see how I need to put forward this point markedly better. A quick example of the kind of marketplace that achieves this beautifully is Itch.io, though it's not without its own problems.

"Meanwhile, some of your other messaging and your comments here are trying to make us think it's about making project controllers accountable to their contributors (whether fiscal or material), and yet also about open source ideals (contribution is its own reward)." - Again this is a problem with how I'm pitching the idea and it's something I need to resolve if it's causing confusion. The platform does both these things. It champions venture creation by technicals rather than idea/money people and does so in such a way that 'project controllers' (as you put it) can't just sit back and reap the rewards (well they could but they wouldn't get much profit from it). Similarly, contributors are contributing their time having appraised a project - perhaps initially to increase their skills or as a hobby - with the hope that the project becomes financially profitable at which point they earn a fair and equitable share of the profits. The balance between controllers and contributors is kept in check by voting rights, project management rights and other mechanics that contributors have access to as they progress. No one individual or group of individuals should have an overruling power and the projects themselves, ideally, should be autonomous. Again, I'm not saying we're there yet, but that's the end goal: a mutually beneficial way of collaborating together for the financial benefit of all in the project.

I've saved many of your quotes in my development boards and I'll work to ensure that all that you've said is factored into clearer and more digestible information. Since starting this venture I've become to believe that one of the hardest parts is explaining ideas succinctly - and this conversation is proving it!

Thanks once again for the time you've put into crafting these responses, it's appreciated a lot.

Mike

1 hour ago, Wyrframe said:

Meanwhile, some of your other messaging and your comments here are trying to make us think it's about making project controllers accountable to their contributors (whether fiscal or material), and yet also about open source ideals (contribution is its own reward).

I just want to point out, that I think this point is good things in favour of what you've said about the platform... just that they're in apparent conflict with the other points which I read from your site.

I took a look at your site after reading the first page of this thread and I'm a bit confused about a few things.

Are you acting a way for people to manage rev share such as: I have a team of 6 people including myself, we each have a set percentage that will be paid out on all sales. Once sales are made we enter that information into your system which tracks how much money is to be paid out to each individual?

Are you also acting as a crowd funding type platform? These are not always "rev" agreements. People will give (x) dollars to back a project to see it through but they're usually offered exclusive game content, items, ect... while some tiers will have certain rewards, and feedback sessions to improve the game. I haven't seen any game that has thousands of backers with a % given back as rev share before, but maybe it exists out there, who knows.

If you're going to be charging 15-20% of sales generated from this platform, how are you defining "generated from this platform"? Is it based on crowd funding money received? And/Or if I take my game and move it onto Steam then sell thousands of copies, I will have to pay out 15-20% on all sales because I used your platform for tracking rev share and/or obtaining crowd funding?

I like the idea about tracking rev share, but I'm very thrown off and confused about what you're getting out of this as a business person, and how you're defining sales from your platform. The 15-20% is very bothersome depending on how far you're stretching because I don't know if its from money generated through your crowd funding, or all sales made because I used your platform to track rev sharing and/or used your platform to generate support income.

If you could clarify a bit more that would be great..

43 minutes ago, Rutin said:

I took a look at your site after reading the first page of this thread and I'm a bit confused about a few things.

Are you acting a way for people to manage rev share such as: I have a team of 6 people including myself, we each have a set percentage that will be paid out on all sales. Once sales are made we enter that information into your system which tracks how much money is to be paid out to each individual?

Are you also acting as a crowd funding type platform? These are not always "rev" agreements. People will give (x) dollars to back a project to see it through but they're usually offered exclusive game content, items, ect... while some tiers will have certain rewards, and feedback sessions to improve the game. I haven't seen any game that has thousands of backers with a % given back as rev share before, but maybe it exists out there, who knows.

If you're going to be charging 15-20% of sales generated from this platform, how are you defining "generated from this platform"? Is it based on crowd funding money received? And/Or if I take my game and move it onto Steam then sell thousands of copies, I will have to pay out 15-20% on all sales because I used your platform for tracking rev share and/or obtaining crowd funding?

