contenture.com - 649 views 
Web sites everywhere are struggling to make the money they need to stay alive. Ad revenues have never been very good, but the last few years have been especially harsh. By paying for Contenture, you are directly supporting the web sites you actually use, like Forgotten Chicago. Your money is automatically distributed amongst the sites you visit, based on how often you visit each one. With memberships starting at only $5.99/month, feel great and support independent websites today!
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Contenture is so great! Websites can monetize without showing stupid ads or forcing users to pay for content..
Brad, you might wanna check them out, the Clicky team is behind it...
I've been seeing links for this lately. How is this different from asking readers to donate via paypal or something like tipjoy?
Edit: I see this now:
and
One concern I'd have is with outsourcing the valuation of my readers to another company. WindyCitizen is building has an extremely valuable audience. Our most active users and submitters are all Chicago reporters, editors, bloggers, PR mavens and other folks who either work or follow local media closely. Letting another company set a value for their attention and participation might solve some technical problems for some sites and would certainly scale better than in-house advertising, but I'm not 100% sure it'd make sense in the long run.
Here's the problem with this and every other company along its lines: inertia.
Instead of a traditional ad model, wherein a visitor views an ad and the publisher makes a little money off that view (or possibly only when a visitor clicks), the micropayment model requires the visitor to go to some other site, decide to create an account, and either add money to it or associate it with a money account such as PayPal. That's three extra steps to expect visitors to complete, any of which may be a deal-breaker that disconnects the pay model. Research finds that nearly 60% of shopping carts are abandoned before purchase is completed -- and that's for actual products they're interested in buying, not websites that would otherwise be free and hassle-free.
Systems like Kachingle add yet another step -- requiring visitors to not just sign up with their system but actively click a button on participating sites. Even if readers are engaged, making sure they remember to click a button somewhere on the page would be difficult without being intrusive.
This model has been tried several times over the past 10 or 12 years. It has never caught on in meaningful numbers, even when Amazon did it.
Agreed. Systems like this turn readers into customers immediately. If that's your goal, great. If not, well, you've got a problem.
I have never been a fan of how these systems work. I feel the overall concept has potential though, it just needs to be done right. I have no idea what "right" is but I have faith Peter Sunde may with flattr.
To clarify:
Forgotten Chicago will function with absolutely no differences to non-Contenture users, every single section of our site is (and forever will be) FREE. Forgotten Chicago's mission is to educate and enlighten, not to turn a profit.
If a Contenture user comes upon forgottenchicago.com, they will enjoy the same content as a free user, but won't see a top ad-bar and banners in the forums. It's that simple.
We have had both ad-zones for years, it's visual pollution as far as we're concerned (we can't stand ads either,) and Contenture will allow us to continue delivering the same high-quality content, with all the research and costs that come along with it, while at the same time making our readers and contributors feel great knowing that they directly help the stuff they like to read about while enjoying an ad-free Forgotten Chicago in the process, something that has never been possible. If any one of our cherished readers or contributors decide that they want to pay a $5.99 Contenture fee every month, that's awesome, we are gently promoting Contenture but would never shove it down anyone's throat, and I think most site operators will have the same model, customers know that it's going to a good cause.
I don't believe any brand dilution or 'second-thoughts' will occur about the site. Unless an operator does something drastic (like lock out certain areas or otherwise alienate legacy traffic) the user will certainly enjoy at least the same experience if not better (ad -free, extra stuff, whatever operators decide to do with their Contenture sites.)
In short, Contenture is more like a donation than a subscription, that will rely on how much people think our content is worth, if anything? This will surely be an interesting start-up...
phew, that was a bit of a rant, sorry yall.