Michal Čihař - Flattr losing it's momentum?

Flattr losing it's momentum?

From what I can see on both my personal Flattr account (where was never really much going on) and on (more attractive) phpMyAdmin's profile, the amount of people using Flattr there goes down there every month. There was definitely big momentum when it has been introduced, many geeks saw it as great opportunity for making micro payments work. Maybe people who started to use it at beginning are slowly abandoning it (what is true for me as well) and new ones simply don't come that much or whatever else. Anyway I definitely don't have the big picture to see whether is global trend or just my project is more unlucky...

Comments

wrote on Jan. 10, 2012, 3:27 p.m.

Hi Michal,

You say that you’re slowly abandoning it - why’s that?

Cheers, Siim

wrote on Jan. 10, 2012, 3:58 p.m.

I had problems finding interesting projects which I did not yet flattr and this lead to lack of motivation to increase means.

In case I want to give some project bigger donation, using something like PayPal is better as it has lower fees than Flattr's 10%.

wrote on Jan. 10, 2012, 5:12 p.m.

Hi again,

This is a common critique by users who are slowly reducing their usage of Flattr.

Signing up new sites to start using Flattr has been our biggest challenge and while we’ve released things like Chrome add-on that makes it possible to flattr any Wikipedia article (http://blog.flattr.net/2011/12/support-wikipedia-with-our-new-chrome-extension/) it’s still an uphill battle.

Our own users are our strongest allies here as their active support and tweets like "Hi, I want to support you, why doesn’t your site have Flattr buttons on it" have been the most effective. Flattr-a-Twitter feature also helps.

wrote on Jan. 10, 2012, 6:04 p.m.

Not sure my last 2 comments came through (no links in comments allowed but no error msg?).

Anyway, wanted to say that this has been the biggest critique so far and things like flattr-a-twitter account, Chrome ad-on for flattring any Wikipedia article etc are steps in the direction to fix it.

And also that fee on donations is not 10% but a fixed 20 cent fee.

Joey Hess wrote on Jan. 10, 2012, 7:44 p.m.

I'm seeing a downward tendency in the number of clicks on my buttons. Maybe offset for a while by each click tending to result in a larger payment (which also supports your hypothesis), but it's nearly at the point where I start losing money.

The subscription feature means I flattr several things each month, but I rarely flattr new individual things.

wrote on Jan. 10, 2012, 7:57 p.m.

See my url for a graph.

wrote on Jan. 11, 2012, 11:22 a.m.

@Siim: Your comments were temporarily moderated as were identified as possible spam, not sure why...

Yes, there are donations, but these can be usually don also using other ways. However the fees goes against using subscriptions - in case I want to donate bigger amount of money somewhere, there are cheaper ways doing that than using subscription.

So my primary use case for Flattr would be appreciating some good articles or useful software occasionally with small amount. Not something I'd regularly use.

wrote on Jan. 12, 2012, 3:06 a.m.

Hi Michael,

I see your concern and understand it. As a former community person at Flattr (with it still close to my heart) I have some added questions.

I see that for your blog here the button for the blogpost is a static one for all posts and pages, am I right?
Considered replacing that with one of the autosubmit ones? Like we have available for Wordpress.com (you can use it to generate for any site). http://tools.flattr.net/wordpress

That would give a chance for people to Flattr your stuff more.

Also on http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/donate.php maybe you could add a shorter description to why Flattr would be a good choice for possible new users. (if that's what you'd be after)

Did you see in this months revenue report that you can send a thanks to everyone who supported you? It might be a good way to start a positive feedback look, and see if it helps anything for next month.

Good luck! And I really appreciate your phpMyAdmin!

wrote on Jan. 12, 2012, 9:50 a.m.

@maloki: I don't think that autosubmit buttons would improve situation (especially on low traffic site like my blog). Making few people who actually do Flattr my blog to flattr more posts will not really change anything important.

Also I did not want to include yet another external javascript. However now I see there is also URL Auto Submit function, which would fit better...

Yes, we could advertise Flattr more on our donations page. In the end it would really deserve more care.