Bangari Payout System: Vineyard Analogy

If Bangari was a vineyard, a {co-op|Kibbutz|Community Shared Agriculture (CSA)} vineyard, and every word we type was a grape worth a credit, and we sold these grapes fresh at a farm stand, and also made our own jelly and wine...

We are all working together to grow, harvest, process and sell these grapes. How do we share the revenue?

If we were just harvesting grapes, and selling them fresh, it’s easy. Each person gets $100 per bushel that they pick, and that is paid as soon as the grapes are sold to the winemakers and jelly makers, and those that will sell our grapes at retail in their grocery stores.

But, at our Kibbutz, we are cutting out all those middle men. We will make our own wine and jelly with our own grapes, and sell our stuff retail. What happens then is:

• We get more money for those same efforts.

• We get “retail” instead of “wholesale” on a larger selection of goods. (jelly, wine, etc.) Thus appealing to a larger customer base. I.e.; Those not just looking for flat spun content but those looking for SEO services, and complete Web sites, stuffed with content produced by us.

• Drawback - on the fresh grapes it’s a quick turn around, but it takes longer for the jelly, and over a year to get revenue from the same grapes that were grown and harvested to make wine, longer if it’s allowed to “age” increasing the value even more before it’s sold.

As our vineyard gets more seasoned, the time delay won’t have such an effect. However, the $5,000 job we did for IV was like our first harvest. Even though we sold 125,000 grapes for .03 each, so IV could make wine with it, we didn’t sell the entire harvest. I think we sold a third of it. The other two thirds are being processed into wine, and when that sells a year or two from now, we could get another $10,000 from that July 2011 harvest.

Hence the credit system. Bangari Bucks are like a cross between an I.O.U. and stock. This is why it’s important that I’m not seen as the “owner” of this vineyard. I’m the director of the co-op. We all own this vineyard, just like share holders own a piece of a company equal to the amount of money they invested. We are not investing cash, but our efforts instead. Those efforts can be assessed by word count. (we still need to assess other things like editing and posting, that’s why time keeping is so important, and we can’t do “freebies”)

By pooling our resources, we also pool risk. Windfalls and losses are shared equally by the entire Kibbutz. For instance:

After the harvest, Petal had picked 100 Bushels, Natasha 20, before they came to harvest, I spent time and effort equal to picking 1000 bushels. If we get $10 (fake money) for each bushel, or bushel equivalent, Then:

Petal = 100 x 10 =1000
Natasha = 20 x 10 =200
Kevin = 1000 x 10 =10,000

We are holding these I.O.U.’s until our co-op takes in real money. Then we can cash them in. However, they are not “real I.O.U.’s, they are just “markers” because we don’t know what our product is worth until it sells, and finishes selling.

Here is where I want to make it clear why we can’t “earmark” this stuff. It’s enough effort to track how many “bushels” each of us harvested. It has to stop there. This is a co-op. Some of those bushels will go to the wine press, and some to be sold fresh, and I don’t want to track each grape, note what it sold for, and trace back to the person who picked it, and pay them according to what it sold for. Wine from the same grapes; some could be worth $50 per bottle, five years later, some could have turned to vinegar.

If we sold a third of these fresh grapes to a wine maker for $5000 (real dollars) and the other two thirds went to make our own jelly and wine, then:

5000 / 11,200 = .44 (44%)

So, each of us will be allowed to “cash in” 44% of our shares. We can choose not to cash them. Or cash in only 50%. Why would anyone want to do that? I’ve been doing it all along, because I’m trying to get this thing rolling. I’m reinvesting a big portion of what I’m making from this. If any of you feel inclined to “donate” word count to this project, that’s nice, but I would prefer that you accept your “credit” but if you want to not cash them in 100% every time, that will allow newbies to get a little more money as we go. I am also working on an “activity bonus” type system like at Factoidz, but I can’t develop that without the team’s input. And until the system is understood, as is, by the entire team, we have to wait to discuss the “activity bonus”

Petal cashes in 44% of 1000 Bangari Bucks for real money = $440
Natasha cashes in 44% of 200 = $88
Kevin cashes in 44% of 10,000 = $4,400

Then, before the next payout, we will all have less credits going in, but will probably have earned more...

