Why We Pay Creators Per Conversation, Not Per View

Any creator payout system has to answer one awkward question first: what stops someone from farming it? We decided the answer up front, and it shaped everything else. Fellowi pays creators EUR 2.00 per qualified interaction - and almost every rule below exists because the easier alternative could be gamed in an afternoon.

What counts

A qualified interaction requires all of the following, per creator and per viewer:

• The viewer favorited your companion - an intentional act, not a page load.
• They sent it at least 30 messages.
• Their email is verified.
• They are not you, and not sharing your connection.

Each qualifying pair credits once. A viewer who talks to your companion for a year is still one qualified interaction, not a recurring meter - the reward is for bringing someone in and giving them a reason to stay, and we would rather say that plainly than dress a one-off up as a salary.

What we reject, and why

Yourself. Self-interaction is excluded outright. Otherwise the whole system is just an instruction to talk to your own avatar 30 times.

Unverified accounts. Email verification is cheap for a real person and annoying at scale, which is exactly the asymmetry we want. Without it, an afternoon of throwaway signups is a payout.

Shared connections. If the viewer and the creator look like the same person on the network, the pair does not qualify. This one occasionally catches genuine cases - a couple on one home connection, two people in a shared flat - and we accept that cost, because the alternative is paying for every second browser profile.

Views and likes. Not counted at all. They are the easiest numbers in the world to inflate and the weakest evidence that anything good happened.

Why 30 messages

Because it is past the point where curiosity carries a conversation. Five messages is a first impression; anyone can get five. Thirty means the person came back, or stayed a long while, and that is the only signal we can measure that actually reflects whether the companion you wrote is any good. It is a blunt proxy, but it is an honest one, and it cannot be faked cheaply.

Where the money sits

Rewards land in your Fellowi Balance as pending and become available once the checks clear. Being straight about the current state: Balance is spendable inside Fellowi today - an extra avatar slot costs EUR 3.00 - and cash payouts are not available yet. We would rather tell you that than let you assume otherwise and find out later.

The tradeoff we chose

A stricter system pays out less often. We know. The alternative is a number that looks bigger and means nothing, funded by everyone whose companions are actually being used. If you want the practical side of clearing that 30-message bar, we wrote about what makes a companion people return to; for the mechanics of creating and publishing one, see the earnings walkthrough.