Building
ZygApp — a marketplace where creators keep what they earn.
Creator platforms take a cut and give back a follower count. ZygApp inverts that: creators recommend through their own affiliate links and keep the full commission, and the contribution they make to the community is measured rather than assumed.
The problem
Fourteen years of production work taught me the same lesson from a lot of different angles: the bottleneck for most creative people isn't talent and it isn't tools. It's that the work of building a reputation is invisible and unpaid, and the platforms hosting it are built to monetise attention rather than contribution.
You recommend the tool that actually works. You answer the question in the group chat. You share the thing you learned the hard way. Someone else captures the value.
ZygApp starts from the opposite assumption.
What it is
Marketplace
Creators keep the commission
Qualified creators submit product recommendations with their own affiliate links. The redirect fires their link as-is, so the full commission is theirs. ZygApp earns from subscriptions and platform activity instead of taking a cut of the creator's work.
Product cards
Recommendations with a face on them
Every card carries the creator's avatar and handle alongside the product. A recommendation from a named person who uses the thing is worth more than an anonymous listing, and the format says so.
Profiles
A record that belongs to you
Member profiles hold the published work, the collaborations and the standing that came out of them — the durable version of a reputation that usually only exists as screenshots and goodwill.
Synergy Score
Contribution, measured
Published work, collaboration and contribution feed a member's Synergy Score. It reflects output, not attendance — published work stays counted, contribution and collaboration weight what you've done lately, and working with new people counts for more than repeating yourself.
How it's built
- Backend
- Python / Django
- Frontend
- Django templates with vanilla JavaScript, and Three.js where the interface benefits from depth
- Database
- PostgreSQL on Google Cloud SQL
- Infrastructure
- Containerised on Google Cloud Run, media on Cloud Storage, deploys through Cloud Build
- Also
- A companion Chrome extension, transactional email, and a scoring pipeline that recomputes member standing on a schedule
- Entity
- ZygApp LLC, registered in the US and operated from South Africa
- Team
- Me — architecture through to deployment
Why me
I'm not an engineer who read about creative communities. I've been in them for fourteen years — as an editor for hire, as a band member, as the person who ends up organising the collaboration. ZygApp is a tool I wanted and couldn't find.
This site is the evidence for the first half of that. ZygApp is the evidence for the second.