Kachingle

= "Social Cents for the Open Web".

URL = http://www.kachingle.com/

Description

"Kachingle enables effortless user-centric monetization of online content and services. Many online content and service creators, from individuals to startups to giant media corporations, are unable to sustain their businesses based on advertising revenue alone. Kachingle implements a new business model for these sites that can coexist with, complement, or in some cases, replace advertising.

Before the internet, publishers set the price of books, artists and photographers set the price of their work, newspapers set the price of their subscriptions, services such as software tools set the price of their products. Some content has traditionally been free but paid for through advertising such as broadcast TV. But nearly all content and service pricing has been one or a combination of fixed price, subscription price, or free but subsidized through advertising.

After the internet, these business models have persisted but with some difficulty as the physical manifestation of content has in most cases disappeared. Electronic versions are trivial and essentially cost free to create, publish, and distribute. Additionally, the quantity of content and services has grown exponentially. Because there is so much content and so many services available, subscription fees are difficult to implement as consumers are overwhelmed by the choices, the aggregate cost, and the inability to connect price with value delivered. Fixed price and subscription price business models have suffered more than advertising, partly because they require barriers to access, which removes them from the powerful internet-based viral mechanisms such as links, widgets, and social sharing. But even advertising has its limitations online as it can be intrusive, irrelevant, or insufficient to support costs. Business Model

85% of all money provided by Kachinglers is passed thru to the Site Owners. 15% is retained to cover administration and financial transaction expenses. This 15% includes all PayPal and credit card fees." (http://www.kachingle.com/site/overview)

How-To

See: http://www.kachingle.com/help/howto

"# As a Kachingler who has downloaded the KachingleX browser extension, you'll see a purple bar containing the Kachingle Medallion across the top of thousands of sites you may choose to support. You may see other kinds of Kachingle Medallions embedded in the pages of hundreds more sites as well.

1. To become a contributor to any site you choose, just mouse over the Medallion so it expands, and click the "Kachingle" button. The Medallion turns green, the Kachingler count goes up (that’s you!), and you're now kachingling the site!
2. Each day you come back, the Medallion will recognize you and count your visit. (No additional clicks required.)
3. Toward the end of your 30 day trial period (we'll remind you!), begin your monthly $5 Pay-Ins (via PayPal or credit card), and each month your $5 will be distributed among all the sites you've chosen to kachingle, based on how often you visited each.
4. If you don't see a Medallion on a site you want to kachingle, use Kachingle Anything to add the site to the Kachingle network in under a minute."

(http://www.kachingle.com/help/faq)

History

"The concept of Kachingle was first envisioned by Cynthia Typaldos (the founder of Kachingle) in May 2003. The timing then was not right for Kachingle, because everyone still believed that advertising would pay for online content and services. While ad-supported business models are wonderful conceptually, they have not proven to be enough revenue by themselves to sustain most creative online work.

At Kachingle we believe the timing is now right for our voluntary crowdfunding system, as seven years later, the real costs and value of content and services are becoming clearer. And we consumers have also become creators, thru our blogs, photos, videos, and so on, -- we now know that we gotta pay to play. So many consumers (but not all, and we don't need them all) are willing to make small voluntary contributions, if it is fair, easy, painless, and there is something in it for us. And that's what the Kachingle service does." (http://www.kachingle.com/site/overview)