Petal = 560 (1000 - 440)
Natasha = 112 (200 - 88)
Kevin = 5600 (10,000 - 4,400)

Now we work at making jelly. Petal takes a break. Natasha does a bunch of work. Kevin cultivates some new vines indoors.

We earn/ produce:

Petal = 0
Natasha = 1000
Kevin = 1000

Then, we sell $1,000 worth of jelly. At this time this is what we have for total credits:

Petal = 560
Natasha = 1112
Kevin = 6600

1,000 / 8272 = 12%

We each get to cash in 12% of our shares:

Petal = 560 x 12% = $67
Natasha = 1112 x 12% = $133
Kevin = 6600 x 12% = $792

Or, if I felt like I wanted to refrain from cashing in so others on the team could get a bigger pay out, and be that much more encouraged:

1000 / (560+1112) = 59%

Petal= 560 x 59% = $330
Natahsa= 1112 x 59% = $656

I have been paying myself in Bangari Bucks, but haven’t been cashing them in, 100%. I’m looking a little further down the road. Remember, like other contributors to Bangari, we have our own domains, and books to promote and we want Bangari to be the perfect place to do that.

We have to be careful to not look like a “content farm.” This is a reason I’m holding off on posting AdSense. We know that there is much better money in sales. Passive revenue should just be a portion of our income.. We need to establish ourselves as freelance writers, content producers, SEOs, and even robot salesman. We have to get the most out of those things, and that’s going to take study and practice.

There are other tech products besides the spinning robot that we can use for our craft. We can try them, review them, sell them, teach them...all by writing about them, or making video tutorials and other multi-media stuff. Let’s try to upload original photos too. We need “Factoidz-like” photos to head our articles. original pet pictures, photos of ketubot, etc. Is anyone good at close ups... like of computer keyboards, and other things that go well with articles on certain topics? Anyone know an aspiring model who would let you take their picture, acting out for example: “Frustrated at tax time?” Can some one draw a cartoon image of that subject?

Bangari: Ready for Launch?

Happy Friday Team!

I think we are about ready for launch. I have about a dozen posts prepared that help explain our business model, including, most importantly the payout system. 

I'm really confident that I'm on to something with content production that many others are not seeing. My goal isn't to become a muti-millioneaire. I'm really just looking to create a good paying work at home job for thousands of people...So I'm still out to make millions of dollars, just not keep them all for myself.  This business model is complicated. Once I start getting feedback that everyone onboard understands it I'll feel better and even more confident. You can have the most brilliant idea in the world, but if you can't explain it you can't sell it, and if you can't sell it then obviously it doesn't make you or anyone else money.

It's common practice to keep a new site in a "staging" status, until it is completely, or petty much completely built and properly linked, with permission given to the indexing robots to do their thing. Then, as traffic starts to flow, the advertising is placed.

Of course, I'm impatient, and want to launch today! Especially since The Best Spinner Robots are going for a real good price, and at an 80% commission. That could be some good revenue for us as new people like what we are doing, and join us. 

If the team we have assembled so far feels like they understand our business model to the point they can explain it or at least answer the majority of basic questions about it, then I wouldn't hesitate to start posting. Just realize that once we start posting, we have to keep going. We can't stop, work out issues, and then try to roll again. It's all about momentum with this stuff.

We are going to get a lot of flack for this system being complicated. What people don't understand, they don't like. That's my biggest worry about Bangari. 

I'm posting this on the BCS Blog. I want to know what everyone thinks. Should we launch? should we wait? What more do we need to prepare?

Please sign up to follow Bangari Content Studio's Blog (Blogger) We can have a bit more discussion there, and then make our decision.

Thanks!

Kevin

Important links and stuff to learn to be a vital part of Bangari

Important links, including all the hoops to jump through in order to be a vital part of Bangari Content Gallery.

This is incomplete, because it is under construction. We need your help to build this thing. In order to that there is a lot to learn. We believe in “earning while learning” and lot’s of things are being done to get more paying work like the $5,000 contract we just completed. Our writers earned .03 per word for their work. Our client was charged .04 per word, and that left a margin for paying for sales and management.

We have other things going on in addition to pursuing more .03 per word work. I admit it is confusing. There is a tremendous “back story” to hear before it all starts to make sense. This is what this post is about. Discover the back story, and you will understand where we are heading. Then you can make an informed decision about joining us on the journey.

