Kreosus is a creative sustainability and crowdfunding platform, created by Tree of Evolution LLC, which is a company based in Texas, USA with roots in Turkey.

It is claimed that Confucius once said "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." It is unlikely that he ever uttered these words, because in China back in his time, it was not that common to pick a profession. Still, we are people who strongly believe in this message. In our time, people are being directed to jobs that are assumed to make money easier, even if they do not have any interest in or passion towards those jobs. We believe that people should profess in fields that they passionately love or have sincere interest in. On the other hand, even if we have this idealist perspective towards the job marketplace, we also have a realist aspect: We understand that the current economic system requires each individual to make a living through monetary income. Therefore, we developed Kreosus! A system which brings creative minds (or simply "creators") and people who consume their creative work together! We believe that the world can become a better place if people who love consuming the creative work of brilliant minds support these individuals monetarily; therefore, in return, these creative minds can gift more of their intellect to humanity.

If you are a content creator (i.e. if you are producing music, movies, posts, articles, art, philosophy, journalistic work, science, poems, etc.), you can use Kreosus to monetize your audience and let them help you create more! By doing so, you can continue your work thanks to the help of your audience, who are already following your work and are willing to support you. This may or may not give you full financial independence; however, it will surely help you take a step towards making your passion your job.

If you are a person who like following intellectual work that brilliant minds create, you can support them through their Kreosus accounts and help them make more of the things you love! Creators who are supported by their audience will be able to create more work in higher quality!

In other words, whoever you are, if you value the intellectual output of humanity such as science, art, literature, or philosophy, and if you believe that this work should not be left without monetary support, and if you believe that these are products that move people towards better places, Kreosus is designed just for you.!

Kreosus (or Creosus) is a combination of two Latin words: The first one is creo, which means "creativity" in Latin. The second one is susteo, which means "sustaining" or "continuing together" in Latin. But this word also has a funny coincidence: Kreosus is mainly built by people with Turkish origin and people who love Turkey. Turkey is a country which lies on Anatolia, a geographic region in Western Asia that unites Asia with Europe, and had been home to many civilizations that shaped the path of humanity. By rearranging just two letters in Kreosus, you get Kreosus (or Croesus), who had been the legendary king of Lydia between the years 560 and 546 BC. Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. Not only this, but also King Croesus was famous for his wealth. Lydians had printed the first gold coin during King Croesus' reign in their capital Sardis, which is a part of Manis, Turkey today. In our world, we do not see kings like King Croesus; however, we believe that the collective power of the people is stronger than any king that has ever existed. Kreosus is built to convert this potential to reality.

You can browse and discover new creators through Kreosus and monetarily support them in a way that it will not hurt your budget. You may support them one time, or through a monthly subscription. By doing this, you help them be sustainable.

You can create a Kreosus creator account and allow your followers to support you monetarily so that you can continue creating what you create.

If you choose to support a creator monthly (subscription option), your card will be charged the very first time you choose to become a supporter, regardless of the day you start your pledge. After this, your card will be charged on the first day of every month. If this monthly charge attempt fails on the first day, a second attempt will be made on the 9th day of the month. If that fails too, one last attempt will be made on the 16th day of the month. If any of these are successful, these retries will not be conducted. If all three reattempts fail, that month is assumed a failure and the process restarts the next month. If your card fails for three months in sequence, your pledge is automatically cancelled. Of course, you have the right to cancel your pledge at any time.

If you choose to support a creator one-time, your card will be charged only once. This charge will not repeat.

You may switch between monthly subscriptions and one-time pledges, you may change your monthly pledge tier (increase or decrease), you may pledge an additional one-time support to your monthly subscriptions, or cancel your monthly subscriptions at any time.

The logic behind crowdfunding is straightforward but a brilliant one: Maybe 1 supporter may not be able to pledge you 1000 dollars per month; but 1000 supporters can pledge you 1 dollar per month. The entire logic of crowdfunding is based on allowing a large group of people making a project sustainable, together. To get a bit more insight, we can divide the crowdfunding platform landscape into two parts:

Project-Based Crowdfunding: These are what we call the "1st Generation Crowdfunding Platforms". The most common examples are: Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, and GoFundMe. In these systems, there is a product idea (e.g. a new drone or a new board game), a project idea (e.g. a new website), or a dream (a world tour or collecting funds to treat a disease). The person with this idea or dream needs monetary support to make it real.

