Kachingle: A Crowdfunding Service

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

This got posted as a comment elsewhere, and I'm pulling it into a post of its own so that people can find it more easily.  This is about a new crowdfunding service that may appeal to creative people and donors here.

My company, Kachingle, just launched our generalized crowdfunding service which could be a good fit for your users. There's lots more information at our blog blog.kachingle.com and an overview at kachingle.com. For access to the beta version or to discuss send an email to beta@kachingle.com.

Thanks.

Cynthia Typaldos
Founder & Chief Kachingler
cynthia@kachingle.com
http://beta.kachingle.com/kachinglers/1

Comments

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

What do you think of this service?

My initial comments are that I see they take 20% of donations to cover paypal and their own costs, so I wouldn't stop having a straight paypal donate button.

And they seem geared toward news, so unless they got enough creative people as site owners to have different categories, people might bounce away very quickly, without reading, only because they were looking for a different kind of content.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>What do you think of this service? <<

It sounds promising to me.

>>My initial comments are that I see they take 20% of donations to cover paypal and their own costs, so I wouldn't stop having a straight paypal donate button.<<

I hunted around on their blog and their website, but I didn't see that part. *sigh* 20% is high for a commission; I'm not happy about that. But if the service has a tendency to route extra readers to a site, there should be some extra money from that.

>>And they seem geared toward news, so unless they got enough creative people as site owners to have different categories, people might bounce away very quickly, without reading, only because they were looking for a different kind of content.<<

Well, they posted a comment on this community, so it looks like they are interested in attracting more and different types of content including fiction. The service is only in beta testing so far -- I suspect they will add categories as they gain more content, since most places do that.

Re: Thoughts

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

And in beta is a good time to sign up and suggest they add some kind of indicator as to type of content.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

By all means, suggest that to them!

Answers to your questions

[(Anonymous)]

Hi everyone, thanks for your comments and questions. Let me try to answer them here, if you have more just ask or visit the about or help sections at beta.kachingle.com.

Kachingle is designed for all types of websites, not just news. It is a generalized crowdfunding service for content and services.

Kachinglers (users/readers) put in $5/month. PayPal takes 50 cents in transaction fees, and we keep 50 cents to build our business. As Kachinglers move up in their voluntary contribution amounts, the percentages will drop. However, unless we can make a viable business from Kachingle, we can't help you make money either. We distribute 80% to content/site providers -- lot better than the 30% from the Amazon Kindle to their content providers!

We are particularly interested in attracting communities -- we get a lot of press because we are also a service for news (and there is nothing journalists are more interested in saving!) -- but ALL forms of content can be crowdfunded thru Kachingle.

It makes sense to have both the PayPal
Donate button and Kachingle. The PayPal Donate button will attract someone who wants to make a one-time large carefully thought thru contribution and is willing to jump thru some hoops to do it. The Kachingle Medallion is a simple hands-free way for regular and casual readers alike to contribute based on their usage.

The best way to figure it out is to just try it. Experimentation is key.

Thanks.

Cynthia the Chief Kachingler