We have three sites:

Bangari Content Gallery: This top level domain, paid for Wordpress site is our gallery where we display the writers bio’s, and post unique content for sale. The goal is to collect passive revenue from it as it is waiting to be sold. We are trying to collect quality incoming links for this site, as we avoid outgoing links.

It’s important to understand “link building” as it concerns SEO and site ranking.


Bangari Blog: This is a free blogger site. We post all correspondence here. We can post links all over, and in any direction. No problem. It is our discussion board, or forum. Email sucks! It’s been like pulling teeth to get everyone to understand why we shouldn’t be discussing things in email. I’ll post three basic reasons here:

1) Most importantly, it’s a waste of perfectly good, unique content and blog updating!

2) It’s inefficient. There is no “huddle” that includes all players at once in the game plan.

3) It goes against the philosophy of “transparency” Click here to read about Bangari policy.

Bangari Content Studios: This is a private, free Google site. Here we post correspondence that we don’t want the rest of the world to see, like our clients contact info, and our own company info and developingideas that we don’t want stolen. This is called “counter competitive intelligence” Here, as well as in google docs, we can be as messy as we want to be! It’s a “Studio” where we create our masterpieces. Then, we display them at our “Gallery” Get it? Studio (private) Gallery (public) Just request permission to access it. It works best with a Gmail address.

Google Docs: Here is where we do our work. If you are still working office applications off your hard drive, you are behind the times. You need to learn Docs to be part of Bangari. This is cloud computing.

It’s important to understand “cloud computing.” It is the wave of the future.

As I said earlier, it is important to understand link building. A good first step to proper link building to take full advantage of the team we are building, is that we all take some time to link to each other, and then build links to Bangari. This is a complete “project” that I will be developing and then explaining in step by step detail. In the mean time, go ahead and build links to each other. Remember, I invented the “buzz it up” feature at Factoidz that is still being used, although not as efficiently as it could be. One, because I kept a couple cards up my sleeve when I set this up for Mike Quoc. Two, because the Panda change has more or less rendered it obsolete. I’m developing a better system.

It’s important to understand Google’s Panda / Farmer Change. Read this article I posted on Factoidz (I bearded the lion in his own den..lol) it was taken down in three days, and the link was rerouted. Here is the article: The Death of Content Farms Like Ezine Articles and Factoidz: Google Panda farmer Change

In this article I suggest taking down your content posted on these content farms, and reposting it elsewhere...I have changed that approach since learning about the power of “The Best Spinner” However, we all need to take back possession, along with the revenue from it, and control of it. This is the goal of “Project Exodus”...there will be more information on that to come. “Project Exodus” is what I am expecting to get content producers everything they have coming to them for their art, with no one else’s nose-pickers touching it! This project is a bit complicated, and to understand it completely, SEO, spinning, link building, cloud computing, the Panda change, and other things mentioned in this post need to be understood fully.

Project Exodus has the potential to be bigger than all the content farms combined. I don’t call AC a content farm, but it’s borderline...I guess what I’m hoping Bangari Content Gallery to be is “Google’s answer” to Yahoo’s Associated Content. It could be huge! Because I have no capital and no backers (yet) I’m offering my friends and fellow writers to be on the masthead of this thing. A group of 10 or 12 of us I think would be sufficient to get it rolling. After that, I believe it could “build itself” from then on.

Here is some information on it: Project Exodus

Here is a post with a list of everyone’s personal sites that we should all follow:

Sites and Blogs to follow

Here is the best explanation of cloud computing I’ve heard:

Cloud Computing Revolution

The Best Spinner

Here is some correspondence on our blog. It might seem like Greek, and it was mainly concerning the flat spun content we did for a contract...I will post a link to the site where we can purchase this tool, but I need to set up an affiliate relationship first. We can make money with this robot, as well as get some revenue for selling the robots! Not o mention, those who master it, can later teach it...yet another way to earn from this cool innovation.

The Best Spinner is an incredible tool. It allows a good writer to parlay their talent and get multiple versions of unique articles from one piece. It’s all about quality content for sure, but “quantity” still plays an important part. It’s not easy to learn and master, it well worth the time investment. It is crucial to making both Bangari Gallery, and project Exodus (as well as individual writers) a success.