Crowdfunding of Creators: This is what we call the "2nd Generation Crowdfunding Platforms". These are more recent and the most famous representative of this category is Patreon. The content you see online (blog posts, videos, audio recordings, podcasts, amateur music recordings, columns, photos, etc.) are mostly created by amateur content creators. Normally, the ad revenue is supposedly used to support these creators; however, recent cuts on ad revenue by platforms such as YouTube make it impossible for the creators to sustain their work.

Kreosus is a 2nd Generation Crowdfunding Platform through which you can choose to support creators within the limits of your budget, one-time or monthly.

Yes! In the Kreosus Support Module that you will see in creators' websites or Kreosus profiles, you can choose "One-Time" option to pledge to these creators for only one time. You can come back and pledge again at any time. By doing this, you can control when and how much you are pledging. You may switch to monthly subscription at any time.

On the other hand, the reason for Kreosus to exist is to help creators collect money from a large community, without hurting the budget of anybody. Therefore, instead of pledging 1000 dollars to a creator one-time, it would be way more sustainable for our creators to receive 10-20 dollars per month. As a result, the biggest contribution you can make to our creators is the monthly subscription option.

But if you choose to pledge one-time, our system allows you to do that.

No! Aside from the credit cards, you can use debit cards or virtual credit cards too! Please remember these two common problems:

• Make sure your credit card allows international payments (if you are outside the U.S.)
• If you choose to use a virtual card, make sure your card has enough balance and also make sure the limits of the card is greater than your pledge amount.

You can use any Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit card. You may also use Japan Credit Bureau (JCB), China UnionPay (CUP), or Discover & Diners credit card depending on your location. You can also use Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Yes! You can create however many different creator accounts with a single Kreosus account.

What happens if your card is declined depends on the type of support:

If the supporter is a one-time supporter, if their card is declined, they will be shown an error message immediately, so that they can try again with a different card. There will be no reattempts for a one-time payment, unless they change their credit card and try again themselves.

If the supporter is a monthly subscriber, if their card is declined, they are still considered a subscriber. If the error occurs on the first attempt, an error message is shown to the supporter. Once the subscription account is successfully created, reattempts will be made for three months, three times in each month. After that, if no successful payment can be created, the subscription is cancelled.

The supports, both one-time and monthly, pledged to each creator are accumulated in Kreosus. The share of each creator is stored separately, so no mixing of funds can occur.

Kreosus works with Stripe, one of the top credit card processing companies in the world. The most current fee structure of Stripe is 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. In other words, Stripe takes 2.9%-3.9% of the entire transaction (either one-time or monthly payment), as well as a fixed fee of 0.3$ (30 cents). You can find the most current fees for Stripe by clicking here.

Stripe stores all payments in U.S. Dollars (USD, $). No matter which currency you choose to collect your support, Kreosus will convert each amount to USD via Stripe. This conversion is not made by what the banks offer for foreign exchange which seeks profits. Stripe does this conversion via Open Exchange Rates, which provides the current, mid-market value of the exchange rate.

Stripe send the accumulated amounts to the J. P. Morgan Chase Bank account of Tree of Evolution LLC, the parent company of Kreosus. This transfer is completely free of charge.

Kreosus has a progressive fee structure designed to treat both small and large creators fairly. Your specific tier depends on the currency of your account.

For US Dollars (USD)

$0 – $100: 0%|$100 – $500: 2%|$500 – $4,000: 4%|$4,000 – $8,000: 6%|$8,000 – $15,000: 8%|$15,000 and above: 10%

For Turkish Lira (TRY)

0 TRY – 3,500 TRY: 0%|3,500 TRY – 15,000 TRY: 2%|15,000 TRY – 100,000 TRY: 4%|100,000 TRY – 200,000 TRY: 6%|200,000 TRY – 500,000 TRY: 8%|500,000 TRY and above: 10%

All other currencies will automatically be converted to USD based on the average market rate and will follow the USD tier system.

Important Notes:

• Initial Fee-Free Threshold: Please note that your first tier is completely fee-free. After your total earnings exceed that first tier, fees will be charged according to the next bracket.
• Lifetime Earnings and Not a Progressive Tier System: Since the fee tiers are calculated from your total earnings over the entire history of your account, and not just on a monthly basis, once your entire earnings fall to a given tier, all of your new transactions will be charged at that tier. In other words, tiers do not reset periodically.
• Industry-Competitive Rates: Even the highest tier (10%) is lower than many industry averages, which can exceed 25%. This helps ensure creators keep more of what they earn.
• Platform Sustainability: These fees support Kreosus's ongoing development, improvements, and operational costs, helping us continue to provide a high-quality platform for creators everywhere.

