Category Archives: how kachingle works

New Plugin: Kachingle Medallion for WordPress

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Bill

We very happy to announce the release of our first WordPress plugin for Kachingle, Kachingle Medallion for WordPress. This is also the first WordPress plugin I coded start to finish by myself (albeit standing on the shoulders of those who came before). As the name suggests, the plugin simplifies using Kachingle on self-hosted WordPress blogs. You can see an example of the result on the left side of this page.

This plugin enables you to put the Medallion on your WordPress site as a widget (if your theme supports them), a custom template tag or a shortcode. You still have to create the Medallion on Kachingle.com on the Sites I Own tab but you won’t have to copy and paste the code block as before.

A Settings page is included so you can set options: Medallion number, style (wide or narrow now, others when available), title and a short marketing message to print above the Medallion. Note that the title is only used with the widget. The Settings page also includes instructions for using the template tag and shortcode.

Options Screenshot

The plugin is already in use on several websites including this one, my personal site BillSaysThis and cool new food blog WhatTwoEat.

Since this is our first platform-specific plugin for the Medallion, we’d love your feedback on the functionality and options included, how easy it is to use, enhancements we can add and other platforms for which you’d like to see us offer plugins. Let us know in the comments what you think and if you’re using it.

Posted in how kachingle works, technology | Tagged | 1 Comment

Jörg Eisfeld-Reschke: “Flattr und Kachingle – ein Systemvergleich (system comparison)”

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Bill

Jörg Eisfeld-Reschke provides the first comparison of Kachingle and an emerging, albeit still in private beta, service called Flattr.

Eisfeld-Reschke concludes that both are promising revenue approaches for online content publishers with a few key differences:

  • Kachingle splits money between a supporter’s sites based on actual visit activity and Flattr in equal portions.
  • Money distribution is transparent and open on Kachingle while Flattr at least for now doesn’t really show this information.
  • Kachingle has a single monthly subscription amount of $5 while Flattr has several price points (€2, €5, €10 and €20)

Posted in Kachinglers, about, how kachingle works, sites | Leave a comment

Kachingle Transaction Fees Explained

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Cynthia

We are often asked “what is the Kachingle transaction fee”?

IMPORTANT UPDATE JULY 2010: IN EARLY JUNE WE REDUCED THE OVERALL TRANSACTION FEES (KACHINGLE PLUS PAYPAL IN AND PAYPAL OUT) FROM 20% TO 15%.
A detailed blog post on this will be written soon.

Our corporate motto is “transparent and fair” and we apply this not only to the way Kachingle behaves for our users (all payments are visible and are based on a “fair” algorithm of value received by the Kachingler), but we also apply this to ourselves.

The simple answer is 10% —  approximately 50¢ of the Kachingler’s $5.00 monthly subscription (we call this the “Pay-In”).

80% of the Pay-In is distributed to the content providers (Kachingle-enabled Sites).

Our 10% + Sites’ 80% = 90% — who gets the missing 10%?

That would be PayPal.

PayPal

PayPal collects fees when Kachinglers make their monthly $5 Pay-In, and collect fees again when we Pay-Out to Site Owners:


  • On the Pay-In, PayPal collects 30 cents plus 2.9% of the $5 subscription — which comes to 45 cents total
  • On the Pay-Out, PayPal collects another fee which varies in size depending on the number of sites and total amount of money we’re paying that day, typically a few cents

These two PayPal fees together make up that last 10% — or 50¢ of a Kachingler’s $5.00.
As we enable Kachinglers to contribute higher amounts the fixed part of the PayPal fee will go down as a percentage – and we plan to negotiate with PayPal to get their overall fees lowered — savings which we will pass on to our users. (PayPal also has currency conversion fees which have to be factored in.)

We must be a viable business to make our client sites successful – and our 10% commission is what we make us able to develop and maintain the Kachingle service.

Posted in about, fair, how kachingle works, kachingle, micropayments, transparent | 1 Comment

Kachingling 101 (how Kachingle works) screencast

Posted on February 27, 2010 by Cynthia

This screencast is a quick overview of how Kachingle works for users (Kachinglers).  It’s my first pass…feedback welcome.

Posted in Kachinglers, cents, how kachingle works, kachingle, micropayments, social, typaldos | Leave a comment

Product Update: payment system working flawlessly, admin tool, upcoming automatic tweeting, fancy statement report

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Cynthia

Now that the payment system is up and running Kachingle engineering is working on the next couple weeks’ round of enhancements.