Learn this! If you don’t, the people who do learn it are going to take your content posted on the content farms, spin it, then use it at will without any problems with plagiarism...It’s still difficult to do for someone who isn’t a good writer, but as the application improves, they will be able to do it at will. Beat them to the punch!

You can get a one week trial for $7.00. We can send you some samples to run though, and study. It really is amazing. A whole new concept in writing for the Internet.

Search Engine Optimization and the perils of duplicate content

The above will be linked to a body of content on this subject that is now posted on Factoidz. For now, just search it out. The best spinner eliminates duplicate content

I think that will about do it for this post!

I have a lot more to get into, but this is a good overview. It can be boiled down even more as we go. Keep the discussion rolling! Ask questions!

Oh, a few more things:

Bangari Will Get You Paid Well for Your Talent

Here is the link to our “application” form, send this to anyone you know who may be interested in joining us...even before we are all “set up”...As long as they understand they will be expected to help build this thing, before any real money is made from it. (Although we did divvy out some good .03 per word work, with some more to come)


Input Your Work Here

Here is the form I built to input our work for payment. I was very proud of this. It worked like a charm on the last project, and $4,390.52 balanced to the penny!

New Work

Here is where we post new work. I want to improve this system, and there is more to the “claiming” system than I’ll explain here. Stay tuned for more on that later.

Our Rates and Union Mentality

Here is a post about how we don’t work for peanuts!

Demand Letter and Collection Efforts

Here is an example of how I won’t take “we are not paying you or your team” for an answer. A lot of what I am trying to set up at Bangari, has to do with avoiding these types of contract scenarios. I’ve had it with chasing money. We all want cash on the barrel head!

I got us paid every cent with in 12 hours of emailing the owner of this multi million dollar corporation. Now, I’m working on selling their customers our services. The dumb asses didn’t have me sign anything saying I wouldn’t do this. So, it’s legal. And because they busted our balls for no reason, setting the tone for future relations, it’s ethical.

Content Production Steps and Flat Spinning -The final word

Billy’s July Project introduced me to flat spinning. As an Internet writer, I am aware of the reasons for avoiding duplicate content. I’ve spun lots of content, without robotic assistance. At first Billy requested one flat spin per sentence, but almost simultaneously requested 10 out of 13 words be flat spun. This created some confusion because it doesn’t add up, especially if the words in the brackets are mostly synonyms, instead of phrases. Even at this point, now that we have gone in and “re-spun” I’m not confident that when the bot removes the brackets and breaks out multiple articles, that they will be 80% original.

Pricing: Of course cost is a factor. I’m trying to gather everyone’s “time studies” to determine what the charge should be for going into article and flat spinning them. I’d still like feedback. I think I had it backwards. I thought it took more time to come up with 150 flat spun words, with brackets and lines, that agreed with the words outside the brackets...and made sense. I figured we could get two or three times as much for the flat spun word count, especially seeing where our client was getting three original articles after it was run through the bot.

Example:

Original article 700 words @ .03 = $21.00
Flat spun word count (one spin per sentence) 150 words (less than ½ hr. to do) @ .07 = $10.50
After robot processing, client has 3 original articles, 700 words each -total of $31.50
2100 words of content for .015 per word...I though there may even be some room at these rates to provide more flat spinning to get closer to 10:13 ratio.


Now I’m thinking that this model isn’t going to work. Billy said he had to spend an hour on each article to increase the flat spin word count. Sally and I asked for the opportunity to send him a finished product...”ripe” apples, instead of green ones. Hence the “re-spin” project. With this extent of spinning, I think it’s getting kinda muddy. I feel like at one spin per sentence, flat spinning is a great tool...at a 10:13 ratio, it’s probably just a wash compared to just “hand spinning” the whole article, or doing it paragraph by paragraph. Please give feedback.

Here is what I think the most efficient process would be, again, your feedback is requested:

I really like how we are doing these “WIKI-style!” That should continue. So in this process, it should be where more that one person can grab any segment of the process, document their portion, and keep this wiki thing going! I also like the flat spin technique, as long as it is used correctly, and not over-used...So:

1) We get a project like this from Billy, and post his “work request” on BCS. His request should include good instructions, key words, web sites to use for reference, sample articles, etc.

