This means that 80% of the revenue for articles are distributed between contributers. Check what a normal publishing house pays in revenues :).
Still it must be stressed that LookLex is not the path to immediate wealth. Over the last year, revenue has been very moderate looking at traffic. In average 1,000 page views yields $1.70-1.80, and that are with popups. Without popups, 1,000 page views will give $1.40-1.50. In other terms, gross CPM is $1.7 to 1.8.
How revenue levels work in the future is very much an open question, we strongly believe that there is plenty of room for improvement here, especially with increased traffic. At some point, revenue should be CPM between $3 and 4. In late 2004 and early, this was the case for us.
To illustrate how things could be (but no promises made here!). Let's say you have written 60 articles, each is read in average 45 times/day, and we have risen slightly to a CPM of $2. Then you would in one month generate a gross income of $162. As an author you will be paid 66% of this, which is $106.92. In one month. In one year you would earn from this $1,283. All depending on the actuality of articles, we estimate that well-written articles, will, with minor corrections (like in case of structural changes in presentation technique) live 10 years. You do read scientific literature that is 5 years or older, don't you?
OK, let's say that your 60 articles "live" 10 years, they will generate $12,830, or $213 for each article. Not bad, or what? At least it beats all that unpaid writing which dominates across the Internet. If you have obtain Editor privilege for your 60 articles, your earnings will increase in this calculation to $245 for each article, or $14,700 in total, $1.470 each year.
And of course, during these years, you could write more articles.
Let's be more optimistic. You write about 40 articles every year for the whole 10 years. These articles are quite popular, generating 150 page views per day. And we at LookLex have actually managed to bring CPM up to $3. In this case your gross revenue becomes $328,500 for the 10 years, the 11th year your exisiting articles will generate around $65,000, of which you will receive 66%, which is about $43,000. If you also have Editor privilege, your payment will be about 49,000.
All knowledge indicates that with the mutual effort of many authors, traffic will increase and even CPM. But for now, we calculate modestly.
What is important to stress here, is that you should not quit your day job just to write for LookLex. But we would like to assure you that of whatever revenue your article generates, as much as possible of that should go into your pocket.