Often, I stumble upon an engrossing website or an excellent blog post or WordPress plugin, and I immediately think about donating to the cause, but for whatever reason, I rarely ever give. Usually a lack of a “donate” button (from PayPal or Amazon) deters me from doing so.
There is now a fix: new micro-payment/donating service Flattr. What’s cool about is that it allows you to financially support writing or videos or plugins (or whatever!) you like.
Since Flattr is based in Europe, a majority of the postings are in a foreign language (i’ve noticed mostly German). To bypass this language barrier, i use Google Translate (included by default in Chrome), which can translate any website to the language of choice.
Flattr’s About page sums up the service better than i could (well, i’m just being lazy lol):
Flattr was founded to help people share money, not just content. Before Flattr, the only reasonable way to donate has been to use Paypal or other systems to send money to people. The threshold for this is quite high. People would just ignore the option to senddonations if it wasn’t for a really important cause. Sending just a small sum has always been a pain in the ass. Who would ever even login to a payment system just to donate €0.01? And €10 was just too high for just one blog entry we liked…
Flattr solves this issue. When you’re registered to flattr, you pay a small monthly fee. You set the amount yourself. At the end of the month, that fee is divided between all the things you flattered. You’re always logged in to the account. That means that giving someone some flattr-love is just a button away. And you should! Clicking one more button doesn’t add to your fee, it just divides the fee between more people! Flattr tries to encourage people to share. Not only pieces of content, but also some money to support the people who created them. With love!
Hope this was helpful. If so, Flattr it! ^_^