Overview

Social Cents for the Open Web - Users contribute and site owners receive tips effortlessly, with zero "mental transaction cost."
At Kachingle we have pioneered a new approach that will enable millions of news and content sites, blogs, and online services to make real money directly from their avid users.

About Kachingle

"Anything that can be digitized will be napsterized"

At Kachingle we are passionate about the value of online content and services, whether they be created by individuals, groups, or organizations.
We also believe that because it takes real time, money, and insight to create and maintain valued online content and services, a business model for sustaining them must be available. Advertising, freemium, product sales, and subscription business models are partial answers, but Kachingle is a more direct mechanism that can complement these forms of revenue generation.

Who benefits from Kachingle?

Kachinglers (users) – help keep the digital stuff they love free and available, and at the same time broadcast who they are by what they support.

Site Owners (creatives) – receive micropayments from their Kachinglers as well as visibility and credibility because Kachinglers are broadcasting their kachingling to their own social network.

What problem does Kachingle solve?

Kachingle enables effortless user-centric monetization of online content and services. Many online content and service creators, from individuals to startups to giant media corporations, are unable to sustain their businesses based on advertising revenue alone. Kachingle implements a new business model for these sites that can coexist with, complement, or in some cases, replace advertising.

Before the internet, publishers set the price of books, artists and photographers set the price of their work, newspapers set the price of their subscriptions, services such as software tools set the price of their products. Some content has traditionally been free but paid for through advertising such as broadcast TV. But nearly all content and service pricing has been one or a combination of fixed price, subscription price, or free but subsidized through advertising.

After the internet, these business models have persisted but with some difficulty as the physical manifestation of content has in most cases disappeared. Electronic versions are trivial and essentially cost free to create, publish, and distribute. Additionally, the quantity of content and services has grown exponentially. Because there is so much content and so many services available, subscription fees are difficult to implement as consumers are overwhelmed by the choices, the aggregate cost, and the inability to connect price with value delivered. Fixed price and subscription price business models have suffered more than advertising, partly because they require barriers to access, which removes them from the powerful internet-based viral mechanisms such as links, widgets, and social sharing. But even advertising has its limitations online as it can be intrusive, irrelevant, or insufficient to support costs.

Business Model

85% of all money provided by Kachinglers is passed thru to the Site Owners. 15% is retained to cover administration and financial transaction expenses. This 15% includes all PayPal and credit card fees.

Transparency

Kachingle is all about transparency:

• Kachinglers are making voluntary contributions so they have the right to see the all of contributions made to a Site
• Kachinglers have the right to display (or not) their contributions are part of their online persona (based on their privacy settings)
• Because all contributions made by a Kachingler are displayed (to them), each Kachingler can easily verify that their contribution was delivered to the websites and blogs they love
• Kachingle itself is transparent in its business models and transaction fees

History

The concept of Kachingle was first envisioned by Cynthia Typaldos (the founder of Kachingle) in May 2003. The timing then was not right for Kachingle, because everyone still believed that advertising would pay for online content and services. While ad-supported business models are wonderful conceptually, they have not proven to be enough revenue by themselves to sustain most creative online work.

At Kachingle we believe the timing is now right for our voluntary crowdfunding system, as seven years later, the real costs and value of content and services are becoming clearer. And we consumers have also become creators, thru our blogs, photos, videos, and so on, -- we now know that we gotta pay to play. So many consumers (but not all, and we don't need them all) are willing to make small voluntary contributions, if it is fair, easy, painless, and there is something in it for us. And that's what the Kachingle service does.

Futures

We are continuing to enhance the KachingleX capability with the end goal that Kachinglers will be able to directly add any digital stuff they love into Kachingle and have the Medallion work instantaneously. Our first implementation, live now, is that the Kachingler makes a request, and we implement. The next version will allow the Kachingler to do it themselves.

Acknowledgment

Cynthia would like to acknowledge her longtime friend, Laura Haydée Gutierrez [1951-2005] of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for providing her with the initial inspiration for Kachingle.