There’s been a hell of a lot of chat recently about exactly how you can make money through social media. So far, the only ones cashing in have been the founding principals when they sell off a fraction of their site to a traditional media company, which immediately gives them an insane valuation in the billions. Right now the situation smacks of the late nineties, dot com “Field of dreams” model. The one that said if you build it they will come, then we’ll start making dumpster loads of money by selling lots and lots of really shitty and intrusive [...]

Looking to democratize the grant process, Society6 has launched a new patronage system based on micropayments.
“When one of our artist friends was invited to show her work at a prestigious art show, but wasn’t able to secure the funds to go, we knew there was a very real problem to solve”, said co-founder, Justin Wills. To do this, “we started to look at the existing support infrastructure for artists and other creative people,” said co-founder Lucas Tirigall-Caste, and “realized that it was particularly bureaucratic, exclusive and wasn’t designed for scale.” So they re-imagined the process as a meritocracy—one where [...]

When we look at the discussion happening around monetizing content on the web, payment models from the likes of the Wall Street Journal, Consumer Reports and Apple’s iTunes are the successes that are most often held aloft as potential saviors for an entire industry of producers. But no one seems to be talking about the quiet successes of cellphone providers and mobile content creators. Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to download everything from games to ringtones and often for a price, yet no one seems to be complaining about not being able to get them for free. Why [...]

Kachingle is a new service that looks like it could bridge the gap between scattered micropayments and free content. Many old media pundits have been suggesting micropayments as a solution to monetizing dying newspapers and other online content, but historically, micropayments don’t do as well as they should. It’s a hassle to pay every time you want to read an article, and you can often find the same content for free elsewhere.
Kachingle acts as a distributor of microdonations. Member sites would sign up and place a Kachingle badge on their page. Readers pledge to send a monthly payment to Kachingle [...]