Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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Content Galaxy is a hosting service for creating paid video streaming channels.
It offers a convenient new way for content providers, editors, and affiliates
to generate income from their web sites, blogs, emails, and social network posts.
Our platform gives publishers a practical way to pool related content into well-edited, flat-priced channels.
With these tools, publishers can encourage the collaboration of many independent experts and their admirers.
The result is shared, subscription-based channels that give consumers a large selection of high quality
material at a good price.
Everyone is paid according to openly stated, verifiable formulas, and authors retain their intellectual property rights.
Content Galaxy's service is streamlined to handle the practical challenges of supporting many channels, content providers, affiliates, and subscribers.
Our focus has been on making sure that all the parties needed to create a great channel and spread the word are sufficiently motivated
– while keeping the publisher's startup and marketing expenses as low as possible.
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We've launched our first video channel, for Tai Chi and martial arts, and have embedded it in our web site as a proof-of-concept.
Our mission is to be a marketplace for paid channels, not to be publishers ourselves.
However, this first channel is self-published, so that we can essure that the underlying software is production tested.
We have paying subscribers, experts providing content, and affiliates promoting the channel.
This channel provides unlimited viewing of a growing collection of great Tai Chi and martial arts videos from world-renowned experts.
The inexpensive subscription includes full DVDs and exclusive videos
from private collections not available elsewhere.
Subscribers can stream all videos as they are added, and content providers share
in the pooled subscription revenues, based on how much of each is watched.
While the emphasis continues to be on high quality Tai Chi and martial arts instruction and competitions,
we are looking to expand this channel's collection to include the best videos from other styles of exercise and
sports. Experts and videographers make money from the viewing of their protected material without
their audiences needing to make individual purchases of premium content.
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Content Galaxy’s affiliate compensation mechanism supports an effective, low-cost marketing strategy.
Simple links that play video on multiple devices can be put into any web page, email, or social network post.
Web sites can incorporate video channels with minimal effort and no additional infrastructure.
Affiliates get paid commissions in two ways:
when subscriptions are sold and when subscribers view videos through any link that includes the affiliate’s ID.
There’s no programming to learn and no loss of site “stickiness”.
The subscriber feels that the video is just an extension of the web page that embeds it - because he is immediately returned to that page after viewing the video.
The simplicity of getting paid strongly encourages publishers, independent web sites, and the experts themselves to promote channels
by incorporating affiliate links.
By promoting their own material, content providers are doing the publisher’s job of promoting the entire channel.
What can lead to exponential growth is that followers and fans of an expert content provider can also be affiliates
and profit from promoting their favorite’s material.
This form of viral marketing makes it possible for a channel to acquire paying subscribers at a very low cost.
And each new expert brings increased sales and a more compelling value to subscribers.
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Content Galaxy is a publishing platform for creating paid subscription video channels.
It’s the first financial service that makes streaming profitable by pooling related content into flat-priced channels
and paying providers, editors and affiliates based on actual subscriber usage.
What we’re doing is filling the gaps between Netflix’s approach to high-end Hollywood productions,
the iTunes item-by-item purchasing model, and YouTube’s free, ad-sponsored clips.
If you’ve created an instructional video or captured an important event on video,
these giants aren’t designed to provide you with an effective way to profit from streaming.
Content Galaxy enables publishers to combine independently created videos into well-edited channels
that offer subscribers a compelling value and yet are inexpensive to build, run, and market.
To do this, we’ve built a new kind of hosting service for collections of premium content.
Our platform makes it easy for producers, aggregators and fans to make money by streaming to their web audiences.
Unlike Netflix or Hulu, the Content Galaxy model eliminates the need for individually negotiated contracts
and up-front payments to content owners but can still deliver “all-you-can-eat” channels.
And unlike iTunes, Amazon, or YouTube, there is a transparent process,
which is critical to promoting the creation of a new eco-system for buying and selling digital content.
Subscribers pay a flat fee to view anything within a channel.
Content providers compensation is calculated daily, based on metered subscriber usage.
Authors retain their intellectual property rights and are paid based on relative viewing time.
