Hello everyone -- Jonny, Dorothy and Dean from Maptia here (we're the co-founders for those of you who don't know us). Sorry were a tad slow to reply -- we've been heads down, working on Maptia 2.0 (keep a lookout in a few weeks' time for an exciting announcement), but we thought we would add our thoughts to this interesting thread.
Maptia is currently self-funded, and we aren't generating any revenue yet. Right now were living frugally and working one day a week on freelance projects to support Maptia. Right from the beginning, like Jeff @CompassCultura, we've held strong values (like don't screw up a site with advertisement or sell out to investors), so early on we made the decision not to rush the business side at the cost of authenticity or functionality.
Our long-term goal is to grow Maptia into a sustainable company that can re-invest in its community to directly fund and support talented photographers and writers to tell stories. However, we've felt comfortable supporting the platform ourselves for now and we're certainly not building Maptia to get rich. We don't really see money as a motivator, other than as a necessary resource to enable us to increase Maptia's impact and the quality of our tools for storytellers.
Although part of our mission at Maptia is to inspire people to travel more and to appreciate the world around us, in the long run we also want Maptia to be a place to amplify the impact of stories that matter -- stories that compel us to care more about our fellow humans and our environment. So in addition to travel-esque content, once 2.0 has launched we will also have a strong focus on sharing emotionally compelling narratives that foster a sense of adventurous empathy, that encourage us to see the world through others' eyes, and that promote individuals/organisations who are making a difference.
But back to Matt's question about long term business models... in addition to plans for selling beautiful letterpress posters of our travel manifesto via an online store, here are a couple of more long-term ideas we plan to experiment with following our 2.0 launch:
1. Encouraging readers to pay small monthly subscriptions to support storytellers' work -- perhaps using a 'help fund the next story' button or similar at the bottom of each story and so helping storytellers grow a monthly subscription from their readers. A subscription could, for example, be in return for behind the scenes action like Google hangouts, updates from the field, high res photo downloads, and other exclusive or interesting extras. Similar to Patreon's model, but more geared towards photographers and writers.
2. Running collaborative storytelling experiments -- in the near future we hope to partner with a handful of authentic brands whose values and philosophies are aligned with our own and who can support a series of unique storytelling projects on Maptia. For instance, this might involve a curated collection of stories from around the world based on a specific theme -- with all contributing writers and photographers getting their fair share of the sponsorship. However, we've made a commitment never to stick logos or brands on (or anywhere near) content on Maptia unless the storytellers are being well compensated and they are fully on-board with the idea.
3. A third idea is a pay-what-you-wish Maptia membership, a bit like NatGeo's members program. The core set of storytelling tools on Maptia will always be free, and so in this scenario we would simply ask our community to contribute a small amount each month if Maptia brought them joy and value, and if they had a little to spare to help support our work.
All of these are still very much embryonic ideas, and our sole focus for the past six months has been building Maptia 2.0. We always aim to be transparent and would love to hear your thoughts or feedback.
Hello everyone -- Jonny, Dorothy and Dean from Maptia here (we're the co-founders for those of you who don't know us). Sorry were a tad slow to reply -- we've been heads down, working on Maptia 2.0 (keep a lookout in a few weeks' time for an exciting announcement), but we thought we would add our thoughts to this interesting thread.
Maptia is currently self-funded, and we aren't generating any revenue yet. Right now were living frugally and working one day a week on freelance projects to support Maptia. Right from the beginning, like Jeff @CompassCultura, we've held strong values (like don't screw up a site with advertisement or sell out to investors), so early on we made the decision not to rush the business side at the cost of authenticity or functionality.
Our long-term goal is to grow Maptia into a sustainable company that can re-invest in its community to directly fund and support talented photographers and writers to tell stories. However, we've felt comfortable supporting the platform ourselves for now and we're certainly not building Maptia to get rich. We don't really see money as a motivator, other than as a necessary resource to enable us to increase Maptia's impact and the quality of our tools for storytellers.
Although part of our mission at Maptia is to inspire people to travel more and to appreciate the world around us, in the long run we also want Maptia to be a place to amplify the impact of stories that matter -- stories that compel us to care more about our fellow humans and our environment. So in addition to travel-esque content, once 2.0 has launched we will also have a strong focus on sharing emotionally compelling narratives that foster a sense of adventurous empathy, that encourage us to see the world through others' eyes, and that promote individuals/organisations who are making a difference.
But back to Matt's question about long term business models... in addition to plans for selling beautiful letterpress posters of our travel manifesto via an online store, here are a couple of more long-term ideas we plan to experiment with following our 2.0 launch:
1. Encouraging readers to pay small monthly subscriptions to support storytellers' work -- perhaps using a 'help fund the next story' button or similar at the bottom of each story and so helping storytellers grow a monthly subscription from their readers. A subscription could, for example, be in return for behind the scenes action like Google hangouts, updates from the field, high res photo downloads, and other exclusive or interesting extras. Similar to Patreon's model, but more geared towards photographers and writers.
2. Running collaborative storytelling experiments -- in the near future we hope to partner with a handful of authentic brands whose values and philosophies are aligned with our own and who can support a series of unique storytelling projects on Maptia. For instance, this might involve a curated collection of stories from around the world based on a specific theme -- with all contributing writers and photographers getting their fair share of the sponsorship. However, we've made a commitment never to stick logos or brands on (or anywhere near) content on Maptia unless the storytellers are being well compensated and they are fully on-board with the idea.
3. A third idea is a pay-what-you-wish Maptia membership, a bit like NatGeo's members program. The core set of storytelling tools on Maptia will always be free, and so in this scenario we would simply ask our community to contribute a small amount each month if Maptia brought them joy and value, and if they had a little to spare to help support our work.
All of these are still very much embryonic ideas, and our sole focus for the past six months has been building Maptia 2.0. We always aim to be transparent and would love to hear your thoughts or feedback.