Interesting development today with Salon launching a new facility to allow bloggers to make some money off their posts. The mechanism allows readers to leave a tip to the person who wrote the post, if they feel that they post has real value to them and if they’re feeling generous. It’s an interesting development from Salon.com who have been relatively active in the blogging space for some time.
There are a number of people posting about this, but the consensus seems to be, that if a reader can get something for free, they’re not going to bother leaving a tip (like what happened with In Rainbows). Salon.com is seeding the initiative by giving people who sign up a free $10 in their account to allow them to tip people, but once that dries up, will people really put money into the system. Thoughts range from the fact that bloggers are better off starting up and monetizing their own blog to fears that this will affect the quality of the blogosphere. All in all, it’s still an interesting experience into human nature, but I suspect Salon will be the only one making a net gain out of this (more traffic, more exposure).
Intrigued? Join up at Open.Salon.com
UPDATED: btw, it’s only open to bloggers and readers in the U.S. at the moment. Great way to eliminate 90% of your potential market!
Owen, thank you for the link but I’m afraid you are not exactly right about accessibility of the system to bloggers and readers from outside the US, only thr tips system is available to US residents because the payments are processed by Revolution Money Exchange and this service only allows US residents to create accounts.
@svetlana: Thanks for your comment. I take your point, but my blog post was about the “tipping” system related to the blogs and as you say, that service is not available to everyone in the world except for one country.
Owen, sorry I misunderstood your point, I thought you were actually talking about the service in general, not only the monetization aspect. But if it is about monetization only, you must be right with the point that they are losing a huge share of the market. I am sure that there is audience for such a service in countries like India or Philippines, while I very much doubt the US.