The website is just a signup form, right? I'm on a mobile device and am not sure if I'm seeing the whole thing. Sorry if some of these questions are answered there.
What is the writer's share of the proceeds?
How are the reward levels and minimum contributor numbers set?
Can money be contributed above the minimum ransom level, and if so, what happens to it?
What kinds of journalism are you seeking? News, features, business, sports, food, arts, opinion? Local, national or international?
Are you just seeking written stories, or photographic, audio and video reports as well?
Once stories are published, will anyone be able to read them, or just donors to that project?
What level of editing will you be performing?
Will you have advances or mini-grants to assist with the up-front costs of reporting, or is that all borne by the reporter?
How are you going to draw contributiors and readers to the site?
Who are your key personnel and what are their backgrounds in journalism?
Why should someone publish through you vs. seeking conventional publication with an established news outlet?
These are all real questions. Your concept sounds intriguing, but there are some big holes in the information.
Thanks for the good questions. Here's some answers:
-Yes, at this moment the website is just signup form where you can signup for updates. We are still in prelaunch and we are now collecting stories that will be already on our site when we launch in month or two.
-We will take percentage fee from succesfully funded campaigns. We haven't yet decided what it will be, but it will be probably around 15%. That will include all the payment fees etc. so there won't be any hidden costs. The rest of the money (around 85%) will of course for writer alone.
-If the the funding is not met, all the money will be refunded to contributors.
-We are concentrating on high-quality long-form investigative articles about any topic. The articles that are all ready submitted deal with subjects like technology, politics, economics and culture.
-We are mainly interested about written content, but writer can add pictures or videos to their story.
-Once stories are published everyone will be able to read them for free. Writer can offer perks for bigger contributors like Google Hangout sessions or whatever they want. But that is entirely optional, although it probably will make it easier to raise the money.
-We will give very open hand to writers and we do very little editing ourselves. We just make sure that story represents high-quality journalism and delivers what it promises before we submit it to the public.
-We will offer advantages for their writers who contribute for our site prelaunch. After we get some traction I hope that it won't be necessary but early on we will offer that to give some safety for writers.
-We are young startup guys with technology background and we do not have any publishing background. That's why we are not trying to be "editors in chief", but instead we are trying to offer best possible technological platform for our writers. But of course we have a big passion for writing/reading and journalism and that is the reason we are doing this.
-There are many reasons for why someone should use our site instead of traditional ways of publishing. It of course depends on person. Probably reasons are pretty same than in cases when someone choose to use personal blog or Kickstarter campaign instead of magazine for example.
You are absolutely right that there was very many holes in information. We are still in very stealth-base with out concept and in prelaunch we are just trying to collect quality articles to launch. Thank you for the good questions, I hope I was able to deliver at least some information!
All of you can always contact me via email too: aleksi at journalium dot com