At this point, the cash flow will depend on your choice of payout. Currently, we offer the following options:

• Direct Transfer to Your Bank Account (TransferWise): If you choose this option, your balance will be paid out to you via the Borderless Account of Tree of Evolution LLC that is kept under TransferWise. Here, your balance is converted to your choice of currency using the mid-market exchange rate again. The fees for this exchange rate is determined by TransferWise and it changes based on your choice of currency (it is usually at a rate of 0.65% + 3.50$).
• PayPal: If you choose to send your balance to your PayPal account, the fees change based on your location. If you live in Canada or Europe, the fees are $0.99 for $0-$49.99, $2.99 for $50-$99.99, and $2.99 for any amount after $100. If you live in any other country where PayPal can be used, the fees are $0.99 for $0-$49.99, $2.99 for $50-$99.99, and $4.99 for any amount after $100
• Payoneer USD Account: If you choose to use a Payoneer USD account, you can receive your balance for free.

Yes! Kreosus had no security issues since its inception. You can verify the security of this website using a third party tool such as VirusTotal. Of course it is not possible to know what is to come; however, at Kreosus, we work diligently to protect your data. For instance, we do not keep any of your credit card information on our servers. Also, as per our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy we promise that we will not sell any of your data to third parties.

The easiest way to solve this problem is contacting your bank and asking why these charges are being rejected. Some banks may prevent charges to companies that they are not familiar with. This usually takes less than 5 minutes, depending on your bank. There may be other reasons for credit card declines:

If you are using a virtual credit card, your card might have been expired. The only thing you need to do is to update your virtual card information and re-enter them to Kreosus.

One of the most common causes of card declines is the use of virtual cards with low balance or low payment limits. If you are a monthly subscriber to a creator with a virtual card, please be reminded that you need to reset your available balance every month to prevent declines.

You may have entered the wrong credit card information. Please update your information.

You may be living outside the U.S. and your credit card might be blocked for international payments. You can call your bank and order them to open your card to international payments.

You can change your pledge amount at any time! After signing in to your Kreosus account, all you need to do is to go to the My Subscriptions page and then click on the "Update Support Amount" button. Here, you can either select a tier from the dropdown menu or enter any custom amount and hit "Update" to finalize the change.

Yes, you can cancel your monthly subscriptions at any time! After signing in to your Kreosus account, all you need to do is to go to the My Subscriptions page and cancel your subscription from the list of creators you are supporting.

This is a case-by-case situation. In principle, we can only refund your pledge within the first 5 days after your pledge. After that, you can only cancel your pledge so it does not repeat next month. Note that the Stripe fees incurred on your pledge will not be refunded.

We cannot give you tax advice. Therefore, we cannot walk you through the form. You can get help from the information buttons next to the form items in the Tax & Payout Information section of your profile. If you have any questions, please refer to a tax expert.

A W-8BEN form, or the "Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting (Individuals)", is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) form that provides foreigners with an exemption from specified U.S. information return reporting and backup withholding regulations. You can access a copy of the form by clicking here.

As Kreosus, we use the information you enter in your profile to fill the form on your behalf.

If you do not fill this form properly, there will be a 30% tax withholding on your payments.

We cannot give you tax advice. Therefore, we cannot walk you through the form. You can get help from the information buttons next to the form items in the Tax & Payout Information section of your profile. If you have any questions, please refer to a tax expert.

W-8BEN-E is an important tax document which allows businesses operating outside of the U.S. to claim tax exemption on U.S.-sourced income. The official document title is Certificate of Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding and Reporting (Entities). You can access a copy of the form by clicking here.

As Kreosus, we use the information you enter in your profile to fill the form on your behalf.

If you do not fill this form properly, there will be a 30% tax withholding on your payments.

Both of these forms are secured among Kreosus documents and if the IRS requests us to show who we pay, we will provide these to the officers.

All you need to do is to sign in to your Kreosus account, hover over the "Supporter" menu, click on the "Edit Supporter Profile" button. From here, you can click on the "Payment Method" tab and click on the "Change Card" button. Our system will prompt you to enter the new card number, expiration date, and CVC number. After making sure that this information is entered correctly, you can finalize the change by clicking on the "Save" button.