Diane from Crafty Pod has spent a lot of time talking about the cost of producing free content, and how we can cultivate a supportive environment for it.
I’ve seen Flattr buttons all over lately, and never really took the time to look into it. I assumed it was yet another micropayment system, and frankly I’m kind of tired of micropayment systems. And while Flattr IS indeed a micropayment system, I think it’s kind of cool.
Instead of randomly deciding to pay for content/things, you decide how much per month total, across all sites you’re willing to spend supporting free content. Then you can go around Flattring things with reckless abandon. At the end of the month, your bounty is split among all the sites you’ve Flattr’d.
I’ve set myself up with it, and it honestly feels pretty nice to use. I can show my support for as much or as little as I like, and not feel like it’s slowly draining all of my savings.
If you think you get $2 / month or more worth of value from all of the free content on the internet, consider signing up for a Flattr account! I’ve added Flattr buttons to my blog; while only a handful of posts are what could be generously considered useful content, there are a few that I know folks have found quite handy. So go forth, and make the internet a more sustainable place for free information!
Thanks for sharing this, it’s something I will definitely try out for an open source project in the future. It’s that whole “getting some money for creating open source things” that I still don’t quite comprehend. I’m getting there though.