Content Galaxy's revenue sharing service is unique,
and it enables publishers to deliver large, organized channels that are attractive to consumers.
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You can earn income from Content Galaxy by participating as a content
provider, editor, publisher, or affiliate.
The accounting system keeps rigorous track of subscriber money in a way that is fair,
verifiable and resistant to abuse. This includes an exact breakdown that can be easily
understood and audited.
To illustrate, if you are a content provider with videos, here
are the points at which you would receive a payment:
- You cause a subscription to a channel with your video to be sold through a link in your web site or post
- A subscriber views your video from a link in your web site or blog or social network post
- A subscriber of a channel with your video views your content from some other web site
- A subscriber views another video on any channel starting from a link in your web site or post
- You cross-sell a subscription to some other channel from your web site or post
- You are an editor of the channel and any content you are responsible for gets viewed from any web site
- You are the publisher of the channel and a subscription is sold from any web site
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Content Galaxy affiliates are people and organizations who earn commissions on referrals leading to
content streaming and download by CG channels and publications and sales of CG subscriptions. As an affiliate,
you receive an income account
and access to CG reporting facilities, so you can monitor the performance of your marketing efforts in real time.
Affiliates include people who are existing CG participants, as well as outside individuals and organizations
that drive traffic to Content Galaxy from their web sites. For authors and artists who maintain their own web
sites, there is a dual benefit to participating as an affiliate, as well as being a registered CG content provider.
CG automatically accounts for affiliate commissions, and this can represent a sizable portion of an individual’s
total compensation. Outside affiliates with popular, relevant web sites also can earn substantial commissions,
because CG publishers appreciate the value of effective affiliate marketing.
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Content Galaxy’s affiliate mechanism and its simple system of links for "embedding" videos and downloads is
key to the potential for viral growth of paid channels. The system is simple to use: there are just links - with or
without an image. These links can be put directly into any web page, blog, email, Facebook post, or whatever, with no
programming, Javascript, or API to learn. The service is designed so that there is no loss of "stickiness“ for
the sites that embed these links.
A "ContentURL" is a link to the Content Galaxy service that causes a video to be
streamed or a file to be downloaded. Here's a sample ContentURL:
...........1a............................b...........c.........2...
http://contentgalaxy.com/stream/1002/15?
af=MaxChen&rem=subscription.html&an=anchor15
3....................4.....................................5..................
Here are the components of a ContentURL (numbered for clarity):
- Channel specifier
- Includes (a) Content Galaxy's service URL, (b) a method of delivery,
and (c) either the channel's numeric code or name
- Content item specifier
- Resolves to a single (logical) file, specified either by a numeric Content Code or meaningful Content ID
(which is like a Windows path name)
- Affiliate parameter
- Required (so you can get paid for subscription sales, viewing, downloads). It can be a meaningful Affiliate ID
or a numeric Affiliate Entity Code
- Remark parameter
- Optional - for tracking, for example the page name or version. Specified by the affiliate
who owns the page with this ContentURL
- Anchor parameter
- Optional - location on originating page to go back to after streaming or
download. Specified by the affiliate who owns the page with this ContentURL
The sample above is an example of the “permalink” ContentURL format.
A ContentURL exists in two logical formats: one that is friendliest for human readability and search engines
and the other, the “permalink” version, which is intended to remain unchanged indefinitely.
For example, these two ContentURLs are equivalent and stream the same video clip:
1) contentgalaxy.com/stream/Essential_Sports_and_Fitness_Videos
/Tai_Chi/William_Chen_Body_Mechanics_DVD_Trailer.mp4
?af=PeterHerman&rem=subscription.html
2) contentgalaxy.com/stream/1002/8?af=PeterHerman&rem=subscription.html
Here is a diagram showing a ContentURL using meaningful names and IDs (as opposed to "permalink" numbers)
for the channel, content, and affiliate:
Link to items of content in a CG channel or publication just as you would construct links to other external web sites.
