Hey Shani. Pretty sad, the ListNerds story. I confess I never felt like spending enough brain juice to understand the mechanics behind .... but the unravelling... would it be unwarranted to say that this is what happens when people are anonymous and care a lot more about their wallet than about being part of a community?
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I'm not sure about anonymity? The team ListNerds was well-known, many of the active HIVE subscribers were, too.
My view is that there was a very high degree of naivity, both on the part of the operators, and on the part of subscribers. I understood the idea behind the paywall and it was financed by the operators. HIVE at the time was averaging .50 USD, so the cost of the paywall was in the region of 100,000 USD, a substantial investment ... and incentive.
Many of the subscribers purchased a specific package which allowed them to post a couple of marketing emails a day (and other benefits), so there appeared to be the potential to earn something like, let's say, $14,000 a week (earning 1,000 LISTNERDS x two emails a day, priced on the paywall at 2 HIVE at .50 USD). The ListNerds server now appears to have stopped working altogether, but I believe the subscriber package with the most benefits was priced at $98 or $198 - a small investment against the purported rewards of $14,000 USD - plus there was a seductive "one-time" offer of a reduced rate for the best package when you signed up.
The monthly subscriptions would have helped to fund the paywall, assuming they weren't needed for anything else like the living costs of the operators, so maybe the operators broke even.
Many subscribers for the top package seemed to be under the impression they were signing up for a job, for which they expected (felt entitled) to be paid, rather than ListNerds was a marketing tool to help them build the audience for whatever product they wanted to promote which, for most Hivers, would have been their blog.
But anyone could have worked out that a paywall of 100,000 LISTNERDS when subscribers, lots of them, are receiving 14,000 LISTNERDS a week, is not going to go very far. Fortunately, due to the "one-time" offer of a reduced rate, some subscribers losses were limited to about $200 dollars in subscription fees.
Another commenter has just noted that ListNerds was superseded by CPTX, I'm not sure of the CPTX model but I think the idea was about finding and promoting content and being rewarded for doing that.
Both models involve quite a lot of grind. For ListNerds to work well, it needs a lot of consumers (who are creators marketing to, otherwise), but consumers (readers of emails) were not rewarded well. Hive is much better model.
So yes, I guess, in answer to your question. 😁
Are you considering going HiveFest in Split this year?
I'm waiting to hear about accommodation.