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Because the vast majority of people will not be accepting donations because they aren't content creators. If a content creator puts $10 in per month, he could quickly get much more back if a hundred non-content creators each give $1.
AFAIK 'donate' buttons have never proved successful. People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free
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AFAIK 'donate' buttons have never proved successful. People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free
It depends on how you define 'successful.' Most people have the metric wrong, which would be conversions. The correct metric is, "Do I make enough to pay for the effort and time doing this?"
I'm really all about Flattr. I wrote a blog post about it when it was announced. Big wins, as far as I'm concerned: * By being subscription based, it's 'set it and forget it.' * By introducing an upper limit, I don't have to worry about overspending my budget. * Flattr's model appeals to me: if I upvote fewer things, they mean more. Sounds about right. * One click donations are so much easier than trying to find and…
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That article is wrong. 25 cent micro transactions? Right. The reason MP's failed is not because MP are a bad idea, but because the implementation wasn't realistic. Flattr solves several problems, and does it realistically, and elegantly.
Flattr creates a system where neither the giver nor the receiver knows how large a donation is until next month. That's not really a solution and it certainly isn't elegant.
I'm really all about Flattr. I wrote a blog post about it when it was announced. Big wins, as far as I'm concerned: * By being subscription based, it's 'set it and forget it.' * By introducing an upper limit, I don't have to worry about overspending my budget. * Flattr's model appeals to me: if I upvote fewer things, they mean more. Sounds about right. * One click donations are so much easier than trying to find and…
Right now, digital content producers often have to support themselves with advertising, which is usually problematic or impossible. Advertising is kind of like a shitty version of Flattr where you automatically click the Flattr button by simply loading the page, and the amount each person donates per month is the average amount per capita that companies profit due to online advertising. It's a stupid system for a lot of reasons. The one thing it has going for it is that people take part whether they want to or not, by viewing pages and being affected by advertising.
Flattr might make creating digital goods a profitable activity -- and that's a critical to having an efficient economic system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That article is wrong. 25 cent micro transactions? Right. The reason MP's failed is not because MP are a bad idea, but because the implementation wasn't realistic. Flattr solves several problems, and does it realistically, and elegantly.
Flattr creates a system where neither the giver nor the receiver knows how large a donation is until next month. That's not really a solution and it certainly isn't elegant.
And I do think that it's an elegant solution that reduces the number of actions required to contribute to things you enjoy to a single click.
[edited to add]
Another way to think about it is that the variable is not the percentage of visitors that are willing to pay X dollars for your content, instead it's the average payment of the visitors that are willing to pay anything for you content.
I think Flattr (or something like it) has the potential to create a competitive economic system for digital goods. Traditionally, if you produce something of value, people will pay for it, and the content creator is rewarded. That model doesn't work well for digital goods, since they're nonrival (if you have an mp3, I can have it as well, with no loss to you) and nonexcludable (you can't stop people having the good,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK 'donate' buttons have never proved successful. People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free
This is not a donate button. Donate buttons are complicated and require you to make all those decisions. With Flattr you have to decide once how much you would like to give per month and that’s that. One decisions and you can click away. It’s hassle free. I don’t think we know why people don’t like donate buttons and your hypothesis (“People don't like paying for stuff they can have for free.”) might be wrong. Maybe…