Idea Clicks

Have you ever wrestled with an idea, repeatedly turning it over in your mind trying to work it out until it feels right? Sometimes it's a real struggle, but there's nothing as satisfying as when everything comes together and the idea finally clicks into place.

As many of you know I've been wrestling with figuring out how I will operate this blog when I move it over to Cent. The general direction has been clear for awhile now - I will publish daily on Cent instead of here - but specifics like how I'll use the bounty mechanism have been unclear to me, so the idea hasn't really clicked yet in my mind.

Well, that is until last night when I was enjoying some of the best lamb in the world with my wife. I was explaining how a tipping function will be introduced to Cent soon that will coincide with the introduction of the original content function when it hit me, and everything finally clicked into place: I will employ a combo of bounty-first posts and more directed tip-based posts.

I will use the bounty function as a way to make big announcements or simply to attract quick, on-demand responses.

For an example of when I will deploy bounties, I will set a bounty on my first post in order to broadcast my plan to move my blog to Cent as well as recruit anywhere from 1~3 Centurions (i.e. moderators) for my blog. These moderators will be in charge of stimulating discussion under each of my posts and creating an atmosphere that is attractive to readers almost independently of my daily posts. For their efforts, the Centurions will get a cut of the $5 I will allocate to each post.

For daily posts, instead of attaching a bounty, I will instead utilize tips. Centurions will get a majority of the daily $5 tip allotment, and top comments from other users will split the remaining cash.

My plan is to develop a couple of recurring, regular posts for the weekend that I will attach bounties to. Currently I feature my favorite podcast from the past week every Saturday. I will continue to do so on Cent, and will ask other Centians to submit their favorite podcasts from the past week. Additionally I will try to set up a weekly 'crowdsourced RSS feed of sorts' by asking Centians to submit the single best thing they came across on the internet over the past week. Observant Centians will have noticed that I've just tried out this latter idea on Cent [here].

Well, that's it. It feels good to me. How about you? It looks like this change will happen sometime this week, so get your applications ready if you want to get paid for starting and curating discusssions under my posts. My short-term plan is to collect $150 in tips from readers to break even, but if I get more tips, my Centurions will for sure get raises. So get ready for the beginnings of something super different.

Cheers everybody.