Alex.

I’m also thinking, though, that there’s no reason an artist couldn’t just use both flattr and paypal donations. Even if, at its start, flattr is quite small, there’s really no reason NOT to add the widget beneath your work. Flattr shifts the profit model so that advertisement/sharing is profitable, and if someone REALLY LURVES your work, you can let them paypal you all the money they want. Seems just about perfect to me.

I’ve been involved as an observer, commenter, consumer, and producer of free culture content since about 2000, and there are some things about about Flattr that I wonder if you’ve thought of (ideas to consider as you design and improve Flattr)…

Although I think there are many people who want to donate to free culture projects, to do it through Flattr, they must first sign up. This commitment will immediately cast what was a “gift decision” into an “exchange decision” mindset, and they will of course ask themselves “what am I getting for joining this service?”

The solution is to provide some kind of member-service “draw.” It could be as simple as an announcements list or a venue for seeing the success of artists using Flattr (it’s well documented that donors are more responsive when they can see the direct results of their donations). But there should be something. It needn’t be “worth” the cost of joining — the user will still see their membership primarily as about supporting artists. They’ll want to feel good about doing that — the purpose of the incentive is mostly to give them a sense of belonging to that group. It’s a social incentive.

Also, of course, you should give users flexibility in how much they pay. Clearly you’ll need some minimum to cover fixed costs, but it should be low, so as to encourage broad participation. Then you should provide steps up to much higher levels. Some few people (or foundations) may want to contribute hundreds of dollars per month to artists, most won’t want to spend more than they do on video rentals.

Also, the simple “even pie slices” model is okay, but it carries some problems. Some users may not want to dilute the donation to their favorites and may withhold contributions to works they are only a little interested in. It would be helpful to be able to edit the “slices” on the Flattr site. Or to have some other means of control — for example, what happens when you click on the Flattr icon for a work twice? Do they get a double slice? That might be all that’s required. Users will of course want to be able to look at where their money is going, too — presumably you’ll already have provided an account view with this information.

Even though it might seem like a no-brainer, artists may also not immediately appreciate the point of joining Flattr. After all, until you’ve got some users, the “pot” is going to be awfully small, so they may not see the advantage over just creating a PayPal link on their own site.

Artists have another problem too — free culture works are not always by one artist or even by an organized group. This can create some unintentional friction if one person is holding the “hat” to accept donations — how does that get distributed among contributors? For many projects this is easy, but for a few, it’s a nightmare. And many artists are poor accountants.

A frequently-needed feature, then, is an adjustable “pie” that can be used to automatically distribute contributions according to some agreed-upon formula to selected contributors. Of course, a project could handle that internally. But if you could make it easy, that might be another draw for artists to sign up.

Good luck with this project, it sounds VERY promising!