This pivot puts them in a very crowded market with no shortage of competition from offshore willing to write articles for low pay. Going that route would make them a mahalo or demand media type play. Even if they are going the high quality content route there is lots of competition there and the current branding is wrong for it.
The original model seemed to be trying to solve a highly scalable technical problem in providing people with low friction affiliate links, there are other companies doing this but referrly was probably the most consumer focused.
We are not going the low quality route, we are headed for direct competition with Medium and blogging networks/platforms like it (we are keeping pace with them on traffic to our articles and plan to continue doing so). There is an undeniable groundswell around this kind of company right now, and even established companies like Quora are starting to offer much better tools for long-form content. It is going to be very hard, and potentially very rewarding. This new direction isn't just about pivoting away from something that didn't work, it is also about doing something we are much more passionate about.
I absolutely agree that our branding is wrong now, and it is likely to change but we haven't decided on a new brand yet. It would have been smoother and more clean PR to annoucne the new brand at the same time as discontinuing rewards, but I didn't want to wait any longer to let users know about the changes that were coming.
As to scalability I don't know, maybe it is harder, but it is a fight I am personally much happier to take on. Filling my day with talking to writers, readers, and producing/editing/reviewing/reading content to keep the quality bar high sounds like heaven. I'm so happy not to be carrying this secret around anymore, and to be working on something I love (again, I really did love Referly and it was a thesis I held for 4 years so letting go of it isn't as easy as my email makes it sound).
I am going to blog about it more in depth, but my email to users basically sums it up - the promise of Referly was "write about products here and you'll get paid", but a lot of people didn't make money (lack of traffic, no being able affiliate products they wanted, etc) so we didn't fulfill that promise. In the process we learned a lot of people wanted to write and drive significant traffic, but only if they could be paid per post and maintain church and state between advertising/referrals and content.
I don't have a real company if our brand isn't a promise we can keep. I want to build that, I won't settle for less.
I could see it working as someone who called themselves something like a product/ market fit or pivot consultant.
You could come in on a big hourly rate and review startups products and the market, advising them whether to continue with the current idea or if not what kind of pivots would best fit the assets and skills they have built up.
The original model seemed to be trying to solve a highly scalable technical problem in providing people with low friction affiliate links, there are other companies doing this but referrly was probably the most consumer focused.
Scalability of the new model is harder.