ZinesFromOuterSpace about flattr and ZiP...

miloh froggytoad at gmail.com
Fri Mar 2 08:51:43 UTC 2012


Our online outlet for the zine now has a flattr plugin running!

Flattr users provide a monthly fund of as little as 3 Euros that gets
split between anything they can find and flattr on the internet. In a
typical month I flattr libre source software projects on github,
independent designers on thingiverse.com, and blog posts by authors
that keep me informed and entertained.

All of my monthly balance gets evenly split between the total of the
things I flattr. If I choose to set 5 euros as my monthly 'flattr' and
I flattr 5 things, then each of those things gets 1 of the euros.  If
I don't flattr anything for a month, the sum monthly amount then goes
to a charity chosen by the operators of the site.  Every month starts
a new cycle.

I recieve income into my flattr account when people flattr the things
I make and post on my Thingiverse account, which is connected to
flattr. Sites like thingiverse (and now zine.noisebridge.net) have
plugins that connect the user's content to their flattr account. Check
out http://www.thingiverse.com/miloh for an example.  I got a few
flattrs for some things I created on there.

If you are a content creator for zip interested in using the plugin
(tony I lookin at you!), then you first you need an flattr account.
The account should be for you personally (I already made a generic
account for the Zip zine which will have its own button on a static
page). Next, you can add your flattr account info into the zip zine
using your dashboard when you log on. You can enter your flattr
account info here.   The plugin will enable you to add a flattr button
to posts if you *want* to.

All of this is largely experimental, but I'm really excited by the
prospects.  Flattr has somewhere between 100,000 and 1 million users.
 That's 200k-2million euros being used in micropayments on a monthly
basis.   According to an older article I found, in 2010 70% of the
users were not creating content, i.e. they could just be there to
support content like ZiP!

Flattr was started in Europe because one of the creators of Flattr is
Peter Sunde, the co-founder of the pirate bay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sunde

More about the wordpress plugin for flattr:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flattr/

grain of salt:
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-publishers/


-ronald miloh alexander



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