The world is missing TotalBiscuit's voice right now.

For those who don't know, Totalbiscuit was a youtuber who called out the ethics of influencers receiving compensation from sponsors. Through his voice, he basically reformed the model to what we have now - where sponsorships for products are no longer hidden.

Now we have something happening in chess - the world wakening to a desire for chess training. I have been approached by many individuals wanting me to consult and build an online chess trainer - for which they will compensate me for a few hours of work. Some don't even want to compensate me at all. One such builder which I am not even going to name for fear of advertising for them, wanted to charge me money to consult and build their product for them, because it would somehow magically allow me to raise prices (don't ask, it was all a little cloudy).

These people have asked me to teach them how to build a factory so they can produce a widget in perpetuity. <---There lies the question of ethics. What is fair to the person teaching how to build the factory? You can't do it without them, and yet they will not benefit from it. It will most likely end up competing in the end.

To the other coaches on lichess and everywhere, please don't sell yourselves short. To solve the question of what is the value of teaching would do a world of good for MANY fields, not just chess. Teachers in the US get the butt end of the stick on compensation. Knowledge is cheap, but teaching is priceless. You know that one little saying about teaching a man to fish vs giving him a fish? One piece of good knowledge well taught can change a persons trajectory. What is THAT really worth?

It seems kind of simple, I don't see the ethical dilemma- your hand isn't forced here. They are trying to get a good deal, and you can just say no. You set your price, they don't. You're not being exploited if you just say no.

There are at least four models here.

1. You can charge a high consulting fee for the initial project to get it started, and then let them continue to operate it and profit from that. This seems pretty fair to me. You just need to set a price that is high enough to represent the work. You aren't taking any risk in the business, so don't get too greedy.

2. The second would be a staggered agreement based on number of users. You can charge a bit more this way, since you're taking more of a risk. Sort of like a profit sharing arrangement with a cap. Total fee is $100 (as a very low, unrealistic example). Upfront, $30. After 1000 users, $30. After 10000 users, $40.

3. If you want to build a chess trainer app and want it to be successful, you would likely need to be a partner and keep working on it to keep it competitive and useful. If you build a "factory" once, it will grow stale and dated quickly. All the most successful chess apps have active development and new content getting added. If you help them build a trainer once, it isn't growing the business, just enabling it. If you want more revenue, you'll need a bit more skin in the game. Start the business with them, don't take any money upfront, and share in the revenue as it comes in. You'll need to respond to customer feedback.

4. You create a content library, and keep updating/maintaining it. You charge a regular licensing fee for access to it.

There are other models to explore too, you could adjust (2) in all sorts of ways for profit sharing, or find ways to combine different models.

In general remember not to undervalue how hard it is to actually build a business. Create an app, find users, build a brand, advertise, customer support, billing, software changes, back end infrastructure... I agree you should be compensated fairly, and have no doubt you've seen some insulting offers. But remember you're creating the first batch of content - your one time "factory" won't magically cause the business to run, it's not the magic key. The "factory" is quite valuable though. You would need to do a bit of market research and estimation to figure out the market value of it. If you can't figure it out that way (which is ideal, imo), then decide on a healthy hourly wage and estimate how long it would take you to create the content.

No clue what totalbiscuit or YouTube sponsorship has to do with this... You're not a sponsor (unless you accept that one guy's offer to pay him!)

Good luck!

(edit: Oh, one more idea. You could totally flip the script. Offer to pay the developer a fee to build the app, and maybe pay them some amount to make changes periodically, but you own the final product, operate it, and take the revenue! You would need to support the app and respond to customers, etc, though)

(edit: there is an ultimate irony of discussing something like this on Lichess - the most radical business model of them all, and my favourite :) )

A competition of writing paragraphs is going lol .

@plsdontclosemyacc said in #3:
> A competition of writing paragraphs is going lol .
out!

@plsdontclosemyacc said in #3:
> A competition of writing paragraphs is going lol .

@DeadlyGambits said in #4:
> out!

These hardly seem like useful contributions! Why bother replying? Seems like bad etiquette for an online forum, no?

@mtxo said in #5:
> These hardly seem like useful contributions! Why bother replying? Seems like bad etiquette for an online forum, no?
that's because you think that it is boring, btw this is off-topic discussion