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[drwyckoff]

Have any of you seen this? https://flattr.com/ It is a payment method by one of the pirate bay guys. It just went beta.

Toady really should sign up for this, so he can receive a chunk of my monthly donations.

[Capntastic]

Welcome to Pathspace

[Dave Mongoose]

It sounds like a surreal pyramid scheme, but instead of paying up you pay sideways...

Paypal is fine for me, thanks!

[Cruxador]

It sounds like a surreal pyramid scheme, but instead of paying up you pay sideways...

So it's actually a Great Wall of China Theme.

[Sowelu]

It sounded pretty interesting when it first came out.  It sounds pretty cool now--but it kind of needs more support.

I'm guessing that if you want to get in on it, sooner is better (so you get a bigger cut).

[Vengeful Donut]

Of the monthly amount we have a 10% fee to keep all the Flattr systems afloat, hope that's Ok?

So to be eligible to receive money, you need to pay them 2 (?) euros per month. Then your "flattr buttons" are enabled and people can give you money, but flattr keeps 10% (!!) of all money put in.

Compare paypal's domestic rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per transfer for sums under $3,000.

A 10% cost is better than 2.9% + $0.30 when the amount being transferred is less than ($0.30 / (.1 - .029)) = $4.22. Otherwise it's worse.

So the important questions are...   
How much money in potential micropayments is floating around?
How many of the larger paypal chunks would move over?
How good is the extra publicity?

[Timst]

It just went public today. It's a system that is being used on the blog of Notch, creator of Minecraft, and he seems pretty happy with it (well, at least he was enthousiast when he implemented it).

[Fourdots]

So, how many people who play dwarf fortress user Flattr? And would adding a Flattr button lead to an appreciable increase in donations, based on that number? Does it provide any improvement over paypal?

Things which need to be known to answer those questions include the average number of flattr buttons clicked per user per month (to give an idea of what fraction of the monthly donation each button click represents), the average monthly total donation amount (2 euros seems to be the minimum), and the number of dwarf fortress players using flattr. If the first two items apply directly to the dwarf fortress players with flattr, all the better. Once those three bits of information are known, we can easily crunch the numbers to figure out how much Toady would get out of adding flattr, and therefor whether it would be worth it. Also useful to know is whether users would end up either using flattr or donating, and then the difference in how much Toady would get between the two (a 0.10 euro flattr ever month of the year is a lot less significant than a 20 euro donation once a year. If there are twenty people flattring per person donating, flattr becomes preferable, though).

Also, considering the 2 euros/month which toady would need to put in, 24 euros in flattry would be necessary to break even. So, if you're using flattr, I ask you: how much is a flattr worth, given your usage? Please answer, it's useful for figuring out exactly how valuable flattr actually is, as a network, to content creators.

(I'm rather tempted to start a poll to try to find out.)

[kiffer.geo]

Ok lets pretend I'm flattr user and I put 10 euro into my account each month... And being a big DF fan I always give Toady a click... but the during the month I see 3 more things that I think deserve a flattr and also have a button...
So each of them gets 2.5 (or rather 2.25) which is enough to pay the 2 euro a month standing charge, so any donations after mine are a plus... As flattr grows more sites have flattr buttons so I click on more buttons... So a few months later I'm clicking on a flattr button every other day... So my money is split down to 60 cent (Including knocking off the 10%) which feels like a piddling amount to be giving Tarn...
now if the number of people using flattr to donate has grown at the same rate as (or a faster rate than) people with good content and flattr buttons then it's ok...
And if the other users arn't putting in 2 euro and clicking on 5 buttons a day and giving pennies to 150 people...

I think the 10% number is a bit high... but I guess the credit card people take a cut out of that too right?

I think flattr would work for webcomics and such were people visit periodically and might go today's Sluggy was great *click*, meh today's Schlock Mercenary was filler no click... And at the end of the month you've clicked Sluggy 20 times, Schlock 15, Penny Arcade 5, DMFA 8 and some idiots 5million views youtube video of himself falling in a lake once...
But for donationware like DF I think a lump sum every now and then is the way to go... Though I guess I check the dev log every day (more dev log entries please!)... I could go click a flattr button there ever time I like what I see and Toady would get a more steady stream of little payments.

[kiffer.geo]

... I could have sworn I posted on this topic lastnight...
I'm a little confused.
Anyway... The 2 euro cost is effectively nothing ... If it increases donations by anyamount it would be a good thing...

edit: what the heck? i swear that my above post was not displaying a minute ago! Fourdots' post one showing in the forum index and when I clicked on it it was the last one there... Maybe it was a caching issue... Or because I was using the WAP2 template on my phone... Sorry about the post.

[Urist McDepravity]

10% is insanely large fee.
That would work for micropayments, but 10% off 3000$?

However, Toady could add it to his devlog, with separate button for each entry.

[qwert]

Considering Donut's calculations and that (as I understand) its an even split of $10 between clicks, assuming people click more than 2 things a month Toady actually comes ahead on fees for small donations, not counting any donations from people that wouldn't have donated otherwise.

[Eugenitor]

Yeah, this is an absolute joke compared to Paypal. 10%, and you pay just to keep your account open? No.

The only thing that makes it tempting is its TPB pedigree, which implies that it won't have any of the fail associated with Paypal.

[Timst]

Well, it's a micropayment platform. It is obviously not intended for $3000 donations (who give that anyway ?). The idea is to add a bit of money (let's say 5 €) every month on your account, and to "flattr" whenever you like what you see. At the end of the month, your money is divided between every button you clicked. Sure, that might be 0.36 € per button if you clicked 15 times, but if 50 person did the same thing, that means a net gain of (18 * 0.9) - 2 = 14.2 € for each button. Sure, that's not a lot, but that's better than nothing.

Also, the goal is to "casualize" the donation process. Nowadays if you want to give something, you have to pay at least 10 €, go to Paypal, confirm multiple times that yes, you wish to send that money, and etc. The whole process is a hassle, so you end up only donating a few times per year. With Flattr, it's way more easy to give whenever you want. And since each account can also receive, you just have to put a flattr button on your blog / forum signature / website, and if you're talented enough, you'll soon enough equilibrate your balance.

[Heavenfall]

To me, my money actually going where they're supposed to is more important than me having to click a few extra buttons.