I must admit I don't 'get' flattr - why would you ever signup if you weren't also trying to get paid? Surely Flattr's biggest problem is that they don't have users who want to freely donate, just users who want to get paid. It's a crap pyramid scheme. Or like a trade show, when the only people there are all salesmen, with no customers.
Flattr - I want to give you my money
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another fun feature, from the FAQ: Can I disable/inactivate my account? - No. As long as there's money in your means account, these will be used each month. When they run out your account will be deactived until you add more funds. I signed up thinking Flattr was a way for people to pay me who hate paypal. It turns out it's not anything like that, at all. But there's no way to immediately get off Flattr and close my…
> I signed up thinking Flattr was a way for people to pay me who hate paypal. Maybe Flattr should do that as well. For example they could extend the service so that you could put a button on your website which when someone presses it, it pays a fixed amount from their website to yours, which could be used as an easy-to-use micropayment scheme allowing people to pay for content.
Yes, that would be nice, instead of the current scheme, where you sign up, have to put money down, and then get reminded monthly that you should go spread that money around. I signed up to get paid, not pay.
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#33Flattr could create a bookmarklet to flattr any webpage. Then if enough people have done so for a given domain they can contact the owner saying "Hey, you have 5$ to collect at flattr, why not sign-up?". This is basically what paypal does, allowing you to send money to anyone with an e-mail address even if they're not yet registered.
TipTheWeb ( http://tiptheweb.org/ ) lets you tip almost anything, as long as it is free to access. When a publisher claims their site, they'll find the tips waiting for them. (If tips go unclaimed for a really long time, they get returned to the tipper's account).
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#34Site owners have to sign up for the service before participating. That barrier should be removed.
For example, you should be able to flattr any URL, not just web sites that have opted in. Here's how it would work: if you see a site that you wish to give money to, you would flattr the URL with a promise of money, but not real money. You would do this on flattr.com. The owner of the URL will go to flattr.com and see that they have $89.13 in "flattry" waiting for them if they sign up. At that point, the site owner has incentive to sign up and collect the money. Once the site owner has signed up, the users are notified that they need to pay (or payment is taken automatically).
This way, users don't have to wait for a site to add the flattr button and site owners will have much more incentive to sign up once they see the money waiting for them.
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#35Here are two big reasons why not everyone has a Flattr button on ther website yet: - To put the button on your website you have to also be a paying Flattr user (pay a minimum of €2/month). - You are forced to pay a hefty 10% cut of everything you earn to Flattr. Also, you further have to pay all PayPal fees (those are not included in the 10% Flattr cut). And possibly taxes depending on where you live.
TipTheWeb ( http://tiptheweb.org/ ) is a new (non-profit!) service that just came out of private beta a few months ago- it has no fees for tippers or publishers, and passes 100% of claimed tips to web publishers via monthly awards. And TipTheWeb doesn’t require a subscription or any kind of ongoing commitment. Both flattr and Readability take big cuts of the money before it gets to publishers. In addition to working with popular publishing platforms and independent websites, TipTheWeb allows multi-contributor sites, like multi-author blogs, to add simple metadata to their pages so that tips can go directly to the authors of the content being tipped.
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#36Flattr could create a bookmarklet to flattr any webpage. Then if enough people have done so for a given domain they can contact the owner saying "Hey, you have 5$ to collect at flattr, why not sign-up?". This is basically what paypal does, allowing you to send money to anyone with an e-mail address even if they're not yet registered.
ha, I had just emailed them with this idea - great minds think alike ;)
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#37I don't completely think that this is an execution issue. Do we really think there is a large market out there for "flattr-ing" blogs and other sites? I don't know how many people would pay for/donate to something they're getting for free. Something about not buying a cow when you're getting milk for free comes to mind...
Well, I wouldn't call it a "market", exactly. But people spend money on plenty of things they don't need to. And if no one supports all the great stuff people work on and put up for free on the Web, then we'll just get more and more obnoxious advertisements and more crazy schemes from big businesses.
At TipTheWeb (see my comments above), we think that by supporting the publishers of the stuff you like online, you're helping to make the Web a place that's more valuable to you. We all want more of the good stuff and less of the crap. If you tip a blog post that you like 10 cents, then not only does the publisher of that blog make a little money, but they also get some information about which of the stuff they write is valuable to their readers. This is a feedback loop that's missing from advertisement-driven publishing, where they get the ad impression regardless of whether you like the content.
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#38I will use Flattr when there are no service fees. After all, the developers/owners, who also just happen to run the pirate bay, feel that everything should be free and "shared, just like when we were children". Why do they need to charge 10% service fees if they want a "free" society?
Yeah. That's why we went with no fees at all for TipTheWeb.org!
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#39Flattr is "failing" (failing as in, failing to gain substantial traction) because of lack of users. Notch (of Minecraft fame) used Flattr for a long time on his blog and he removed it because he made so very little off it, even though he has a very high traffic blog. They shot themselves in the foot when they launched the service: a "private beta". It was the most ridiculous idea ever , here is a service that NEEDS e…
Could reddit pull this off? Their "reddit this" buttons are already everywhere.
Re: Flattr - I want to give you my money
#40Flattr is "failing" (failing as in, failing to gain substantial traction) because of lack of users. Notch (of Minecraft fame) used Flattr for a long time on his blog and he removed it because he made so very little off it, even though he has a very high traffic blog. They shot themselves in the foot when they launched the service: a "private beta". It was the most ridiculous idea ever , here is a service that NEEDS e…
People forget that PayPal got started by literally giving money away -- $10 -- to get people to sign up.