Kachingle is an effortless way to support your favorite sites, online publications, and blogs just by visiting those sites after becoming a Kachingler. Kachingle is also a way for Site Owners to monetize their online content without resorting to paywalls, per-story "tipping" or other cumbersome, easily-bypassed (and traffic-killing) methods of revenue collection.

As a Kachingler, you choose the sites you want to support — your favorite blog or your local newspaper, for example.

Once a month, you make an automatic Pay-In to your Kachingle account. Kachingle counts the days you visit your chosen sites, and at the end of each month, divvies up your Pay-In among those sites based on the frequency of your visits.

Kachingle is also a social-networking system — a way to share the sites you love with colleagues, friends and family via Twitter and Facebook, if you so choose — building an online persona around your Kachingle contributions. You can also add a link to your My Kachingle page — showing the sites you support — in your email signature or your profile on Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, MySpace, etc.

Most importantly, Kachingle is user-centric. You, the Kachingler, the consumer of online content, determine the sites you want to support.

1. Join Kachingle. All you need is a Facebook account or email address, user name, and a password.
2. As a Kachingler who has downloaded the KachingleX browser extension, you'll see a purple bar containing the Kachingle Medallion across the top of thousands of sites you may choose to support. You may see other kinds of Kachingle Medallions embedded in the pages of hundreds more sites as well.
3. To become a contributor to any site you choose, just mouse over the Medallion so it expands, and click the "Kachingle" button. The Medallion turns green, the Kachingler count goes up (that’s you!), and you're now kachingling the site!
4. Each day you come back, the Medallion will recognize you and count your visit. (No additional clicks required.)
5. Toward the end of your 30 day trial period (we'll remind you!), begin your monthly $5 Pay-Ins (via PayPal or credit card), and each month your $5 will be distributed among all the sites you've chosen to kachingle, based on how often you visited each.
6. If you don't see a Medallion on a site you want to kachingle, use Kachingle Anything to add the site to the Kachingle network in under a minute.

It's that simple!
For more details, visit our Getting Started pages.

The name was derived from the English words for these sounds:

Ka-ching! — the sound of an old cash register ringing up a sale
Jingle — the sound made by shaking a purse full of coins

Thus: Kachingle!

• Support online newspapers you rely upon to keep up with current events
• Support your favorite blogs
• Support sites that provide you a free service
• Share your support with colleauges, friends, and family (and soon Twitter followers and others), and turn them on to the sites you visit
• Build an online persona around your Kachingle contributions
• And do all this on your own terms, and without having to have to support each site though separate means

A quantum shift has taken place in journalism and other media. With more and more consumers getting their news online and their music for free, many of the sources on which you rely for information and entertainment are having a hard time paying for the content you need and enjoy.

The quality of news reporting is suffering as a result. Many newspapers are closing bureaus, cutting their ranks of reporters, or folding altogether. Others are considering blocking their sites to readers who don't pay for access.

Gaming, video, music and other web services also need more support from users to stay afloat.

Kachingling is a way to contribute to the sites you choose, with a single click on the Kachingle Medallion.

And for Site Owners, Kachingle is an easy, user-friendly alternative to paywalls, subscriptions and pay-per-page plans.

If you used to subscribe to a newspaper, for example, and now read that paper online instead, why not contribute a portion of your former subscription price to help support the online version?

Kachingle makes this easy. Instead of having to pay to access each site individually, kachingling those sites allows you to support them all with a single monthly Pay-In — and you control how the money is distributed by how often you visit each site.

Kachingle is also a way to support the "little guy" — like bloggers who take the time, talent, perseverance, and commitment to create and maintain a site you love.

By kachingling that blog, you're sending the message — and a financial incentive — to that blogger to keep up the good work.

What's more, Kachingle is fun! You can build an online persona around sharing the sites you support with colleauges, friends, and family through social networking.

At the end of each month you have been a Kachingler, we add up the number of days you visited each site you've chosen to kachingle, and distribute your monthly Pay-In proportionally.

If Kachingler Joe visits his favorite site every day this month (let's call it Joe's Favorite Site), that's a total of 30 Daily Visits.

Let's say Joe kachingles four sites this month...

• Joe's Favorite Site on 30 different days
• Site B on 25 different days
• Site C on 25 different days
• Site D on 20 different days

This adds up to a total of 100 Daily Visits.

That means...

• Joe's Favorite Site will receive 30% of his Pay-In that month
• Site B will receive 25% of his Pay-In
• Site C will receive 25% of his Pay-In
• Site D will receive 20% of his Pay-In

(before transaction costs)

Kachingle counts Daily Visits (rather than, say, pageviews) so that your kachingling is distributed based on how often you visit a site, rather than how much you use it when you're there.

Absolutely. We encourage it!

If you're a Kachingler with a web site, you should place a Kachingle Medallion on your site, so you can be kachingled by your visitors. And every Site Owner should kachingle the sites they love too, just as they hope others will kachingle theirs.

