March Call for Cyberfunded Creativity Projects

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Please answer any of these questions that apply to you:

• What cyberfunded creativity projects did you view and/or donate to during the past month? What did you like about them? Would you recommend them to other patrons?



• What cyberfunded creativity projects did you complete during the past month? What made them special? How successful were they?



• Have you written about cyberfunded creativity theory or practice elsewhere? Where can we go to read that?



• What cyberfunded creativity projects are you currently working on? What are your plans for them? Who is your intended audience?



• What cyberfunded creativity projects do you plan to launch this month? When and where should we watch for them to appear?

Comments

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

I'm still a little confused about the line between cyberfunded creativity and general e-commerce, so I'm not sure I can answer these 'correctly.'

I bought some original art direct from artists this month, and brokered a handful of portrait adoptions as well as a few of my own (these were largely web adoptions, which have no tangible trade of goods, so those at least probably qualify!).

I've done more creative writing in February than I have the past five months put together, I think, but I'm (so far) entirely too shy to ask donations for them yet, so they're just available on-line.

A new issue of EMG-Zine just went up - http://www.emg-zine.com - and I am investigating how I might add a donation engine to the backend of the site that will allow the writers and artists to get their specific donations, but be easy for a reader to combine into a single payment. Right now I pay for non-fiction in EMG credit (giftstore purchases or print services are the most popular redemptions), but I have a backend at the main EMG site that will track both a 'real money' balance and a 'spending credit', so I'm trying to figure out how to merge it all so that it's not an administrative nightmare. Mostly, I want to make sure it's a fair distribution, but that I don't get hosed with paypal fees over small donations. (So a flat percentage is right out.) I'm considering making the donations $1 increments, with the author/artist getting .60 for the first dollar and .90 for each additional dollar. After paypal fees, I'd be getting about 7% to cover hosting and administrative fees - a little more if they donated to more than one contributor. And, would I do this in addition to paying them the credit? It's not exactly a break-even scenario unless donations are really outstanding, but EMG-zine was meant as a service, not a money-maker, so it's mostly a matter of 'is it worth the hassle of setting up?'

That's my ramble.