14 December 2011

Is Flattr a useful blog micropayment method ?

Most bloggers dream of generating some income from their work, but most of the mechanisms for doing so are either cumbersome or intrusive.  I once told myself that if I reached the point where Blogger (my host) charged me for storing the images, I would add a "tip jar" to the site to cover those expenses - but to date I've only used about half of my available image-storage space, so that justification hasn't arisen.  And I looked at Amazon's "affiliate" program, especially since I occasionally review books, but decided it probably wouldn't be worthwhile.

Recently, I've read about a new platform called Flattr.  Here's a summary from Huffington Post:
What it is: Flattr allows you to donate tiny amounts of money to a blogger, filmmaker, photographer or any other content creator without having to type in your credit card information each time. The service also enables users to give mobile micro-donations to things in the real world.

How it works: Once you sign up for Flattr, you must deposit a minimum of $3 each month into your Flattr account. Over the next month, you can "flattr" certain web pages (blog posts, videos, images, etc.) that use the service simply by clicking the page's Flattr widget. Each time you flattr something, your monthly budget is divvied up between the sites you've flattr'd. The more sites you flattr, the smaller each donation becomes. And if you don't flattr at all in a given month, your monthly budget is donated to charity. 
The Forbes magazine website offered these thoughts:
Launched in August and based in Malmo, Sweden, Flattr has 50,000 registered users. Sunde hopes to have a million by this time next year. A handful are making a steady income from it. Tim Pritlove, who blogs and podcasts from Berlin, Germany about technology and personal media, makes about 1,000 euros per month from Flattr, depending on his output. Pritlove is an outlier. Online technology magazine TechDirt had only 6 Flattrs on a recent popular post that had 250 comments and 47 tweets.
There's further discussion at The Economist and at Neatorama.  I've not noticed a lot of Flattr buttons at sites I usually visit, and I'm a bit put off by the company's 10%-off-the-top management fee (which theoretically might decline if they scale up the system) and apparently an annual registration fee to embed the button

This blog has lots of readers in Europe; do you guys make use of Flattr?  Is it really user-friendly and practical?  Unless I receive advice otherwise, I'm planning to give this a pass as well.

16 comments:

  1. I think this model would be ideal for thoese newspapers that are trying to find a subscription method. People don't want to pay for online newspapers and other paywalled sites, however if they were to pay a set fee of may $10 a month to access paywalled nws sites and that was divvied up that would make payment for new a more workable solution.

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  2. I would happily donate to the blogs i read if I had a tool that was easy and wouldn't charge me viciously like they usually do.

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  3. I agree with Paulo. I've seen this in a few places so far, but I have never heard anyone talk about it (I live in the US). So I'm just learning about it's function for the first time.

    I do frequent lots of blogs and would love a way to show my appreciation for their hard work other than subjecting myself to advertisements (which I block anyways).

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  4. Yeah, what Greta said. I rarely see an advert, but I feel a bit guilty about it on blogs that I like. A way to slip a few pence their way would be much better, in the same way that I occasionally slip Wikipedia a fiver.

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  5. It was a huge fad in the FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) scene back when it started. From what I hear, most people don't cross the two-digit or even one-digit barrier in monthly Euro payout.

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  6. 10% off the top, AND they collect interest on all the money that passes through their accounts? Sounds like a really greedy bank.

    Why not just setup a paypal account using a dedicated email address, and then if/when it comes to it, simply put a note on your site asking for donations?

    On the other hand, I don't mind a few advertisements either.

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  7. You should have a tip jar - you provide a valuable service and should be compensated for it. You appear to have some weird notion that what you're doing would be less pure if you collected money for doing it. From my perspective, if you were getting money for it you might still be doing it incessantly (rather than intermittently). And don't give me that crap about being retired - my dad will be 91 next month and he works full time and the idea that you can retire in your early 50s grates on my protestant-work-ethic upbringing.

    Put up the tip jar; collect money. If you don't want to buy your wife jewelry, support butterfly refuges or starving English majors. Post more.

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  8. I agree with Anonymous: Paypal.

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  9. The only fee Flattr takes is 10% on revenues, this goes towards the normal costs of hosting, maintenance, product development (read: instant noodles for our devs). There is NO annual registration fees or anything else. And Flattr waives the 10% fee for charities.

    Yes, it’s bigger in Europe (having only € support is one barrier for US based people) but we’re seeing growing traction in the US too now. $ coming soon, by the way.

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  10. I'm a big fan of flattr (as a reader) and miss the flattr button on many interesting blogs. It's pretty easy to click that button and I don't mind the 10% fee (there is _no_ signup fee). Regarding the amount of revenue you can make: The more people would use flattr (and offer flattrable content) the higher the revenue will grow.

    Regarding PayPal: I'm personally looking forward to the day where I can cancel my PayPal account, because the company policies just suck. Therefore, blogs with whatever interesting content there might be, that only have a PayPal button won't make any money from me.

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  11. Flattr isn't widely used.

    What works best for me is pledge drives like Wikipedia does - if you asked for $10/$20 a year, I'd happily pay, and then I don't need to create my 218th billing relationship, with Flattr.

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  12. Whatever you decide, will you please post about how and why you made that decision?

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  13. dang, forgot to subscribe to the comments....

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  14. I've decided not to participate, Chakolate. I think the concept is a good one, and might well be rewarding if/when there are more users of the system and if/when this blog has a larger audience. At present it would just add a widget to this blog's home page, and I like the generally clean, uncluttered look the page has now.

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  15. Anon - Paypal is the epitome of a greedy bank, plus it's largely unregulated. Just look them up on Consumerist - the Regretsy donation debacle is the latest bad press. They can and will freeze your account for no reason whatsoever.

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  16. Funder, I hadn't heard about the Regretsy incident. Thanks for the information.

    For others who may be interested in tip jars etc-

    http://consumerist.com/2011/12/paypal-admits-the-regretsy-donate-button-fiasco-should-never-have-happened-in-the-first-place.html

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