2D BOY made around $100,000 in a week. That’s $50,000 each for writing a blog post about a game they finished a year ago. By letting people pay whatever they wanted. 2D Boy stirred up a lot of discussion (previously) about game piracy when they used online scoreboard data to estimate an 82% piracy rate for their fantastic indie game World of Goo (previously). For World of Goo's first birthday, they decided to try the Radiohead model and let people buy the game for any price they choose. Now they've released extensive data about the results. Short version? "A huge success," even though the most commonly chosen price was only a penny. [more inside]
posted by straight on Oct 20, 2009 - 64 comments

" Under the plan, every citizen, rich or poor, would be entitled to it starting at birth. There would be no poverty test, no conditions and, therefore, no social bureaucracy. And no one would be told what he or she is permitted to do with the money." Promising news from Spiegel Online about a Guaranteed minimum income project in Otjivero, Namibia. (via)
posted by The Whelk on Aug 20, 2009 - 51 comments

Crowd surf, crowd sourcing, crowd funding? Like being supported by an ocean of people, or collaboration from around the world, crowd funding gets projects financial backing from the people. It's not new, as it has been the method for funding charities and political campaigns for a very long time, but it is a novel attempt at getting funds for other projects. Some people have placed their hopes in crowdfunding as a way to save journalism, while other companies are looking to get micropayment-scale public investments in fashion by offering investors the potential for a cut of future profits. The more typical return is physical goods, like getting the t-shirt you help sponsor [via mefi projects], or a limited edition version of the album. There's another site long these lines, but more free-form in structure: Kickstarter, crowdfunding for people who make stuff. [via mefi projects] The fundees can set a fundraising goal, deadline, and a set of rewards for backers. If the goal's reached by the deadline, then everyone's charged and backers get their goodies. If not, nobody's charged. The previously discussed 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, Kind of Bloop was funded this way.
posted by filthy light thief on May 20, 2009 - 7 comments

One creative cartoonist claims that micropayments would virtually eliminate the problem of piracy. On the other hand, programmer Sean Barrett disagrees.
posted by alona on Feb 17, 2007 - 16 comments

Kottke ends the micropatron experiment. After a year (and $39,900), Jason decides that loafing around collecting paypal payments is just too much work.
posted by crunchland on Feb 22, 2006 - 156 comments

Bitpass.com: A micropayment service for content providers. Many many worthy sites have been lost because they could not afford to continue, even though users would have been happy to pay for their service. Unfortunately, a system has not been in place to service the small transactions (paying fifty cents for a ten cent transaction is the opposite of making money). Enter Bitpass. Facilitating transactions as little as one cent, maybe online artists, cartoonists, pundits, humorists, etc, can start making money.
posted by o2b on Jul 1, 2003 - 23 comments

Micropayments to the artist as a young boy So, I've been thinking about this end of copyright thing as has Scott McCloud it seems. Coupled with Lance Glassdog's rant on the subject and something has been tickling my brainstem about it. Since when does being an artist equal being paid?
posted by fullerine on Jan 8, 2001 - 14 comments

Dru Jay has a good article on voluntary micropayments, and the theme is something the failed micropayments crowd never thought of: instead of forcing the charge before you see it, treat a site as shareware, and pay after you've enjoyed it. Thanks to two individuals, I'm $0.50 richer today. Are voluntary paypal donations the wave of the blogging future?
posted by mathowie on Jun 20, 2000 - 74 comments