You can determine the URL to use by locating the corresponding entry for the item in question in the CG publication
that contains it. CG content URLs begin with “http://contentgalaxy.com/” or “http://www.contentgalaxy.com/”. This
is followed by “content/” or “stream/”, depending on whether the item is a downloadable file or a segment of
streaming media, respectively. The next part of the URL specifies the numeric code
or short name of the CG channel, terminated
by a slash, and then a Content Code or Content ID. For a Content ID, the rightmost portion
is a valid Windows file name, and this
may be preceded by a hierarchical path, delimited by forward slash characters. For example, the URL might resemble
this:
http://contentgalaxy.com/content/CG_Sports/Fishing/Gone_Fishing.pdf
where the publication short name is “CG_Sports” and the Content Id is “Fishing/Gone_Fishing.pdf”. Note that
CG ContentURLs are case-insensitive, but mixed case is often used for clarity.
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When you create links from your web site to items of content in CG channels, you would normally append
an additional piece of information to the URL for each CG item to which you refer, in order to indicate your
affiliate ID. When you register as a CG affiliate, you are assigned a unique numeric affiliate code and
corresponding mnemonic ID, either of which may be specified via the “af=” query parameter. For example, the
following URL would be associated with affiliate #1234:
http://contentgalaxy.com/content/CG_Sports/Fishing/Gone_Fishing.pdf?af=1234
As a registered CG affiliate, you will be credited for both new subscriptions and usage by existing
subscribers to CG publication content visited through your links. You can monitor your affiliate referrals
and and track your earnings online, and you will receive regular payments from Content Galaxy, just as
content providers.
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Another piece of useful information you can attach to a CG content item URL, in addition to your affiliate ID,
is a short tag or remark, specified through the “rem=” query parameter. To specify query parameters on a CG content
item URL, append a “?” character, followed by one or more query parameter assignments, separated by “&”. For
example, to specify affiliate #1234 and the remark “Xyz”, you might use a URL of this form:
http://contentgalaxy.com/content/CG_Sports/Fishing/Gone_Fishing.pdf?af=1234&rem=Xyz
Remarks may be used for A/B testing, or to identify the exact location where this link was found. Content Galaxy’s
account monitoring facilities include a breakdown by remark, so you can use this field as an aid in tracking your
referrals.
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Content Galaxy (CG) sells subscriptions to on-demand channels and publications that are collections
of premium, “better than free” digital content. Individual items are not separately
priced, because they are freely available to paid subscribers. The system is unique in
the way it combines material from many independent sources and encourages a productive
collaborative of authors, editors, and affiliates by ensuring that all parties are
fairly compensated.
By charging a modest subscription price for access to a substantial body of
valuable content not readily obtainable on the open Internet, CG channels
attract a growing number of subscribers. At the same time, Content Galaxy provides
an increasingly attractive way for content providers to profit from material
that is difficult to sell effectively and too limited in its potential to generate
advertising revenues.
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The Internet offers an abundance of free content, but it’s still true that
"You get what you pay for." The task of creating digital content is too vast
and labor intensive for the best material to be free, and appetites for high
quality content are not appeased by what can be had for nothing. People will
pay for premium content, if the price is right.
Our contention is that what has been missing is a business model and
infrastructure to enable digital commerce in the broad range that lies
between free and the uppermost echelons of established, premium offerings.
Content Galaxy fills that need.
As the Internet grows in size and complexity, it becomes harder for individual
authors to be seen. The difficulty of generating revenues from digital content
hinders the production and dissemination of valuable material. By encouraging
content providers, pooling resources, and adding editorial value, Content Galaxy
creates compelling online publications that subscribers perceive as a bargain
for the subscription price.
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CG channels and publications bring together high quality material from many independent
sources to build an increasingly compelling value for subscribers. Since no
further purchase is required, subscribers are not inhibited from exploring a
wider range of content. This gives authors broader exposure than they would
receive by selling their products independently. As a CG channel gains
more subscribers, content providers receive their fair share of an increasingly
larger pie. Thus aggregate publications can be made more appealing to both
producers and consumers of digital content, potentially leading to explosive
growth in both publication size and circulation.
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Publishers determine the price of subscriptions and apportionment of income between
authors and editors. Content Galaxy also receives a portion of revenues,
after paying credit card processing fees. While publishers establish formulas for
individual compensation, it is Content Galaxy that actually processes subscriptions
and automatically makes payments directly to all parties. (For some publications Content
Galaxy acts as the publisher, as well as being the CMP service provider.)
