Tag Archives: kachingle

Carta analyzes Kachingle and implements Medallion

Posted on December 26, 2009 by Cynthia

Carta.info recently wrote a detailed analysis of Kachingle and also installed the Kachingle Medallion on their site.

Their description of Carta written on the Kachingle site is:  “Carta is a German language online-publication on politics, economics and the digital Public. It is based in Berlin. We are interested, among other things, in the political economy of the digital public sphere. Carta has around 20 to 30 regular and passionate contributors. Grimme Online Award 2009.”

Carta previously mentioned Kachingle in two earlier articles — below are listed all three.  The first one is the detailed analysis along with numerous comments (some in German, some in English)

Google translate does a reasonable job with German –> English so non-German speakers can read these articles by going to Google Translate and entering the URL of the article [This has been included after the German title.].  Note that if any English appears in the original German article it gets a bit weird in the translation — in some cases the opposite of what was written is what the translation shows.  So read the German in the translated version but read the English directly. [Yeah, everything is complicated!]

Die Zukunft von Paid Content: Hier wäre ein Ansatz.

Google translation to English: The future of paid content: This would be an approach. The Crowd-Funding Application “Kachingle” enters the beta phase. Carta is the first partner site in Germany.

17.12.2009 | Robin Meyer-Lucht | 26 Kommentar(e)

Die Crowdfunding-Applikation “Kachingle” geht in die Beta-Phase. Carta ist als erste Partner-Site in Deutschland dabei.

Mehr zu: | |

Online-Journalismus: Raus aus der Gratisfalle

Google translation to English: Online journalism: Get Out of the Gratisfalle. In the Internet a better pricing models for journalism are possible than in the offline world. Just find the right ones.

03.12.2009 | Stefan Kooths | 33 Kommentar(e)

Im Internet sind bessere Preismodelle für Journalismus möglich als in der Offline-Welt. Man muss nur die richtigen finden. Stefan Kooths über den Irrtum der “Grenzkosten = Preis”-Regel, über die Probleme der Kulturflatrate und die Folgen einer Verstaatlichung der F.A.Z.

Mehr zu: | | | | |

Frage: Kachingle – der Ausweg?

Google translation to English: Question: Kachingle – the way out? Steve Outing has written one very remarkable article. He holds Kachingle for a solution to the funding crisis of online journalism. A closer look, the system is worth: Users pay a monthly fee that is passed on to the real use of them offers.

17.02.2009 | Redaktion CARTA | 16 Kommentar(e)

Während im Time Magazine noch ungestüm Bezahlinhalte eingefordert werden, könnte es einen sehr viel intelligenteren und flexibleren Ausweg aus der Refinanzierugskrise des Journalismus geben.

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Update on Kachingle Beta Program

Posted on December 24, 2009 by Cynthia

Kachingle launched our friends and family and colleagues Beta site last month. It’s going great thanks to our early adopters and our slew of usability testers. Our main focus over the last 30 days has been to study and then improve the usability of our service, both for Kachinglers and Site Owners (our bible is “Don’t Make Me Think!” by Steve Krug) . We are now on our second Beta update (rev 1.02) and have made numerous improvements, primarily in the Medallion and in the flow of some sections of the sign-up process.

The Medallion (which resides on the sites – you can see ours at the top left of our blog) now has four clearly identifiable states:

  • gray (user is not a Kachingler or has not set the Medallions to the “Remember Me” state – e.g. Medallions not cookie-enabled)
  • purple (user is a Kachingler, Medallions in “Remember Me” state, but user has not chosen to kachingle that particular site
  • green (user is a Kachingler, Medallions in “Remember Me” state, user has  chosen to kachingle that particular site [nirvana for the Site Owner]
  • red (user is a Kachingler, Medallions in “Remember Me” state, but user PayPal account not enabled (therefore user unable to kachingle their sites)

We also added smileys to each of the states.  I believe they quickly convey the nature of the state — e.g. the gray has the ? smiley, the purple has the straight mouth smiley, the green has the happy smiley and the red has the ! smiley.  However, the smileys are pretty small in the actual Medallion so we are still experimenting.

Kachingle Medallion Smileys

Kachingle Medallion Smileys

Check out the Medallion and tell us what you think!

We also have some exciting new sites as part of the Beta program.  Our first German site is Carta.info, our first Austrian site is politik.netzkompetenz.at, our first musician sites are Aeos Records and Symetrk.com, our first journalist site is SteveOuting.com, and of course our first canine site is The Daily Bunny by our own Bunny the K9 Kachingler.

We will be featuring other Beta Sites in further posts so stayed tuned!

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Kachingle Beta now available!

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Cynthia
Kachingle Beta Logo

Kachingle Beta Logo

Kachingle Beta 1.01 is available to a select few early adopters to check it out, give us feedback, and just play around and have fun.  We are looking for both consumers (“Kachinglers”) and Site Owners.

