Welcome, other Odyssey creators. Good of you to click on this, especially since this article is mostly for you. And for those non-creators, here’s a little peek behind the scenes.

I’m a newer creator in a newer community. I’ve been having a lot of fun here in our opinion-sharing playground. It’s overall a great experience. That said, even great things can get better, and I see an opportunity for that with the rewards program.

Rather than earning $20 per community for the most shared article of the week, I think it would make more sense to divide that between everyone. And before everyone starts yelling and choosing sides, read my arguments. I’ll be waiting at the bottom.

Numbers

I played around with some numbers I pulled from the website. These aren't going to be completely accurate, but they'll give you an idea.

There's about 1000 communities and let's say that 500 of them are healthy communities, with 12 or more writers. You're paying all of these 500 communities $20 a week. That's $10,000 per week. If you divide that by about 12,000 content creators, that's $0.83 a week per person. With 52 weeks in a year, each content creator would be rewarded $43.33 per year. Whatever the actual amount that Odyssey has set aside for this part of the rewards program, this is the general idea. It wouldn't be a huge reward in the grand scheme of things, but it would be a guaranteed something. And something is really, really important, especially to the 52 percent of Odyssey content creators that are between 18 and 24.

Wrong Incentive

*From this point on I'll be using the word "shares" a lot. I'm using it to include likes, comments, views etc. It's more convenient for all of us.*

The whole idea behind Odyssey is to make more people pay attention to the things that matter to us. Our most powerful tool in this mission is shares. Currently, the rewards system tries to help us increase our shares through competition. The idea is that rewarding whoever gets the most shares will encourage others to produce the same results but this incentivizes the wrong thing.

If we’re all putting in the same amount of effort, ideally, we’d all be getting a similar amount of shares. But how much involvement an article gets is based on a lot more than effort. Things like who are in our social media bases in addition to the topics we choose to write about have just as much influence on shares as effort.

To me, it seems better to use the rewards program to incentivize the quality of the post over the quantity of shares. People who are compensated for something feel obligated to put more effort into it (fact: Psych AP), so guaranteeing a creator bonus would help put a focus on quality.

Resources Used Right

It seems like a waste of resources to create an artificial, competitive motivation to share, when we’re already writing for that same reason. If we’re so worried about increasing shares, there are other ways that are much more effective. Just off the top of my head I can think of a few ideas.

You can require everyone to share an article outside of their community or pair up with a sister community. You can put the links to every community members’ article in the “article is now published” weekly email. You can feature someone for a week in each community. You can help creators set up new, Odyssey-specific social media accounts on platforms they don’t already have with a step by step guide. Etc.

Anything that makes things more efficient and builds a more supportive community will help us increase our views, likes and shares.

Personal Plea

I love writing a lot, and I’m not going to stop being part of Odyssey. But I feel guilty that I'm putting so much time into this every week and not making anything at all, especially with all of the random, small costs that are springing up as I’m get ready for college. (If you’re wondering, the editor positions we’re already filled in my community.) I'd rather have a guaranteed amount over the potential of nothing. And I’d rather be receiving a bonus for the quality and effort put into my work than because the social media gods heard my prayers.

You’ve made it to the bottom, so here I am. This is something that affects all of us creators, so I’m sure you have an opinion. Whether you agree with me, disagree, or just want to share an idea for getting us all more shares, comment below. Because that's the best thing about Odyssey--it’s a place for all of our voices to be heard.