[gloob]

You had to give money before you were able to receive money... Sorry, that seems like a classic pyramid scheme.

I'm having a hard time thinking of a single B2B company that isn't a pyramid scheme, by that definition. Pretty much everyone spends money in order to make money. Easy example: before I can build and sell my widgets, I need to buy the parts for them.

[awj]

Well, sure, but you can make almost any statement sound ridiculous when you abuse word meaning to pull it that far out of the original context.

Being required to put money into Flattr before other people could give you money sounds a bit shady. It would be like the postal service refusing to deliver your mail unless you send a few letters every month.

[ugh]

Hm, so what if Flattr charged you a $5 fee instead? They just want you to use it yourself, I can see nothing wrong with that.

[awj]

There isn't anything wrong with asking people to use it themselves, but then it also isn't quite the "online tip jar" that many people want to see it as.

Maybe that's the point, but I honestly have been confused as to why the process with Flattr is so complicated. What I want is a "great blog post, kid, here's a quarter" button. Flattr feels like it's mostly there except I have to keep track of who I've Flattr'd each month to make sure I'm handing out the amounts I wanted to. It could be that in the end this is "the better way", but for the need I feel this mechanism is kind of off-putting.

[jacques_chester]

> What I want is a "great blog post, kid, here's a quarter" button.

A conventional tipjar, by the sounds of it. These have been tried and they generally don't work. My theory is that this is because they violate Krug's 1st Law.

[Peaker]

The idea, I think is to avoid disincentivizing users from clicking, as they know they pay a flat rate anyway.

[idonthack]

capitalism is apparently the biggest pyramid scheme ever