Just send us an email at beta@kachingle.com with your contact info and your website/blog (the latter is needed only if you would like to install the Kachingle Medallion).

We look forward to hearing from you!

Cynthia Typaldos [Founder]
Mike Krigel [Business Development]
Rob Blackwelder [Customer Care]
Yves Huin [Director Kachingle Europe]

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Micropayments for Digital Goods in a Social World

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Cynthia

Anything that can be digitized will be napsterized. Kachingle is a business model for the inevitable future of “free”.

Here’s the presentation on Slideshare…there’s also a large (70MB!) version with a narrative by me (Cynthia, the Chief Kachingler).

Micropayments for Digital Goods in a Social World

View more presentations from Kachingle.

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Kachingle founder Typaldos to join Journalism Online’s Steve Brill and Former Time Exec Editor Walter Isaacson on panel in D.C. May 27

Posted on May 12, 2009 by MikeKrigel

Anyone who’s been following the dialogue on the future of journalism knows Kachingle is but one of many revenue models being considered by media companies and individual bloggers. Now, for the first time, proponents of three of the different approaches will come together for a panel discussion Wednesday, May 27, in Washington, D.C. Walter Isaacson, president/CEO of The Aspen Institute, Stephen Brill, co-founder of Journalism Online LLC, and our own Cynthia Typaldos, founder of Kachingle, will headline a Q&A titled “The Strategic Landscape for Sustaining News.”

Their panel is part of a one-day symposium called “From Gatekeeper to Information Valet: Work Plans for Sustaining Journalism.” It’s being sponsored by the Donald W Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, in collaboration with The George Washington University School of Media & Public Affairs and the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

Isaacson, as you may recall is the former Executive Editor of Time Magazine, and it was he who suggested an “iTunes-easy method of micropayment” in his February 2009 cover story on “How to Save Your Newspaper.”

Brill’s Journalism Online proposes to set up a password-protected website through which “consumers will be able to purchase annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes, and single articles from multiple publishers.”

We at Kachingle, on the other hand, accept that content will remain freely available — and needs to stay free — to best take advantage of viral and social distribution. And that the Kachingle model is much closer to the way the Internet works because it’s easy. Lifting a couple lines about us from a recent CNET article: “Users decide just once who they want to pay; the service doesn’t create ‘walled gardens’; the total amount of money is limited; and above all it’s voluntary.”

Should make for an interesting discussion.

Posted in events, typaldos | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

“We Thought You Were Dead!”

Posted on May 7, 2009 by MikeKrigel

“Welcome back.” “Where have you been?” “We thought you were dead.”

Well…would you first like the good news or bad?

The bad news really isn’t so bad. After all the great articles and blog posts that were written about us, we quickly realized that Kachingle was going to be a bigger idea from the start than what we dreamed of. Two pieces really put us on the map: First, there was Editor and Publisher’s Steve Outing article that called us a solution that just might “save journalism.” That was some pretty heady stuff. The next day, the Poynter Institute’s Bill Mitchell said even though we were “user-centric, voluntary, social and a little bit goofy” (we took that as a compliment, by the way), we had a shot at success anyway.

But then all of you started to comment on how yes, you liked our idea, and felt it had the potential to go big. Which lead to dozens more interviews, including those with NPR’s “On the Media,” the Chicago Reader’s piece “Will Report for Tips,” Business Week’s “The Online Experiments That Could Help Journalism,” and the Guardian’s “Cashing in on content.”

What next happened totally blew our minds: The largest media companies in the world started contacting us. Sites with tens of millions of unique users. It became clear to us that if just 1% started Kachingling, we were going to have problems scaling.

So we halted our testing and went back to the proverbial engineering drawing board.

The good news is that we’re making progress. We’re working on scaling, playing with new features. We’re still doing interviews here and there, talking behind the scenes with many of you, too. Because when we launch at the end of 2009, we want to be ready. You’re expecting nothing less.

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Kachingle CEO speaking at Public Media Conference February 17-21, 2009

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Cynthia

I will be speaking twice at this upcoming conference in Atlanta:

Public Media Conference

February 17- 21, 2009

My speaking slots are on the afternoon of Wednesday Feb 18th and afternoon of Friday Feb 20th.  I will be at the conference thru the morning of Feb 21st.

Kachingle also has a booth where I will give live demos.  I hope to meet some of you there!

Here’s more information about the conference:

If there are any issues you think I should be sure to address in my talks, please post them here or send me an email.

IMA Conference Atlanta 2009

IMA Conference Atlanta 2009

Thanks.

Cynthia
cynthia.typaldos@kachingle.com

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Kachingle Introduction

Posted on February 4, 2009 by Cynthia

What problem does Kachingle solve?

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.

What does Kachingle do?

Kachingle provides online content and service providers with a simple “hands-free” user-centric monetization service fueled by existing social networking services.

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