High on the list is an improved administration tool. The beta version of Kachingle had such a tool, but because of the complete rewrite of the site in php, that admin tool no longer functions. The new admin tool will have the same functionality as the previous one, with some enhancements. As always, we learn a lot by experimentation!

We are also implementing Kachingle’s  first automated Twitter tweets. I’ve been experimenting by doing manual tweets of various information at a variety of intervals. I’ve learned a lot about what makes sense and what  is news versus noise. Our first automated tweets will be sent by Kachingle itself when a new Site signs up  — we will welcome each new Site with a tweet and a blog post.

So far the new kachingle.com website and payment system has performed flawlessly without a single moment of downtime or any bugs. There are some quirks and we are working on them. Please let us know if you see anything that doesn’t seem right or is annoying (send to customercare *A*T*  kachingle.com).

By the way, we have a terminology to describe the four phases of the money flow through Kachingle:

  • Pay-In: Kachingler’s incoming monthly $5
  • Payment: Monthly distribution of a Kachingler’s $5 to the sites they support
  • Statement: End-of-Month for Site Owners (showing them how much they received)
  • Pay-Out: If the Statement was $100+*, the movement of money to the Site Owner’s PayPal account

*We are planning to lower the Pay-Out threshold to $50 due to input from client sites (thank you Robin!) — AND since quite a few Sites are already above that threshold the first Pay-Outs will be occurring soon.

And because we are all about money (and yes, prestige and building a real-time online persona — but in our case, money makes these other things happen), we are also working on an enhanced easy-to-read truly beautiful combination end-of-month and real-time statement for our Sites.  Here’s a mock-up of the Site Statement Page: Continue reading →

Posted in how kachingle works, micropayments, progress | Leave a comment

Kachingle processes the world’s first transparent social micropayments

Posted on February 18, 2010 by Cynthia

Wow, we’ve had a busy last few days.

We publicly launched Kachingle a few days ago. While we have been counting financial transactions since our private beta launch last November, the actual display and distribution of the Kachinglers’ payments was not visible till now.

It’s exciting to see exactly where the money is flowing — Kachingle distributes each Kachingler’s $5 monthly Pay-In based on their surfing behavior — which is a proxy for value received. And because Kachingle is a transparent system, each Kachingler can see all of the details of their payments to Sites — this guarantees that the money ends up where it’s supposed to!

I’ve been a Kachingler since October, and so I’ve been thru 3 payment cycles — here you can see all of my payments to the Sites I support publicly. Any Sites I support anonymously are of course not displayed.

Several of our Sites joined the beta quite early and have been thru 2-3 payment cycles. Carta.info is an early adopter of Kachingle — they’ve been paid almost $50 (at the time of this post…of course more money comes in every day so this number will most likely be higher by the time you read this post!).

Posted in Kachinglers, how kachingle works, kachingle, micropayments, social, transparent, typaldos | Leave a comment

Video: How to add the Kachingle Medallion (widget) to your Site

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Cynthia

We are developing a bunch of “how to” demos.  Here’s the first one developed by Bill Lazar, Kachingle’s marketing engineer.  In this video Bill shows how any Site can place the Kachingle Medallion (a javascript widget) on their pages.  The Kachingle Medallion is the mechanism by which new users sign up for Kachingle, and existing Kachinglers indicate whether or not they want the Site to be on their kachingling list (they do this by clicking on the Medallion just once.

Let us know what you think of this video. More are coming soon that will highlight the different features of Kachingle, our business model for our Sites, and our overall philosophy (“transparent and fair”!).

Adding Kachingle to Your Site from Kachingle Vimeo on Vimeo.

See how to add the Kachingle Medallion to your website and start earning money for your content.

Posted in how kachingle works, medallion | Leave a comment

Sneak Peek at the Kachingle Payment Display – Feb 8, 2010

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Cynthia

For those of you who can’t wait to see the Kachingle payment system working on beta (production) Kachingle site, here’s some screen shots from our development site.  Keep in mind the data is all fake here, that’s why the dates are all the same.

There are four main displays of payment information.

  1. Each Site’s payments from Kachinglers
  2. Each Kachingler’s payments to Sites
  3. Dashboard for a Site Owner to see the status of all of their Sites (Medallions) and drill down to add more Sites, manage existing Sites, or see further information
  4. Pay-Out information for a particular Site

Because Kachingle is a transparent system, all payments are visible to everyone in the world except for an important difference when a Kachingler has chosen to be anonymous.  That payment is marked as “anonymous” and is not linked back to the Kachingler.  [This will be explained in more detail in a later post once the payment system is pushed to the beta.]

