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.

Quote

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.