Content Galaxy uses its automated
accounting system,
Content Marketplace Platform (CMP)
, to pay all contributors
on a regular basis according to clearly defined formulas. In addition, CMP
provides you with a way to monitor your progress and estimated earnings
continuously, in real time.
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The success of a CG channel or publication depends, above all, upon offering a compelling value to
subscribers. Unlike conventional merchandise, digital content can be delivered electronically
at much lower cost and with greater economies of scale. Lower revenue per subscriber may be
more than offset by a higher rate of growth in subscribership. With this in mind, CG publishers
price subscriptions aggressively, to maximize long term profits by increasing circulation as
quickly as possible. Ultimately, this rapid-growth strategy is to everyone’s benefit.
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Content Galaxy subscriptions are priced low enough to be perceived as a bargain for the amount
of valuable content they make available. The value of this content is further enhanced by editors,
under the direction of the publisher. Editors ensure that a high level of quality is maintained,
and the content under their control is well organized and clearly presented. At the same time,
publishers and Content Galaxy are actively marketing for new subscribers and soliciting additional
sources of material.
In addition, the CMP infrastructure supports an affiliate compensation mechanism, which encourages
both content providers and outside affiliates to participate in the overall marketing effort. All
parties concerned have a clear, direct incentive to promote CG content and grow the subscriber base.
As new content is added to a channel, the value proposition for subscribers becomes increasingly
attractive, leading to accelerating growth in circulation limited only by market saturation.
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Because Content Galaxy’s business model is based on paid subscription services, anonymous,
non-paying traffic automatically is excluded from premium content and privileged facilities.
New content always must pass the scrutiny of one or more editors, who are responsible for
organizing and presenting material appropriately, and maintaining high publication standards.
The CMP software infrastructure securely supports authentication, accounting, and administrative
functions. Payments to publishers, content providers, editors, and affiliates all are handled
automatically, with online reporting tools allowing each party to monitor, test, and confirm
income-related performance statistics in real time.
CMP tracks all usage by paid subscribers, and it uses this information to credit content
providers, editors, and affiliates from a compensation pool according to clearly defined,
auditable formulas for each channel. Those formulas are designed to compensate content
providers fairly in proportion to the popularity of their material among subscribers, and the
system is not easily gamed.
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Before undertaking any new Content Galaxy publication, the publisher will have
reviewed the market for the type content to be covered, and performed a detailed
analysis with the aid of CMP modeling tools. Having determined the potential for
a successful channel and
various key parameters, including subscription price, the publisher undertakes the effort and
expense of securing arrangements with content providers, editors, affiliates, and other
marketing activities. This is done at the publisher’s risk, with the expectation that the new
publication will become highly profitable, typically within 1 or 2 years from inception.
Of course there can be no guarantee that a new publication will succeed, but CMP assures
that any CG publication’s success will be shared with its editors, content providers, and
affiliates according to known, predetermined formulas. Contributors to a new publication can
expect to see a growing stream of income, which can be confirmed in real time through CMP’s
online monitoring facilities and compared against the publisher’s projections.
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Content providers (authors, artists, and copyright holders) are paid a pro-rated portion of
total subscriptions according to the amount of actual usage
of their material by paid subscribers. Exact formulas vary from publication to publication, but
in all cases the apportionment to content providers is explicitly stated and automatically accounted
for by CMP, which handles metering and security functions. The system automatically generates
payments to authors and others on a monthly basis, and provides a year-end summary for tax purposes.
All participants also gain access to web-based CMP facilities for reporting and monitoring account status.
Authors also can act as affiliates and receive additional compensation when content is retrieved
or CG subscriptions are sold through their own web sites. The bottom line is that content providers
typically receive the majority of total CG channel and publication revenues, based on equitable and transparent
formulas, and the system’s proprietary design is inherently resistant to abuse.
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All new content is subjected to editorial scrutiny, to determine that it is suitable for inclusion
and of sufficient quality to be consistent with the channel’s standards and intended audience.
