About Us

Notd brings you micro-subscriptions, where publishers and writers can offer ad-free streams of notes that are focused on one or several topics.

Notes can be news, real time commentary, general opinions on anything, even poems. Since the notes are presented as a stream, the writers post them on a regular basis – maybe several times per day, or just once per day, week, or month. We just make it easy for you to find and read the notes.

It costs nothing for writers to create a stream, as you only need to create a Notd account, which is free. You decide how often you want to write, and your notes can be as long as you think they should be. You can add photos, but if you want to use video or audio, they need to be hosted elsewhere (we suggest postd.io) and linked to in your note.

About the absence of ads

Operating servers and paying people to run them costs money, so we do need some form of revenue. But not a lot. In place of ads, we are offering micro-subscriptions to these streams, where the cost is in cents per month, sometimes even as little as two cents per month. Not free*, but almost free. As an added benefit, the contributors get most of the revenue.

Since we don't have ads, we don't sell user data to advertisers (or anyone else). And pages load quicker, especially with no video. No ads means no spam, and since people pay to read notd, the only fake news will be in the comedy section.

Readers

Readers will have access to excerpts of all streams, so they can decide which ones are worth paying for. They can even buy individual notes, if you don't want to subscribe. They can comment on streams they subscribe to, but there will be rules, so we can minimize trolls and abusive conversations. You will need a transact.io account to pay for notd, but they are giving free credit to early users (so sign up now!).

Contributors

Contributors decide how much to charge, either for access to their stream for a month or a year, or for an individual note. We collect payments using Transact.io, and give contributors 90% of the revenue. So it can actually be a paying job for some writers. If contributors aren't interested in income, the stream will be priced at two cents per month, as notd still has operating expenses. For more details see the commission schedule on the Terms of Service. The minimum commission notd will charge is $0.01.

Teams

We also allow teams of contributors (the print analogy would be newspapers and magazines), where streams from multiple contributors can be subscribed to as one, sort of like a package deal. This is good for readers, who get a quantity discount, and contributors, who get a bigger audience (and maybe an editor and some marketing).

So check out our totally new way to keep up to date on what's goin on in the world, and let us know what you think.

*actually, some streams will be free to read, but they will be paid for by the contributor. We call these publicity streams. You will have to find them on your own, as they won't be advertised here.