From tip jar to tech we go today, announcing the launch of a fantastic – and, yay, European-driven – website offering a neat way for your audience to show you monetary love for your creative endeavours.
Here’s how Flattr works:
- Members pay a monthly stipend – upwards of €2 (it doesn’t matter where you live, since they use fancy pants payments systems – so it truly is global)
- Content creators display the Flattr button on their site
- When members discover content they love, they hit that magic Flattr button
- At the end of the month, that member’s payment is distributed equally among creators whose buttons have been fondled.
It doesn’t get simpler than that.
Will it take off? I sincerely hope so.
There’s a huge hitch that I believe needs to be, um, unhitched before Flattr is widely accepted.
People expect content for free.
In my experience, it’s the older audience that is more prone to donations. @leolaporte has (among other things) a flexible payments tip jar. @GSPN has a Plus membership. Libsyn and Blubrry media storage services offer sponsorship opportunities from advertisers. And predictably – by and large – it’s the advertising that steers monetisation for any ‘live’ media on the web, right now (figures bandied about suggest Laporte and TWiT are mainlining about $2m annually from sponsors such as GoToMeeting and Audible.com).
I truly hope Flattr.com prevails in the battle for content reciprocity.
Do you think it will?