If your material is selected, a qualified editor is assigned to assist you, and that editor’s
compensation will be tied directly to the popularity of your work, as well as the overall success of
the publication. These common incentives shared by you and your editor will help to ensure that your
concerns are addressed and your efforts are mutually supportive.
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The central purpose of Content Galaxy’s CMP infrastructure is to ensure that content providers are paid
fairly, based on the popularity of their work among authenticated subscribers. To perform this task CMP
monitors and logs subscriber activity, and it maintains accounts for recording credits as they accrue to
each author. By design, the system is secure, auditable, and resistant to abuse. Each CG
channel or publication follows
an openly stated formula for dividing its revenues between authors, editors, publisher, and affiliates. The
CMP accounting system is responsible for adhering to those formulas and automatically making payments to all
concerned parties on a monthly basis. In the interim between receiving your monthly payments, you can use CMP’s
online reporting facilities to monitor your account status and view activity reports relating to your content.
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Authors do not lose ownership or control of content they submit to a CG channel
or publication. While it is
the job of editors to approve submissions and present them appropriately, the author or copyright
holder ultimately must give his or her consent. Content providers retain full ownership rights, and
they can withdraw their material if they are not satisfied, for any reason.
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CG channels and publications offer convenient access to valuable content for a low subscription price, removing
much of the incentive for piracy in the first place. For streaming video, there are technical obstacles
to piracy, and Content Galaxy gives subscribers the added convenience of automatically serving content
in a format compatible with the user’s choice of browser or device.
Since CMP handles subscriber authentication and serves the CG publication content, it can support
additional content protection measures such as registration keys, watermarking, and other forms of
Digital Rights Management (DRM). In most cases, though, content providers need not resort to these
sorts of extra security measures, because the basic protections of the CG subscription model itself
are more than adequate.
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Linking to your content in a CG channel or publication doesn’t divert visitors from your site. Content Galaxy
simply presents the content and returns the user to the referring page, allowing it to serve as a fairly
seamless extension of your own web site. On the other hand, subscribers browsing that CG publication
may discover your material and from there be directed to your own site. Thus the net effect of publishing
your work through Content Galaxy is more likely to increase your site’s traffic, not decrease it.
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You may sell some of your material through a CG channel, some through direct sales, or both. If
you are selling DVDs, that same content could be sold through Content Galaxy as well, potentially reaching
an untapped market for streaming video to a variety of browsers and devices. These different modes of
consumption are not mutually exclusive: a subscriber who finds your video clips in a CG
channel may
be sufficiently interested to purchase your DVD.
Every one of your items in a CG channel or publication acts like a piece of free advertising that promotes
additional sales of your premium offerings. By publishing your work through CG, you gain greater
exposure that can actually increase your conventional sales, while at the same time generating
additional revenues to you from Content Galaxy.
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Of course, some authors and artists will make more than others, because their material is more popular.
In that sense, content providers are in competition, but it’s a fair and healthy form of competition that
promotes the addition of more and better content. In a larger sense, though, content providers are allies,
because they share a common interest in improving overall publication quality, and this leads to more
subscribers.
An immediate benefit of pooling material from many different providers into a single CG
channel is
that it increases exposure and cross-promotion for all contributing authors. Subscribers are not inhibited
from trying additional products, because no further purchase is required. In the long run, if a publication
is growing rapidly, the benefit of increasing paid circulation greatly outweighs any dilution of author
revenues due to enlarging the number of contributors.
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When a new author’s material is added to a CG publication, there may well be a brief period of time where
existing contributors experience a reduction in income, to the extent that the new author’s material is popular.
But if the new content is popular, it would be expected to increase the publication’s overall subscriber appeal.
That is, the rate of subscriber growth should be correspondingly increased when popular new content is added.
The dilutive effect of new content is essentially linear, which is to say that it takes a proportionate
amount of revenues away from previous content, assuming quality is comparable. On the other hand, the growth
in a CG publication’s circulation, until it approaches market saturation, tends to be more like a bank account
earning compound interest. The rate of circulation growth is not constant, but accelerating, i.e. it grows
exponentially.
