6 ms·

A crowd-funding charity website that collects monthly very tiny micro-payment (as little as .10 cents) from users for charity. This way many users would sign up

by sferoze 13y ago

A crowd-funding charity website that collects monthly very tiny micro-payment (as little as .10 cents) from users for charity. This way many users would sign up, worry free, as .10 cents a month is extremely affordable and can add up to a lot of money with scale.

bnt 13y ago
OK, on the topic of funding charities, an old idea that I haven't gotten around to yet: A JS plugin that companies (or regular folks) put on their blogs, which generates a downloadable PDF of the article people are reading, but have to pay $1 to download.
- sferoze 13y ago
  Depending on the content, I would consider even charging less, anywhere down to couple cents, given a practical micro-payment system.
allworknoplay 13y ago
micropayments are hard. credit/debit card fees are proportionately astronomical. some day things will be better...
binsch 13y ago
My friend started a site that does exactly that: Goodst.org
- sferoze 13y ago
  This isn't exactly what I was thinking. When you sign up on Goodst.org you sign up to a plan that charges your credit card about $6.00 a month. Even though they let you choose where to direct .25 cents each day. So overall you have to be willing to give at least $6.00 a month. I was hoping to really lower the barrier to donating by only asking for a .10 - .20 cent donation per person, per month. I think many more people would be willing to donate .10 - .20 cents per month instead of $6.00 per month. .10 - .20 cents a month would not be a noticeable difference to most people, so people would sign up without any concern about their own finances. As long as they could trust the payment options and donation service. Lets take a look at a possible scenario here. Currently amazon micropayments charges credit cards 5% of transaction value + $0.05 for transactions anywhere between $.05 - $9.99. Lets consider single transactions between .10 - .20 cents. Any transaction in this range comes with a 6 cent transaction fee. So you would receive a net payment of .04 - .14 cents per person per month. Imagine an example where each person donates .20 cents and we receive .14 cents net per person after transaction fee. How many user do we need to get $500,000? About 3.57 million users. Seems like a lot of people but it is only about .01% of the United States population. And since the website could take donations from anyone in the world willing to give .20 cents a month, I think attaining practical large sums would be achievable. And extremely affordable! So .25 cents a day is good if you can afford it, but .20 cents a month is soo extremely affordable for most people and with scale it could add up to a lot!
eddyystop 13y ago
Check out zidisha.org. They explain why micro-financers have to charge up to 40% (!!!) interest to cover loan management costs. They have a new, eBay-like take on micro-financing. You earn about 5% on your loan, while knowing 50% of loans will fail. I like their concept and plan to throw a couple hundred into the wind and see what happens.

by sferoze 13y ago

bnt 13y ago

OK, on the topic of funding charities, an old idea that I haven't gotten around to yet: A JS plugin that companies (or regular folks) put on their blogs, which generates a downloadable PDF of the article people are reading, but have to pay $1 to download.

sferoze 13y ago
Depending on the content, I would consider even charging less, anywhere down to couple cents, given a practical micro-payment system.

allworknoplay 13y ago

micropayments are hard. credit/debit card fees are proportionately astronomical. some day things will be better...

binsch 13y ago

My friend started a site that does exactly that: Goodst.org

sferoze 13y ago
This isn't exactly what I was thinking. When you sign up on Goodst.org you sign up to a plan that charges your credit card about $6.00 a month. Even though they let you choose where to direct .25 cents each day. So overall you have to be willing to give at least $6.00 a month. I was hoping to really lower the barrier to donating by only asking for a .10 - .20 cent donation per person, per month. I think many more people would be willing to donate .10 - .20 cents per month instead of $6.00 per month. .10 - .20 cents a month would not be a noticeable difference to most people, so people would sign up without any concern about their own finances. As long as they could trust the payment options and donation service. Lets take a look at a possible scenario here. Currently amazon micropayments charges credit cards 5% of transaction value + $0.05 for transactions anywhere between $.05 - $9.99. Lets consider single transactions between .10 - .20 cents. Any transaction in this range comes with a 6 cent transaction fee. So you would receive a net payment of .04 - .14 cents per person per month. Imagine an example where each person donates .20 cents and we receive .14 cents net per person after transaction fee. How many user do we need to get $500,000? About 3.57 million users. Seems like a lot of people but it is only about .01% of the United States population. And since the website could take donations from anyone in the world willing to give .20 cents a month, I think attaining practical large sums would be achievable. And extremely affordable! So .25 cents a day is good if you can afford it, but .20 cents a month is soo extremely affordable for most people and with scale it could add up to a lot!

eddyystop 13y ago

Check out zidisha.org. They explain why micro-financers have to charge up to 40% (!!!) interest to cover loan management costs. They have a new, eBay-like take on micro-financing. You earn about 5% on your loan, while knowing 50% of loans will fail. I like their concept and plan to throw a couple hundred into the wind and see what happens.