Making money on the internet is hard. People are used to getting content for free and, because you can find everything on the internet, if you start charging then your customers will find someone who doesn’t. Rupert Murdoch has put all of his online publications behind pay walls: Rupert Murdoch’s online publications will stop getting any readers and they will go under[1].
This sounds great for the consumer; all that lovely content for free! But… producing really good content takes time and money, and if you want people to spend time and money doing something, they have to be able to make a living at it. If we want to continue getting good content, we have to find a way to pay for it.
Some blogs sell advertising space. That’s ok, but you need astronomically high levels of traffic before that begins to return significant amounts and not everyone wants advertising on their blog (I know I don’t).
So, advertising doesn’t work, paywalls don’t work, running a shop only works if your product is something other than the words you write; how can we ensure those interesting people who make the internet a fun place can make a living at what we want them to do? I’m hoping Flattr might hold the key.
Flattr is a micropayment site. The idea is that, if you like a website, you can make a voluntary donation and, although the donation will be small and not everyone will make it, hopefully enough people will put their hands in their pockets to keep the site going. In the case of Flattr, you set a monthly allowance and at the end of each month Flattr counts up how many sites you would like to pay, and splits your allowance equally between them. So, if your allowance is 2 Euros and you Flattr 10 sites, they’ll each get 20 cents. If you Flattr 100 sites, however, they’ll each get 2 cents.
That differs from a traditional pay wall in two crucial ways:
The first is that it is voluntary. With a pay wall, you can’t get new customers because they can’t see whether what they’re getting is worth the money until after they’ve paid. If you wait until you have a large customer base before instigating the pay system (Times), you will alienate all your old customers who are used to getting your content for free. With micropayments, new customers can see what’s there and old customers are offered a chance to contribute if they want to, but they aren’t locked out if they decline.
The second difference is that Flattr is very very easy. I sign up, put some money in my account and then, if I see content I like, all I have to do is click the Flattr button and the payment is made. There’s no rooting in my purse for my card and no filling in of arduous details over and over again for each site I would like to pay.
Flattr breaks something called “the penny barrier”. The penny barrier is the term used to describe the inordinate difficulty of parting a web surfer with that first penny, but, once you’ve got them to sign up to paying the first, it is very easy indeed to get them to pay more. Flattr solves the problem by getting you to deposit money in one and at a time and place psychologically removed from when you make the payment. When you see something you like, all you have to do is click a button and the payment is made at the end of the month. You don’t even have to decide on the amount, because Flattr automatically divvies up your allowance between every site you Flattred.
The problem with Flattr is that it needs to grow. It will only work if lots of people are signed up to it and Flattr buttons become commonplace. I have had an account for ages, but I didn’t put any money in because I’d never seen a button. Finally, last week, I saw Wikileaks have added a Flattr button and so I bit the bullet and added some cash. I was going to donate anyway, but I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and give Flattr a boost as well. Sure enough, since then I have paid money to two other sites that I wouldn’t have had I not set up my account[2].
Flattr is very new, and it isn’t quite right yet; I have two major complaints. First, I can’t Flattr multiple times, so even though I would like to give Wikileaks more of my allowance than some blog post I saw by some guy that I quite liked, I can’t; secondly, I can only Flattr once per page, in the case of a blog, that means I can’t Flattr on a per post basis. That leads to unfairness, because a site I read one post on in a month will get the same payment as on I read every day. I would like more control over how much I give to each place and both problems could be easily solved but allowing me to click the botton as many times as I like.
Flattr is only in beta, so hopefully they will resolve those issues but, in the meantime, if you would like to see the people you read regularly getting paid for their work, sign up[3].
1. Contrast the number of comments on the headline Times articles with those on the Guardian. Times: 10-15 comments, Guardian: over a hundred. Comments don’t tell the whole story, but I suspect 15 comments for the headline story in a major broadsheet is symptomatic of a woefully low number of readers.
2. I have also, of course, added my own Flattr button, but not out of any particular wish to make money at this. More as an experiment to see what happens and as a way of spreading the word; Flattr will only take off if content providers start putting up the buttons.
3. Because it’s only in an early phase, there is a waiting list for invites. As a member, I have a couple left, so if you would like one, let me know, but otherwise you may have to wait a bit to sign up.
