February 13, 2010 | Interesting Web Sites

Since you’re reading this article, you’re obviously a blog reader. Some of you may also be blog writers.

So how do you get paid for the content you write, and also give your (monetary) appreciation of those you read? For some, the answer is advertising.

Another payment solution (not involving advertising) which was hot in the 1990s was micro-payments. I.e., payments of less than $10 or so, even as small as a tenth of a cent. Most of the micropayments sites shriveled up leaving a trail of Paypal “Donate” buttons as the only way for most content-producers to receive donations.

Flattr.com is a new twist on that which might just succeed. Flattr was announced by Peter Sunde, former spokesman for The Pirate Bay, a Swedish BitTorrent site.

How Flattr works

Here’s how it’ll work, according to the YouTube on the Flattr site:

Up until now it’s been hard to give or small amounts of money easily for content. With Flattr, you set a flat fee that you’re willing to pay for content on the Internet each month.

Then, when you read or view content on the Web, you click the Flattr button to “flatter” producers whose content you like. Like a cake that you cut up in slices, at the end of the month, your flat fee (say $5) is split up among all the places you Flattr’d.

The website name “Flattr” is a play on both “flatter” and “flat-rate fee“.

My comments

The problem with content payments so far has been the clumsiness and difficulty of paying at each place you read an article or view a movie. Also, the credit card companies want a cut, and they don’t want to settle for just a few percent of 1 cent, which means you have to have a minimum payment to make the whole thing worthwhile. And if you pay a dollar at each content site you like, that can quickly add up.

But Flattr may solve the problem by aggregating small payments into bigger ones and sending them out all at once. And you get an “all-you-can-eat” model where you don’t have to worry about spending too much.

Unanswered questions

Some questions that might determine whether Flattr is going to be a success include:

• How will the site determine who is the true owner of the content, and whether that owner is the one being paid?
• Can you set your favorite content-producers to get payments every month instead of clicking Flattr buttons again and again?
• Will content be presented for free and Flattr presented as an option? Or will teasers be presented for free and the content shown only after it’s flattr’d?
• What if you don’t Flattr any content-producers in a given month? Will the flat-fee be saved up for the next month?
• If you click a Flattr button multiple times, will that content-producer get multiple slices of your flat fee?
• How much, if any, would Flattr get as a cut for running servers and paying staff?
• What about security, and preventing people from unknowingly Flattring a site?

Resources

Flattr

TorrentFreak article

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Explore related content: content, copyright, Flattr, micropayments, Peter Sunde, The Pirate Bay

13 Responses to “Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde Starts Flattr, A MicroPayment Site”

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