Anyone who creates content that is used by paying customers on Blended Teaching, and is in a contract with Blended Teaching is called a Content Creator. When Blended Teaching receives money from customers (which includes students, companies, universities, etc) to use the content, the Content Creator will get a share of that. We call this the Creator's Share.

The Creator's Share is calculated as:

Over time, the exact calculation methodology evolves to make sure Content Creators get their fair share. As we've grown, we've allowed more forms of content beyond videos, more mechanisms for payment, different length access licenses, etc. So we carefully adapted the calculation methodology as we grow based on the principle that Content Creators get a fair pro rata share of the money generated through the content they have participated in creating.

We'll explore this further below, and provide some helpful FAQs.

Let's take an example of a fictitious Content Creator, Michael. Let's say that Michael has created 1 hour of video with Blended Teaching, which is used within a course frequently used by Instructors in the US.

Dr. G, our fictitious instructor, is teaching a class. They decide they would like to use Blended Teaching as a resource. They select 10 hours of content to embed in their course, of which Michael's 1 hour of content is included. This represents 10% of the content chosen.

The fact that Michael's content represents 10% of the content chosen by Dr. G has no bearing on what Michael will receive. The Creator Share calculation is entirely based on what is used by the students, not on what's available to be used by the students in a class.

Meg is a student in Dr. G's class. Students in Dr G's class pay $100.00 to access Dr. G's chosen Blended Teaching materials for six months of access. So Meg pays $100.00.

Meg pays for Blended Teaching through an intermediary. Common intermediaries include bookstores, inclusive access programs, credit card processors, etc. Intermediaries impact the timing of when the money is received by Blended Teaching (up to 4 months after payment in some cases), and how much money is received and available to share. Intermediaries often take a cut of the student payment, ranging between 3%-30% and transfer the remainder on to Blended Teaching. For this example, we'll assume that the intermediary takes 5% of the money paid by Meg, amounting to $5.00, and $95.00 is transferred to Blended Teaching.

Over the six months, Meg watches most of the chapters, but not all. Generally, students don't spend time in proportion to the content time available. In this case, Meg spends 20% of her study time on the platform studying Michael's content, even though Michael's content only makes up 10% of the total content available.

Michael will now be attributed a share of the money received by Blended Teaching, pro rata to the amount of time that Meg spent studying Michael's content versus content created by another Content Creator.

Meg spent 20% of her time on Michael's content over the six month period, so 20% of the money received by Blended Teaching from Meg will be attributed to Michael. This is called the Attributed Revenue.

The math so far looks like this.

$19.00 of the $95.00 collected from this student is attributed to the content that Michael has created.

Now to calculate Michael's share of the $19.00. This will be a function of Michael's Creator Share Percentage agreed in his contract. Michael has a Creator Share Percentage of 10%, making the math:

For Meg's purchase, Michael will receive $1.90.

The majority of students purchase their six-month access licenses for a Blended Teaching class early in the Spring and Fall semesters (Jan/Feb, Aug/Sep), but there is also a varying flow throughout the rest of the year.

When a student purchases their access license, they get access to studying those materials in that class for six months. At the end of that six-month period, we can look back, make the attribution calculations for each Content Creator, and distribute the Creator Shares.

If a student purchases a six-month access license in February, their access will expire in August, allowing us to run the attribution calculation in September.

To keep things manageable, we are currently running the calculations and making the payments 4 times per year, in September, December, March and June. However, as we grow, our goal is to move this to a monthly payment.

Students pay for access per class. So if they have 2 classes simultaneously, they will pay for two separate access licenses.

The Creator Share calculations are run for each access license, so the calculations will effectively treat them as two separate students.

Currently, only time spent watching videos is included in the calculation for the Revenue Attribution. We have the systems to track this to the millisecond.

But videos do not represent all of the content we provide, and students enjoy. We also have text chapters, assignments and quizzes that Content Creators are building and sharing on the platform. These Content Creators should also be compensated.

We are working on a system that will allow us to track the time students spend on these activities (reading, taking tests, etc.) and intend to include a ratio of the time spent in the Revenue Attribution calculation.