Review: IndieKarma
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By Jeffrey Copeland in Review Published: Monday, 21 May 07 - 09:54 AM (GMT -06:00) Last Updated: Monday, 21 May 07 - 11:07 AM (GMT -06:00) |
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The idea behind IndieKarma is that small independent blog authors need a way to generate income. There are many more ways to do this of course but most are intrusive and annoying to the visitor. This makes the visitor feel the blog is there as a way to generate revenue and not some ones personal space they want to share with the world.
Of course some blogs out there are designed for revenue generation and are usually consist of large endeavors to provide professional writing, contests and exclusive content. But for the most part blogs are somebody’s attempt to reach out and share their interests with likeminded individuals.
What I think IndieKarma may be better suited for than an income generation platform for small blogs is just as a way for people to tell you they like what you are doing. Of course you can post comments, emails and other feedback for the authors saying how much you like their site. But the donation aspect is just another nice little way to show them you appreciate the effort they are putting into their site.
The IndieKarma site is very straightforward and easy to use. Signing up takes only a few second and the first 5000 people to sign up get their first dollar (the minimum required to open an account) for free. Which I think is a great and also a necessary move on their part to get people using the site.
As of now they only accept PayPal as a payment method which I hope to see opened up to other payment methods in the future. Seeing as how I think a large part of their user base will be younger people who may not have access to a PayPal account or a credit card by locking into only one payment method they may severely cut their potential for growth. You can easily change your info and check the history of sites you have donated to as well as add more money to your account via PayPal.
The donation aspect is handled by you going to a site that has their little javascript widget embedded on the page. If you are logged in to your account (login is persistent on one browser at a time as long as you don't manually logout) then one penny is donated to the site. The donation is automatic when you visit a page. A visit is considered one hour after that hour has passed if you revisit the site another donation is made. After the first donation to a site you can then set whether you want it to donate each time you visit the page after an hour has passed or if you want to click to donate when you decide to also you can set it to a higher amount per donation.
At first I had issue with the fact that it donated automatically when you visited a site but after thinking about it a bit longer I see how this is a good thing. First off, it would become a bit annoying to have to remember to donate when you visited a site. Also, if you are a regular visitor to a site, then you would probably want to be donating more to that site and doing it automatically just takes some of the hassle off of you. Since you can set it to not donate each time you visit a site, you do have the option and control to donate only when you want.
In case people are wondering IndieKarma makes money by taking 25% of each penny donated or .25 cents per donation to cover their costs and to keep the site going. This doesn't seem like a huge fee when you think of the cost of PayPal overhead, hosting, design and the other costs associated with the service.
I personally plan to use any pennies that are donated to THIS site in turn to donate to other sites I find within the network that I like. Kind of a pay it forward mentality I guess. I did not put the widget in the sidebar to make money to finance exotic vacations to sandy beaches (wi-fi enabled of course) but to support what IndieKarma is doing as well as support other sites within the network when I run across them.
Of course it would be great as this site grows in popularity that if enough pennies were donated to not only use them on other sites but to cover the modest $5/month fee Terapad has for expanding the bandwidth/storage this site is allowed, but that is not even an issue at this point.
If anyone is using this service or signs up for it after reading this please let me know in the comments if it is working correctly. I don't know if I can use my account to donate to this site and wouldn't want to abuse the service this way so I cannot test it myself.
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