I like the idea about tracking rev share, but I'm very thrown off and confused about what you're getting out of this as a business person, and how you're defining sales from your platform. The 15-20% is very bothersome depending on how far you're stretching because I don't know if its from money generated through your crowd funding, or all sales made because I used your platform to track rev sharing and/or used your platform to generate support income.

If you could clarify a bit more that would be great..

Hey Rutin,

I’ll try to keep this quick as it’s getting late here. Right, so we’re acting as a way for people to formalise their rev-share schemes, as well as finding people to work with + offer a marketplace and selling tools to sell the fruits of their labour. There’s absolutely no crowdfunding element to it. The only investment there is, is your time - that’s whole point, collaborating together without undertaking financial risk, working as little or as much as you want to earn a fair share of the profits. The proportion of the share of profits people get is based on how much they contribute and this is tracked by contribution points earned by completing tasks. Which leads on to sales. Sales on the platform literally means people going to crowdsourcer.io, seeing your product and buying it. That’s when we take 15-20%. Similarly if you use the widgets to make sales through your site (it’s simply an elaborate redirect back through to the site) that’s also considered on the platform. Anything else, sales through steam or whatever (anything collected in a company bank account) that are distributed through the payroll system is where the 5% comes in. It’s that low because we will want people to be willing to payout through it to ensure the Rev-share scheme is stuck to. I appreciate that this side of things has only just been discussed and I’ll put something more formal on the site in the coming days.

Cheers,

Mike

6 minutes ago, MikeDiz said:

Hey Rutin,

I’ll try to keep this quick as it’s getting late here. Right, so we’re acting as a way for people to formalise their rev-share schemes, as well as finding people to work with + offer a marketplace and selling tools to sell the fruits of their labour. There’s absolutely no crowdfunding element to it. The only investment there is, is your time - that’s whole point, collaborating together without undertaking financial risk, working as little or as much as you want to earn a fair share of the profits. The proportion of the share of profits people get is based on how much they contribute and this is tracked by contribution points earned by completing tasks. Which leads on to sales. Sales on the platform literally means people going to crowdsourcer.io, seeing your product and buying it. That’s when we take 15-20%. Similarly if you use the widgets to make sales through your site (it’s simply an elaborate redirect back through to the site) that’s also considered on the platform. Anything else, sales through steam or whatever (anything collected in a company bank account) that are distributed through the payroll system is where the 5% comes in. It’s that low because we will want people to be willing to payout through it to ensure the Rev-share scheme is stuck to. I appreciate that this side of things has only just been discussed and I’ll put something more formal on the site in the coming days.

Cheers,

Mike

Thank you for clearing things up. Now I have a better understanding of where you're going with this platform, and how the percentages come into play.

Hi Mike,

Interesting read. Let me tell you my thoughts about the team sourcing platform idea in general.

Technology is rapidly growing, conventional jobs are dying out, and more and more people are teaming up to work on specific projects. The whole startup movement is a clear sign of this. For that reason, I believe a crowdsourcing platform is a brilliant idea with huge future potential.

Now to the execution! I visited your website and the first impression was good, but as xaviersythe already mentioned sketchy.
After reading all the information available I didn't really know how the platform works and what it will cost me. Information missing, not many photos of the actual work environment, etc. I am eager to find out how the control center actually looks like, but again, not much information besides the Nucleus page.

I assume the platform works with a task management system similar to scrum where every task has a set amount of points. By completing the task team members collect points which will later determine how much payment each team member is going to earn at the end.

Regarding the 5% revenue share, I don't think revenue share as your income source is a good idea, especially if you want to attract promising projects. There is a reason why major parties like unity don't work with models like this.

Also, I don't think a marketplace would be the right focus for your platform. I don't see it as essential for the whole project, more of a distraction for you and your users.

I hope my message is not misleading, I do think you are doing a pretty good work, there are issues, but what project doesn't have issues? Especially in the beginning. What I see as the most important issue is the focus part, it is what helped me the most to grow and advance with my own projects.

By the way, I submitted my actual project to the platform. I am really curious to test it out now that we are looking for new team members.

