Flattr does not work on smallish blogs
News about flattr.com has had its impact recently – for example there were top rated submissions on Hackernews here, here and here.
It seems like a great idea to generate modest revenue for content creators of all kind. So I gave it a try. My blog is usually not very high traffic, but there is a steady stream of 6-7k visitors to my old articles. Those articles generate a time on page between 6-10 minutes each. I like to think that people stay and enjoy the read. So I made myself an account and installed the official flattr plugin for WordPress.
10’000 unique visitors to my blog later, I received no single flattr.
By no means does my experiment imply any significant validity for the general public, but I see no reason to keep the advertising buttons on my blog, either.
Category: articles | Tags: flattr, revenue 3 comments »
October 31st, 2010 at 4:58 pm
I considered adding flattr buttons to my blog, too, but when I considered the pros (someone could give me a small amount of money) vs the cons (I had to pay a small amount too, add another button, look like I wanted even more monetisation) and decided to give up. It looks like I would have had the same problems as you do, thus I’ll probably forget about flattr in my blog.
Cheers,
Ruben
October 31st, 2010 at 5:34 pm
@Ruben: Exactly my point. When advertising a service, you should have a certain gain from it. After all you’re cluttering your own page. Anyway, I gave it a 10k sample try – now I can concur in good conscience with your assessment.
November 18th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I think the truth beneath Flattr is that it is aimed mainly at those sites that have some strong content to display and therefore need bucks to be produced on and on. I mean that noone’s going to pay for writing but they’re probably willing to visit a site of videos and stuff, and then pay a small amount to feel they’re giving some sort of patronage to it.
Giving money to someone to go to Brazil and do a documentary on favelas it’s different to flattr some plain text blog made at desk.
My two cents, and for the record i think Flattr won’t work :D