Get in touch →Partner with SparkPeople
A different kind of platform for creators who want to build something positive.
You've probably noticed it: the platforms that grew you are also the ones that gate you, demote you, and surround your work with negativity. We're building the opposite — and we want to do it with a small group of thoughtful creators.
Our goal is to build the best behavior-change software and program ever developed — and use it to transform the world one person at a time.
Where the money goes this time
The original SparkPeople spent a seven-figure advertising budget every year — and most of it went to Google and other giant companies.
This time, we'd rather partner with — and financially reward — real people who want to be part of this mission.
Same growth budget. Different recipients: the coaches, creators, and community leaders who actually help people change their lives. That's you.
Why this is different
SparkPeople 2.0 is a reboot of the original SparkPeople — one of the largest health and wellness communities of the 2000s, which helped millions of people change their lives. We're rebuilding it for 2026 with AI as a real building partner and 20 years of lessons learned.
Three things make this platform unusually friendly to creators:
- 1.Positive by design — and we'll defend it. Every comment goes through AI moderation tuned for kindness. We don't reward outrage. We don't optimize for fights.At the original SparkPeople we had 5–10 million community interactions per month and the systems and culture to keep it positive — including a volunteer community team of 3,000 members from around the world. Members bought into the standard and helped police it themselves. We'll bring the same posture here. We will suspend and delete accounts that violate our community guidelines. Free speech does not rank above positivity on this platform.
- 2.You get your audience. Members who join through your link automatically join your SparkTeam — a community space you actually own. Members can message you. As your team grows, we offer real direct access (in-app messaging, then opted-in email, eventually exportable). No gating. No pay-to-reach.
- 3.Whole-person platform. We help people with health, planning, goals, community, and gratitude — not just one slice. That means your content can range freely, and your audience stays because there's real ongoing value across their day.
What we offer partners
💰 Revenue share
20% of subscription revenuefrom members who joined through you, for the first 12 months of each member's subscription. Drops to 10% after that. No caps on how many members you bring in. We pay monthly.
What we're charging: the core platform is free, and Premium (AI coaching and deeper features) is $14.99/month or $119/year — still being tuned for launch, but representative. So as a rough example: every 100 Premium members you bring in is on the order of $3,600 in your first year.
👥 Your own SparkTeam
A community space on SP that you own. Members who join through your link auto-join your SparkTeam — so you start with a real community on day one, not a follower count that may or may not see your posts. You can post updates, run challenges, message members directly, and build something that grows whether or not the algorithm cooperates.
📝 Contributor articles
Want to write? We publish your articles in the main content section with full credit, your bio + credentials inline, and citation-friendly structured data so AI search engines surface your work. You keep your voice; we handle the platform.
📊 Real analytics
See exactly how many members joined through you, how engaged they are, and how much revenue your community is generating. Not vanity metrics — the numbers that actually matter.
🔓 Audience access that grows with you
Once your community hits a meaningful size, you unlock progressively deeper access: in-app messaging, then (eventually) opted-in email contact, and exportable lists. The Substack-style guarantee: you can take your community with you if we ever stop being worth it.
Who fits
I've built before. My first company, Up4Sale, became eBay's leading competitor and was their first pre-IPO acquisition. After that I founded the original SparkPeople, which grew into one of the largest health communities online. More recently I helped build People One Health, a major healthcare company on an IPO path.
I'm saying this because the next sentence isn't hype: the new SparkPeople has a real chance to change the world.We want to add positive, thoughtful people like you to this mission — people who genuinely want to help others, and who can also earn real money doing it. Those two things are not in tension here. They're the whole design.
You're probably a good fit if:
- ✓ You make content about health, wellness, behavior change, productivity, or thoughtful tech
- ✓ Your audience trusts you because you're honest, not because you're loud
- ✓ You've felt the pull of platforms optimized for outrage and want a different option
- ✓ You want to build something that compounds, not chase short-term reach
- ✓ You're genuinely interested in helping people change their lives, not just monetize them
- ✓ You have a lived transformation story people ask you about — maybe you were even part of the original SparkPeople community
Two ways to look at SparkPeople
We're both — and that's the point.
View one
Productivity tools with a social component
World-class daily planner, behavior-change engine, AI coach, food and fitness tracking, goals — plus a community around it.
View two
A social platform with a real business model
A positive social network — with productivity tools as the value engine that funds it, so we never have to optimize for outrage to keep the lights on.
That real business model is what lets us share revenue generously with partners like you. It's also what lets us reward positivity instead of penalize it. We want to use that model to benefit you and other people who want to make the world a more positive, productive, and happy place.
The story this could tell
Things worth saying out loud about what we're building:
- The original SparkPeople took 15+ years and $20M+ to build. We've rebuilt most of it in a few months using AI as a building partner.
- We're building a positive social platform by design, not by hope — AI moderation, mission-aligned ranking, no algorithm optimizing for fights.
- We've built a 30+ component proprietary AI Learning Engine behind our coaching — combining platform awareness, member context, and what-actually-works data. We genuinely believe it's one of, if not the, best uses of AI for personal coaching ever developed.
- We're proving you can build a small, fast, founder-led platform that competes with billion-dollar incumbents — and we're doing it in public.
If any of those threads are interesting to your audience — interview us, write about us, build with us. We're open to all of it.
Want to talk?
Reply to whatever brought you here, or email me directly. I read every message. The best way to start is just a conversation about your work and what you're looking for.
Email me directlysparkguy@gmail.com · Chris Downie, founder
P.S. — if you're curious how I think about this, I've been writing about the build publicly. Start with our story here. — Chris