Flattr: June’s Cake
I like Flattr. I like the idea of it: Flatter people with a click that is the digital equivalent of a coin ringing in a tip-jar. And for some reason it became customary to blog about how much you made past month. You get tipped, and you tip yourself. It’s social. No surprise: It’s from Sweden. They compare it to having a piece of birthday cake and giving a slice to everybody you want to flatter. The more people you flattr, the smaller the slices get. At the end of the month it’s payday: Everyone on Flattr empties their jars and counts the coins. There are people who had an income of more than 500 €, the are many more people who had about 10 € by the end of the day. And now I am going to spill the beans myself.
I made 1.07 €. Plus taxes.
For a Web 2.0 thingie that’s still in beta I’m rather surprised by that. In fact I made 90% of that the first day after I signed up with Flattr. The rest of the month was spent by posting creative stuff I did to Flattr, hoping some people would enjoy my music, my videos, my podcast, my photos or this blog as much as they’d toss me a coin.
In retrospect I even feel a little odd: Instead of doing the stuff I usually do for free and mainly for myself, it became a habit to wiggle them under people’s noses every day, hoping they would drop me some spare. Like a shabby one-man-band-guy on the street I play all my different instruments uni-sono, hopping around like a court jester and shout, strong yet friendly, for some monetary attention.
What has become of me?
I still have the PayPal donate-button on my posts labeled donationware and you know what? People actually clicked these. In the last 3 years I made 13 bucks that way. Without trying to sell myself out. And now: I spend considerable more time attempting to get my work noticed than I spend actually making cool stuff.
This has to end. The cake is a lie!
Hereby I declare, officially, that I will concentrate more on creating content than in the last weeks — while keeping my hopes up to find one day an actual bill in my tip jar, instead of the Euro-equivalent of nickels, dimes, buttons and small rocks. Well. Or at least really many of those. Why? Because I’m a greedy bastard who wants to take this girl out for dinner and the movies, you know. Well, at least I admit it, right?
And if you like this post then, please, flattr me.
Comments
maloki (Jul 02, 2010)
I do like this post. I’m sorry that you got so little. I’m not sure why, and I’m not sure about your statistics for visits either and how many of the people who read your blog actually use Flattr.
Since you have an active account, have you shared your 3 invites with people that might be interested in flattring you?
I talk alot about flattr. Even brokep him self has said that I’m obsessed. I think it’s a great thing and I want to see it develop.
What I have noticed is, I get alot more clicks on my blog as a whole (have two) than I do on singular posts. There’s also http://imflattrd.com where you can add yourself and you can be flattrd for just being you!
maloki (Jul 02, 2010)
I could probably write another essay about it. Check my blog, find the link collection, and read about it yourself!
Phil Strahl (Jul 02, 2010)
First of all: Thank you heaps for that very constructive input, Marie! In fact I already shared my invite-codes although never to be seen again.
I think it’s time for Flattr to just get out of beta in next couple of weeks and to have the New York Times write about them, then I expect a lot of new Flattr users, and some of them will stay.
In my experience most Flattr users are from northern and middle Europe and mainly blog. People who visit my blog, on the other hand, are from the US, Canada and, well, Germany and are observers rather than creators and for them Flattr does obviously not work.
Having a single Flattr button for the whole of my blog won’t so much work for me, since my content is really diversified. I guess my readers are more comfortable with approving to a certain post, but, who knows, maybe they don’t?
And, of course, I’m already on http://imflattrd.com/philstrahl — and somebody actually flattrd me. Thanks, anonymous!
maloki (Jul 02, 2010)
I am a bit of a Flattr-fan girl, so I like to give constructive comments on it. I’m also dedicated to make it work, as well you might have noticed by now.
Not with complete luck, but we’ll get there.
You have to put faith in stuff that you believe in. I too am working for Flattr to be able to cross the atlantic
I’ve seen some Canadian people use it
Why don’t you have flattr-comments?
Phil (Jul 03, 2010)
If Flatter keeps spreading like this, I predict we’ll be flattring India, US and Chinese people by the end of this year. And I don’t know why I don’t have flattr comments. I guess nobody wanted to comment on my things. But I’m cool with that.