We first took a look at Flattr.com when they launched last summer but decided the model wouldn’t work as set up. Well the crew behind the innovative Swedish micropayments service have wised up, and this week decided to allow any publisher to sign up for the service without conditions.
The result is likely to be an explosion in users and sites joining up to share in the automatic payment system, if only because it’s so darned clever. The key is the fact that you don’t have to worry about setting up subscriptions or allocating money or any fiddle faddle at all.
All you do is join Flattr, allocate whatever sum of money you want to your monthly pot, and the system will then automatically share out the pot between all the sites you select with a single button click. It’s a no-brainer, and yet your monthly spend is still totally under your control. Genius.
For the website owners and publishers, it’s also super simple to set up. There are quick installs for many different platforms, including plugins and settings for WordPress, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Drupal, Blogger et al, and a lovely looking dashboard for owners to manage the funds they receive. There’s even a Flattr plugin for Android apps.
As if all that wasn’t enough, you can actually earn Flattr money (which converts to real money via Paypal) by buying stuff on Amazon, through a brilliant Firefox or Chrome addon which means you can basically help fund your favourite online sites, services and blogs for free if you’re a regular online shopper.
We could go on about cool features like auto-subscribe, which let you specify how many months you want to support a site with automatic donations on the 1st of each month, but suffice to say we think everyone should sign up immediately and start an online micropayments revolution that will rival Google Adsense for supporting awesome content on the web.
And of course if you would like to set up an auto-subscribe to help fund a small red furry Polecat, we wouldn’t say no. 
You’ll find our badge top right in the sidebar. We will be using Flattr from now on to support our favourite online haunts, that’s for certain. It’s just too cool not to.
When you’re registered to flattr, you pay a small monthly fee. You set the amount yourself. At the end of the month, that fee is divided between all the things you flattered. You’re always logged in to the account. That means that giving someone some flattr-love is just a button away. And you should! Clicking one more button doesn’t add to your fee, it just divides the fee between more people! Flattr tries to encourage people to share. Not only pieces of content, but also some money to support the people who created them. With love!
Guten Tag! Ich habe versucht deinen RSS-Feed zu abonnieren – aber es funktioniert irgendwie nicht. Ich nutze Firefox Feedreader. Wieso geht das nicht? Grüße aus Hamburg