Support Online Creators with Flattr

In the internet age, people spend a lot of time making things to share with others with no promise of financial compensation for their time – it’s simply shared because people enjoy doing it. Bloggers, software developers, and artists share their content with the world, often for free, and so it’s natural that some of the people coming across this may want to give back. Naturally, some of these creators put donation links on their websites but with the extortionate fees of some of the payment processors, it can often be useless donating small amounts. Then again, if you did want to help out every creator by donating a large amount, your wallet would probably empty pretty quickly.

Flattr is a compromise. Well, it’s a lot more than that.

Flattr

Flattr is a donation system with a difference. Instead of using complicated payments systems to go through the process and then having to choose how much you’d like to spend, with Flattr all you need to do is decide how much you’d like to spend each month and then whenever you see the Flattr button, you can simply share that wealth with those content creators. It’s really that simple, and I’m a huge fan of this concept. In all honesty, I’m surprised it hasn’t already been done before on this big a scale.

The Button

Where traditional methods of donating to people online usually involves using a payments system and a several-step process to transfer the money over to another account, Flattr makes this process so much simpler. From a creator standpoint, this can be a really helpful feature because it allows users to make impulse donations and not really have to worry about spending more because their donation will simply be shared amongst the people they’ve flattred. It also probably gives users a nice warm feeling inside that they’ve supported something they’ve really found useful – another important factor. Luckily, it doesn’t take much effort to get Flattr up and running for any creator wanting to add a ‘flattr’ button to their website.

The wordsmiths at Flattr have named each of these pieces of content ‘things’ and they can be just about anything. Whether it’s a blog post, a blog itself, a piece of software you’ve created, there is no limit to the range of things that can be created (providing they’re made by you). You can easily review all of your things directly from the dashboard to see just how many times each has been flattred and overall see how popular your thing is.

To submit things, you’re going to first need to add the button to your website. Flattr allows people to do this by manually submitting their thing, with additional details such as a description, the type, language and users can also choose whether or not to include these in the public Flattr catalogue. It also supplies a range of plugins for popular publishing platforms and other web apps and should they not directly allow buttons to be added, they can be enabled for showing to people with the Flattr browser plugin installed. There’s also an extensive API available so the tech-savvy of users can also create their own methods of adding things. Once the button is installed, your users can then begin flattring you.

Finding Things

Once users have deposited money into their Flattr account and allocated that month’s maximum spend, they can then begin flattring other users of the service. To do this, as mentioned before, users need only click the Flattr button when they see it on a website.

In addition to this, Flattr also has an online catalogue that allows users to easily find popular things and check them out, giving the option of flattring these if they like them. In short, if you’ve got some money deposited inside the Flattr account and want to find some worthy causes to share this with, the Flattr Catalog is the place for this.

However, the problem of having money deposited but no interesting things flattred shouldn’t be a problem. If a user has allocated money but hasn’t actually flattred anything that month, the money is simply kept in the account until they flattr something the next time. To ensure that the money is shared each month regardless of whether users are actively flattring, users can also set up recurring flattr subscriptions so that certain things are automatically flattred each month. Everyone’s a winner.

And more!

In addition to the basic functionality, Flattr also offers some more features for its users to enjoy. The first is a social network of sorts. Users can follow others to see just what they’re flattring and Flattr makes it incredibly easy to find these, especially if that Flattr account is connected to an existing social account. Flattr makes it ridiculously easy to follow other people you know from Twitter and Facebook that have signed up to Flattr in a single click so you can easily see what’s hot amongst your friends and if you share that view, flattring of these things can begin.

Finally, the last feature of Flattr worth mentioning is Flattr Mobile. Though the whole Flattr model seems to work perfectly with the web already, Flattr makes sure that flattring isn’t just limited to online. QR codes can be generated and printed for display in real-world situations so that should you see someone with a Flattr QR code and want to flattr them, simply install the Flattr app, scan the QR code and your wealth will be shared.

My Thoughts

From the tone of this review, I imagine it’s pretty clear to see my enthusiasm for this site. It’s a concept that I’ve never really seen before and as such, it’s incredibly promising as the number of people using the app to give and receive flattrs grows. The team have addressed a real need in the world of online creation whereby consumers don’t want to over-pay and those creating the content don’t want to be penniless for their amazing creation simply because the payment processors want to take a larger cut of the donation.