Leagues, Games, Contests
What is a League?
Leagues are like categories, in to which media can be uploaded and entered. For instance, if your media is music, it probably goes in "League of Music." If your content is writing, it might go in "League of Writing," or maybe "League of Journalism."
What is a game?
Games are like sub-categories in Leagues. For instance, in League of Music, you might enter your music in the "global" game, which means it's measured against all other music in the world. You might also choose to enter it in your location, say, "San Francisco." You could enter it in a game in the genre division too, say, "Blues."
What's the difference between a game and contest?
Games and contests are synonymous. Originally we used the word "games" (as in Olympic "Games"), but started migrating to the term contests, since various people said it would make more sense to most people. Originally, we didn't like that term, since when people upload stuff on Selfport, there are more dimensions than just competing for a prize.
What is an "interwoven game?"
So far, we offer two interwoven games: Promoting and Judging. Promoters and Judges are competing in their own contests, where they can win and earn as the best Promoters or Judges.
How does Judging work?
Judge is the same feature that we call RR, or rate and review. When you RR a game entry, you are a "judge." When other people RR your judgements, you develop judge power, based on their reviews of your review. How much power they have to increase or decrease your judge power (or rating power) depends on their own rating power.
Judges can win in the judge game, based on the judges with the best judge power. They can win overall, or in a particular League...say, a judge of music. Or they can win in a particular game in that League...say, a judge of San Francisco musicians.
How does Promoting work?
When your friends enter their stuff, you can add them to your promoter
list. Then you are their promoter. You can add them again each month.
Each time their entry is viewed, you get points as a promoter. You can
also promote your own entries. And you can use the share button to
post those on Facebook, or about 100 other sites, like Digg.
You get
more or less points when the stuff you promote is viewed, based on how
early you promote them, and what order they are in, in your promoter
list. One of the ideas of the promoter feature is, promoters are motivated to really look carefully
through a lot of entries, which helps more people to get their creative
work viewed. A deeper layer is that you can earn money, if you make
your stuff "premium," and "official" promoters view it.
What does "Premium" vs Free view mean?
In the long run, this is one way we'll help media makers to earn
money
in a new way.
Any entry can be made "premium" at the time of
uploads (or any time, by editing.) For videos, we only allow them to be
premium, and not free view, for now. All other types of media, it's
your choice.
If an entry is "premium," it requires a credit to view it. People
get
credits when they are official (subscribing or sponsored) promoters or
judges. The reason they want to be official promoters is it makes them
eligible for prizes and earnings as a promoter.
Back to the
premium entry. The first 100 views of that are free. And we give every
user 10 credits every month. So this plan depends on volume. But when
the volume kicks in, after those free credits, when someone views the
entry, the person who put it there earns money.
The way the money
works: 1 million views = $10k-$20k to the content maker. (This could
be one very popular thing, or many smaller things.) The range is
because, if the viewer adds you to their promoter list, you get more
money.
By comparison, someone in the Youtube partner program
might earn about 1 or 2% as much.
On Selfport, though, it's not
just videos, but writing, music, etc. that can be "premium."