Once you've signed up as a Kachingler, whenever you visit a site that displays a Kachingle Medallion (a purple bar at the top of a page, or sometimes an embedded badge somewhere else on the page), the Medallion will recognize you. If you're kachingling that site (if you're a contributor), the Medallion will count your visit (and display green).

This is accomplished through the use of "cookies," small files all web sites store on your computer when you visit, so they can remember you when you return.

If you visit a site with a Medallion but you're not (yet) kachingling that site, the Medallion will be purple instead of green. If you want to begin kachingling the site, just mouse-over the Medallion and click the purple "Kachingle" button.

You can find statistics for all your kachingling on the My Kachingle page of your Kachingle.com account.

No. When a Kachingler visits a site with a Medallion, the Medallion does recognize you, but only makes note of your visit if you're kachingling (contributing to) that site.

The Kachingle Medallion relies on cookies to remember you and count your visits to the sites you kachingle. If you ever need to delete your browser cookies, to resume counting your visits to the sites you support, just click "Already a Kachingler?" on any Kachingle Medallion to turn back on all Medallions' ability to remember you.

(Please note: Some browsers have separate settings for allowing "third-party cookies." Third-party cookies must be enabled for Kachingle Medallions to remember you. If you need more help, see "How do I set my browser to accept third-party cookies?" below.)

Yes, it's easy to kachingle under a different name (or anonymously) for any site.

If you want to kachingle a site under a name other than your Kachingle Display Name — or if you want to kachingle anonymously — click "Kachingle [site name] as..." when you mouse-over the Medallion. You'll be taken to your Preferences for that site, where you can customize (or anonymize) your name for that site.

You can change how you kachingle the sites you already support by logging into Kachingle.com, and in your My Kachingle page, clicking Edit Preferences below the name of each site you want to change.

Kachingle is, in part, a social networking site, so there is a Public View of your My Kachingle that is always visible. But if you don't want anyone to see the sites you're kachingling, you can choose to contribute anonymously to each site, which will make this Public View empty.

To kachingle anonymously, when you first mouse-over a site's Medallion, select "Kachingle [site name] as...", then choose the Anonymous option.

You can change how you kachingle the sites you already support by logging into Kachingle.com, and in your My Kachingle page, clicking Edit Preferences below the name of each site you want to change.

Add it to our network by visiting Kachingle Anything. Submitting a new site takes about a minute. Within 2 days, you'll start seeing the Medallion at the top of the site you've submitted. (We'll let you know by email when the Medallion has been activated for your submitted site.)

From your smart phone, tablet or iPod Touch, you can kachingle hundreds of sites where Medallions are embedded into the pages. Other Kachingle sites require the KachingleX browser extension for the Medallion to appear, and as browser-extension technology becomes available for mobile devices, we'll be developing KachingleX for mobile as well.

There are two ways to turn kachingling on and off for each site you visit:

• From any Kachingle Medallion, you can control whether or not you kachingle that particular site by clicking "Kachingle [site name]" to become a contributor or "Stop kachingling [site name]" to end or suspend contributions.
• From your My Kachingle page on Kachingle.com you can click "Edit Preferences" for any site you kachingle, and turn your contributions on and off.

Note: If you stop kachingling a site, it will remain listed in your My Kachingle history, but will gradually move lower on the list when sorted by Last Visit (which is the default).

If you need to turn off the ability of Medallions to recognize and remember you (for example, if you're kachingling a public computer and don't want the next user to affect your kachingling), login to Kachingle.com and click Settings at the top of the page. From there you can "stop kachingling from all browsers on all computers and devices."

When you're next on a computer from which you want to resume kachingling, just find any Medallion and click "Already a Kachingler?", which will take you to a screen where you can turn back on the Medallions' ability to remember you. (You can also do this from Settings in your Kachingle.com account.)

If a Medallion doesn't recognize you, click "Already a Kachingler?" in the Overlay and sign in.

If after doing so, the Medallion still doesn't recognize you, the problem may be that your browser is set to reject "third-party cookies." The Kachingle Medallion's cookie, used to recognize you, is a third-party cookie -- meaning it comes from Kachingle.com, not from the site you're visiting when you see the Medallion.

Here's how to accept the Kachingle Medallion cookie while still rejecting other third-party cookies:

In Firefox for Windows: Tools > Options > Privacy
Under "Use custom settings for history," click the "Exceptions..." button, enter kachingle.com and click "Allow."

In Internet Explorer for Windows: Tools > Internet Options > Privacy
Click the "Sites" button, enter kachingle.com and click "Allow."

In Firefox for Mac: Firefox > Preferences > Privacy
Under "Use custom settings for history," click the "Exceptions..." button, enter kachingle.com and click "Allow."

You bet! To turn your kachingling on from any HTML browser, just click "Already a Kachingler?" on any Kachingle Medallion and sign in to activate the Medallions' ability to remember you on that browser. Remember: You'll need the KachingleX browser extension to see Medallions on most sites.

When on your My Medallions page, click the "Add Site" button, which will take you through an easy, quick, step-by-step process for creating and placing a Medallion on your site.