P.S. Sorry for the bad grammar, English is not my native language but I try my best^^

Good Luck,
André

2 hours ago, Marinski said:

Hi Mike,

Interesting read. Let me tell you my thoughts about the team sourcing platform idea in general.

Hi André,

Thanks for the comments and for the kind words. I greatly appreciate it.

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After reading all the information available I didn't really know how the platform works and what it will cost me. Information missing, not many photos of the actual work environment, etc. I am eager to find out how the control center actually looks like, but again, not much information besides the Nucleus page.

1

As discussed with Xaviersythe, I completely agree. As I now know the specifics, it's essential I get them on there. As for information on the actual mechanics, there's more info on the /features page. Better yet, see for yourself, I just accepted your project

Quote

I assume the platform works with a task management system similar to scrum where every task has a set amount of points. By completing the task team members collect points which will later determine how much payment each team member is going to earn at the end.

Back of the net (world cup pun). You've got that spot on.

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Regarding the 5% revenue share, I don't think revenue share as your income source is a good idea, especially if you want to attract promising projects. There is a reason why major parties like unity don't work with models like this.

I see what you mean. But the alternative is charging people for services which I really don't want to do. I want this to be completely free at the point of contact and only charge people once they themselves are earning money from their project. We're essentially doing a Stripe model (seems to be working well for them) and by handling all the money, transactions and costs of such, we charge 5%. Just to reiterate what I've said in earlier messages that 5% will be for paying contributors from external sources. Selling things through the CSio store will cost about 15-20% which is substantially cheaper than most stores. Plus you'll have the added benefit of being able to sell on your own website etc via widgets.

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I hope my message is not misleading, I do think you are doing a pretty good work, there are issues, but what project doesn't have issues? Especially in the beginning. What I see as the most important issue is the focus part, it is what helped me the most to grow and advance with my own projects.

By the way, I submitted my actual project to the platform. I am really curious to test it out now that we are looking for new team members.

Your message has been wonderful, thank you It's much appreciated and I know full well that there's lots to be improved. I've been working on it for 2 years now and it still feels like I need an extra 100 hands working on it!! We'll get there eventually though, don't you worry. Also if you do like CSio and want to port over to the platform, let me know and we can get the last 4 years of work by you and your team retrospectively added so you can be rewarded with the correct level of contribution points.

Once again, thanks for the message.

Mike

This sounds super sketchy, even if it is pinned. The fact that it's practically unknown isn't exactly going to help with tapping into the platforms viewers either. Something relied on in platforms like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo.

Something like this needs to happen, but unfortunately, this looks like a half-finished attempt that wasn't well marketed. Things like this have (or don't have) a huge network effect, like social networking, where your friends get their friends to join.

The fact that there are no blog posts since October 2nd 2018 is a red flag to me considering it is almost a year later. Its like this guy had a great idea, put a lot of effort into it for a few months, couldn't find people to help him, and then gave up.

1 hour ago, Jastiv said:

Something like this needs to happen, but unfortunately, this looks like a half-finished attempt that wasn't well marketed. Things like this have (or don't have) a huge network effect, like social networking, where your friends get their friends to join.

The fact that there are no blog posts since October 2nd 2018 is a red flag to me considering it is almost a year later. Its like this guy had a great idea, put a lot of effort into it for a few months, couldn't find people to help him, and then gave up.

Nope, still here. Not given up at all. While I do agree, that there hasn't been as much traction as I'd have liked by now, I've not given up, merely changing my approach - as in trying to be more clever about how we engage users etc. etc. It is absolutely not dead though, I've got a couple of bigger releases on the way for the platform to help stimulate it a bit, they should start rolling out by the end of Q4 '19, so not long at all. We've seen 3 times as many people join the platform this year as they did in the last 2 combined, so we are growing, just way slower than I'd have liked.

I agree though that the lack of blog content is a turn off. I personally stopped because it was a chore that got in the way of other things, but I'll see if I can't get one of the others to put some new content up. What about the platform makes you think it's half-finished? That would be really helpful feedback.

P.S: "put a lot of effort into it for a few months" - try a few years. I still very much believe in the ideology and methodology behind this platform.