2) Production manager sets up and titles all the Google docs for the project, puts them in a folder, and shares the folder with all content producers. PM also copies these docs to a folder that isn’t shared. Protecting our work from sabotage by some unhappy camper that may not be willing to play nice in the sandbox with the rest of us. The PM gets a flat fee for this portion of work.

3) CPs claim a doc by renaming the doc, adding “claimed by (name)” after the title. The CP will then:

• research and write the article in Google docs (backing up on personal hard drive recommended) A CP can do the editing on their own application if they must, but only use Google Docs for word count. Don’t copy/paste/delete/paste with spins.
• keep comments and questions pertaining to that piece in “discussions”
• tell the PM when it’s complete, so the PM can invite the client to look it over.
• PM will put editing notes in “discussions”
• CP will make edits if necessary, doing final proof.
• CP calculates word count, puts it at the top of the doc “orig article word count 700 by (name)”
• CP renames Doc to “completed by (name)” after the title.
• CP enters word count, title, time, etc in the form on the BCS Blog.

If spinning is required, in other words, our client is looking for three, 80% (or better) original articles, that will be called out in the work order. I want to get away from sending our content over with the flat spun brackets, etc, if they allow us to. I want to get our own robot to help us spin these. However, I’m aiming for the sweet spot between robotic and hand spinning to provide our clients with a complete product that they don’t have to tweak in the least. Someone, hopefully Trish, can give us some guidance here. She has experience with this, but also realizes that spin bots are becoming obsolete with recent changes in Google algorithms. I think we agree that their best purpose is to assist in a hand spin, like I’m about to describe.

1) CP claims a finished article to do a flat spin, by renaming the doc with “flat spin 1 in progress by (name)” after the title, replacing the “completed by (name)” after the title.

2) CP double checks starting word count, notifying PM of a discrepancy. PM will notify author so book keeping can be corrected.

3) CP does flat spin in accordance with some fool-proof instructions and powerful tips that will be forth coming. Also, proof and edit the doc while flat spinning if needed...just to be nice :-)

4) Do record keeping -change title to flat spin 1 complete by (name) record spun word count at top of doc and in form on BCS Blog.

5) If it needs more flat spin, PM will note that in the title, and it can be claimed again, renamed “flat spin 2 in progress by (name)” ...repeating these 5 steps.

Now is when the robot comes into play. We take this article, put it through the flat spinner -By “we” I mean whoever gets to wear the “robot master” hat. Trish? (She is considering it.) The robot spits out three original pieces...no brackets. The RM pastes all three of them in the doc, stacking them preferably...About us 1, About us 2, About us 3, social BM title 1, social BM title 2, social BM title 3, Original article 1, original article 2, etc. The RM will get a flat fee for this portion of work. Now it’s ready for final edit, and the RM will indicate that by renaming the doc to indicate that. The RM will also post the word count, which should be around 1500 at this point. If we want a final article to be 750 words, then the original article, befor flat spinning and everything should be about 500.

1) CP will claim the piece for final edit ..”final edit in process by (name)”

2) CP will shuffle around some sentences a bit,  if possible in each section, cutting and pasting, to make it more original.

3) CP will add to the word count in each section, adding phrases, sentences and/or bullet lists -bringing it up to the required final word count. Recording the amount of words they added to the doc...as per the drill: on top of doc, in the form, renaming title “final edit complete by (name)”, etc...always making sure to double check the starting word count, before they begin to add to it.

4) The PM will do a final proof and edit small mistakes, receiving a flat fee for that.

5) the PM will email it to the sales manager. The SM will look it over, check all the accounting, add a 25% mark up that will be used to pay CPs  their “flat fees” for the work they do when wearing their specific “management hat”

6) when it’s accepted, and paid for, the SM will distribute the funds to the CPs, according to the accounting, and will receive a flat fee for that.  

7) if it is “kicked back” for any reason the SM will negotiate a way to make it right, fix it for full payment, or accept a “kill fee” and/or find a use for it as “scrap” maybe, posting it somewhere for passive income and/or reference material.

That’s it! Pretty conclusive, huh? I welcome feedback, comments, suggestions and questions below in the comments.