Placement of the Medallion is up to you, but Kachingle recommends it be placed high on each page ("above the fold") in a conspicuous spot to draw Kachinglers' attention.

For a more details, visit Getting Started for Site Owners.

There are currently three Medallion designs:

Which one is best for your site will depend on where you want to place it. Classical goes best in a wide sidebar, Neo-Classical fits better in narrow sidebars, and Jazz fits just about anywhere!

Additional Medallion designs and options are under development.

The Medallion should work on just about any kind of site, made using any kind of software, with the following known exceptions:

Sites that don't allow external widgets on personal pages:

• Facebook
• MySpace
• WordPress.com (If you host your own WordPress.org blog the Medallion will work)

Software with known compatibility issues:

• iWeb (prevents overlays - solutions are being tested)

Yes, you can create as many Medallions as you like and put them anywhere you choose on your site.

You might, for example, have separate Medallions for different blogs within the same site because they have different readerships.

Keep in mind that if you use separate Medallions in separate areas, readers would have to kachingle each Medallion separately. A Kachingler contributing to one area of your site will not have their visits counted when they surf to a different area of the site, unless they've clicked that Medallion separately to become a Kachingler in both areas.

The Kachingle staff manually verifies each new Medallion. It's part of our review process when we check out our newest member sites. This usually happens within one or two business days. But your Medallion is fully functional from the moment you add it to your site. Verification only controls whether your site is included in All Sites and whether it's eligible for the Leaderboard.

For instructions and advice on launching and marketing your Medallion, visit the Marketing section of Getting Started for Site Owners.

We're keeping things simple for Kachingle's first incarnation, and using Pacific Time to calculate Daily Visits day. We may explore different or additional options in the near future.

To keep things simple for Kachingle's first incarnation, we're only accepting payments through PayPal for the time being. But you can use your credit card when you reach PayPal - just look for the link "Don't have a PayPal account? Use your credit card or bank account."

Kachingle will be expanding its own payment options in the future.

So do we!

We're keeping things simple for Kachingle's first incarnation, but we will be expanding kachingling options in the future.

Let us know what kind of contribution structure you'd like to see by visiting our Community Forum and leaving your feedback.

Your monthly Pay-In is charged each month on the day of the month you'd originally signed up for Kachingle.

Kachingle accepts payments in the following currencies when paid through PayPal:

• US Dollars
• Canadian Dollars
• Euros
• British Pounds
• Yen
• Australian Dollars
• New Zealand Dollars
• Swiss Francs
• Hong Kong Dollars
• Singapore Dollars
• Swedish Kroner
• Danish Kroner
• Polish Zloty
• Norwegian Kroner
• Hungarian Forints
• Czech Koruny
• Israeli Shekels
• Mexican Pesos

Kachingle Pay-Outs to Site Owners are paid in US dollars only at this time, and the recipient of the funds is responsible for any conversion fees.

If you have no kachingling activity on your account in a given month, your Pay-In will be distributed based on the previous month's activity. If you have not yet kachingled any sites at all, any accumulated Pay-In will be distributed based on your first month of kachingle activity.

A Pay-In is the amount amount charged each month to a Kachingler (currently set at $5, but additional options will be available in the future).

A Payment is when, at the end of the Kachingler's month, the Pay-In gets distributed proportionally among the sites the Kachingler supports, based on his or her visits to those sites.

A Pay-Out is when those funds are then desposited by Kachingle into the PayPal accounts of Site Owners.

After at least 180 days of reasonable efforts by Kachingle to reach the site owner or management, or if a site has notified us that they do not wish to receive payments from Kachinglers, funds collected will be donated to Kachingle’s official charity. The Musella Foundation for Brain Tumor Research and Information was chosen because it was one of the sites that Kachingle Founder Cynthia Typaldos used when she was supporting her friend Laura Haydée Gutierrez (1951-2005), of Buenos Aires, Argentina, who was stricken with brain cancer, and is one of the sites that Cynthia wanted to monetarily support during the process of her getting the idea for the crowd-sourced voluntary micropayment service which is now Kachingle.

PayPal is the simplest, fastest and most secure way for Kachingle to make collective payments of Kachingler contributions to Site Owners.

PayPal also makes it quick and easy for Site Owners to maintain payment records and transfer payments to their bank accounts.

We may be expanding payment options in the future. If you'd like to provide feedback on the subject, please visit our Community Forum to discuss the issue with Customer Care and other Site Owners.

Pay-Outs to Site Owners' PayPal accounts are processed at the end of each month (from the date your Medallion was created).

Contributions from Kachinglers to Site Owners are paid less 15%, which Kachingle retains to cover the cost of processing payments (we pay all related PayPal fees) and our commission.

Kachingle payments to Site Owners are in US dollars only at this time, and the recipient of the funds is responsible for any conversion fees.

Sure. If you know the charity's or non-profit's preferred PayPal email address, just enter it in the appropriate field during the process of setting up a Medallion on your site.

You can read about Kachingle's tax collection and reporting here.