Comments on: In The Final Analysis

By: Fleen: Written by bitter, haggard wordbeasts » IndieKarma — So, It’s Been A Month

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 20:56:45 +0000

[...] Uncategorized This page wrote about what might (or might not) be the ultimate triumph of no-hassle micropayments; we promised at that time to keep an eye on the service, and so we’re briefly revisiting IndieKarma today. [...]

By: Garth "gwalla" Wallace

Garth "gwalla" Wallace — Mon, 15 May 2006 00:14:05 +0000

As for the dock, the whole point is to get people to toss in a penny regularly, but if they’re not reminded (without setting it up to do so automatically, which absolutely shouldn’t be the default), they won’t do it any more often than they would click a tip jar. It’d just be a tip jar in smaller denominations. Big whoop; may as well go the straight PayPal route in that case.

If you’re not comfortable with the idea of reminding your readers to donate, it seems that IndieKarma is rather fundamentally not for you.

By: Garth "gwalla" Wallace

Garth "gwalla" Wallace — Mon, 15 May 2006 00:08:51 +0000

The t-shirt thing may be a non-issue. The webcomics that do well wit t-shirts usually do well because their readers actually want to wear their t-shirts, not just because they want to contribute cash. Take Jeph Jacques, for instance. He sells t-shirts people like to wear. Contrast this with the many artists who do t-shirts that are based on in-jokes from their comic: these people are dependent on the charity factor in shirt-buying, because most people don’t really want to wear a shirt they’ll have to explain to people.

By: Dave Kellett

Dave Kellett — Fri, 12 May 2006 19:09:03 +0000

Thanks for this series — nicely done.

In addition to your five excellent summary points, my own addendum is that the pop-up dock has to come as disabled by default before I could consider trying it. It’s just far too disruptive to the 99.5% of people that won’t sign up.