Here are screen shots of each of the four scenarios mentioned above.

1) Each Site’s payments from Kachinglers (including anonymous)

This view shows all of the payments to the Site named “puzzelate”.  Anonymous payments are not linked to the Kachingler’s profile.

Kachingler Payments for Puzzelate

Kachingler Payments for Puzzelate


2. Each Kachingler’s payments to Sites

This view is of the frank the Kachingler’s “Sites I Visit”.  Frank is logged into the Kachingle site (thus as his default he sees the private view that includes the Sites he is kachingling anonymously).

Kachingler Payments by Squirrely

Payments by frank the Kachingler

3. Dashboard for a Site Owner to see the status of all of their Sites (Medallions) and drill down to add more Sites, manage existing Sites, or see further information.

All of frank’s Sites can be managed from this page.

Payments for all of frank's Sites

Payments for all of frank's Sites

4. Pay-Out information for a particular Site (puzzelate)

The Pay-Out dates will be once a month…here in the test data they are all the same date.  Payments from Kachinglers are continuously accruing however and shown the instance they occur.  On the Pay-Out date for the Site, an actual Pay-Out is made to the Site’s PayPal account if the Account Balance is $100 or greater.  Otherwise the amount is carried forward until the next Pay-Out date for the Site.

Pay-Out History for Puzzelate (only visible to Site Owner)

There will be enhancements to the payment displays as we evolve the system.

Posted in how kachingle works, progress | Leave a comment

Kachingle Beta Update – Feb 6, 2010

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Cynthia

The Kachingle Rev 1 Beta was launched in November 2009 and has been going extremely well.  The system has not had a single failure!

There are over 50 websites/blogs participating in the beta program, and hundreds of Kachinglers.

We have learned a lot from the beta regarding usability and made some significant enhancements based on Kachingler input and usability testing  — our “bible” for this efforts is the book “Don’t Make Me Think!“.

We have made usability enhancements already with more to come.

In the next few weeks we will be rolling out Rev 2 which will have further usability enhancements, and most importantly, the complete payment system installed and visible.

In Beta Rev 1 all payment tracking was being done, but not displayed.  Beta Rev 2 implements the display and the actual monetary pay-outs.  The payment display turned out to be intellectually difficult because all payments must be transparent, yet anonymous contributions must still be protected.  Once Rev 2 is up and running I will write a detailed post on how this is accomplished.

The beta sites are from 5 countries: US, Germany, Canada, UK, and Austria.  The focus of the sites ranges from investigative journalism, corporate governance, German politics and media, newspaper business analysis, local news sites in Minneapolis/St.Paul and Chicago, music and photography, to narrower niche topics such as shedworking, cats and their environments, romance, and even a dog blogger.

The size of sites ranges from tens of thousands of unique monthly visitors to the hundreds of unique monthly visitors.  Languages represented in the websites/blogs so far are English and German.

US Flag German Flag Canadian Flag British Flag Austrian Flag

Kachingle welcomes all quality websites/blogs to join our beta program.  While we are especially interested in  developing a core set of sites around:

  • investigative journalism (everywhere in the world),
  • German language news and information,
  • hobbyist enthusiasts,
  • local news,

…we welcome every high quality content or service site in any language or format (text, music, video, photos, applications — or a mix) to embrace Kachingle as the revenue platform to monetize free content (and services).

To find out more about including your website/blog in the beta program send an email to beta@kachingle.com.

For additional information about beta  program or Kachingle overall contact me directly (cynthia@kachingle.com).

Posted in crowdfunding, how kachingle works, progress, transparent, typaldos | Leave a comment

Why Kachingle selected PayPal

Posted on February 5, 2010 by Cynthia

We selected PayPal as our first mechanism for payment management for a variety of reasons.

  1. user-centric. control over subscriptions
  2. 23 currencies in 190 countries and regions
  3. only need to enter PayPal email address if already have account, otherwise relatively easy to set up a new account or use a credit card
  4. 75M active users
  5. good match between early Kachinglers and PayPal users
  6. PayPal account can be set up without a bank account or credit card account — more on this in a future post.

Posted in crowdfunding, how kachingle works, paypal | Leave a comment