Ultimately, the effect of increasing the exponential rate of circulation growth will always outweigh any
linear dilution of author revenues. For example, suppose a publication started with a single author, and the
monthly rate of subscriber growth were 10%. If a second author’s contributions of comparable popularity were
added, the instantaneous effect (in the first month) might be to diminish the first author’s revenues for that
month to half of his previous month’s revenues. But in subsequent months, it is reasonable to expect that monthly
circulation growth might be correspondingly increased from 10% to 20%.
An analysis of this example shows that by month 7 the monthly author income for each of the two authors will
have reached the same amount as the single author scenario, i.e. the publication’s total monthly subscription
revenues will have doubled over what it would have been in the single author scenario. By month 14, each of the
two authors will be making roughly twice as much per month compared to the first scenario. After about 2 years,
each author will be making 6 times as much as in the first scenario, and so on: with each subsequent year the
ratio becomes still greater.
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If you are the creator or owner of valuable digital content and you would like to distribute it through a
Content Galaxy channel or publication, contact us or one of our publishers. Let us know what sort of material you have to
offer and any pertinent information that might be helpful. An editor will be assigned to assist you in preparing
your submission and taking further steps to incorporate your material into a suitable publication.
Once your content has been accepted for publication, you will become a registered CG content provider, with
an income account and access to secure, web-based CMP monitoring facilities. You will receive regular payments from your Content Galaxy account, and a year-end income summary for tax purposes.
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Every item in a Content Galaxy channel or publication has an associated editor, as well as an owner. The editor is
responsible for evaluating material and working with authors and artists to present their works within a
publication. It is the editor’s job, as an employee of the publisher, to help build, organize, and maintain
a high quality publication. Editor compensation is tied directly to the performance of his or her area of
content, so each editor is motivated to provide good service to content providers, as well as having a clear
interest in the publication’s overall success.
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Even it you are not already a professional editor or industry pundit, if you’re the sort of person who
might be inclined to edit Wikipedia, participate in online forums, or spend time blogging, you may be a
good candidate for becoming a Content Galaxy editor in one or more publications. Not only would you have
an exciting arena for applying your expertise, but also you would be providing a valuable service to
authors and artists who will greatly appreciate your assistance.
Beyond that, what you get from Content Galaxy, which none of the usual outlets provide, is income. That
income directly reflects the quality of your editorial work through the success of the content providers
you serve. As an active participant, you join a team of other editors, authors, and a publisher who share
a common interest in building a successful CG publication.
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Content Galaxy and its publishers are actively seeking the services of qualified editors, both full and
part time. If you have writing and editorial skills, knowledge of an area of interest, and connections with
content providers, we encourage you to contact us to discuss the possibility of your assignment to one or
more CG channels or publications. We recognize that skilled, knowledgeable editors are instrumental to our success, so
we treat editor compensation just as seriously as that for publishers and content providers.
As a registered CG editor, you are provided with your own income account and access to CMP administration
and web authoring tools. You will receive regular monthly payments from your Content Galaxy account, and a
year-end income summary for tax purposes.
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A publisher is an entrepreneur who exploits his or her knowledge about a segment of content, connections
within an industry, marketing skills, and business judgment to create and sustain a profitable
channel or publication. A Content Galaxy publisher is an individual or business
entity that is responsible for one or more paid
CG channels, managed through Content Galaxy’s CMP services. CMP (the Content Marketplace Platform)
provides the required payment processing, content hosting, accounting, reporting, and administrative functions,
enabling the publisher to focus on business decisions rather than web infrastructure.
Publishers are paid automatically on a monthly basis, after deductions for credit card processing, CG's
service fee, and the payments to affiliates who have sold subscriptions.
Monthly usage payments to affiliates, editors, and content providers also are handled by CG,
according to formulas determined by the publisher. Each CG publisher essentially runs an independent business,
responsible for managing its own editorial staff, making arrangements with content providers, and subscription
marketing. Content Galaxy supplies the hosting, content delivery, and accounting services that make
the publisher’s job easier.
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If you've gone through this whole FAQ, then you deserve to know:
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Bonus: secret Wing Chun workout:
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