There have long been questions around how to monetize content online.  Advertising has been the dominant model, but several companies have tried the online equivalent of a tip jar, allowing readers to leave micropayments for content they enjoyed.

These services have primarily been used on blogs, but have suffered from a lack of take-up.  Most services require the reader to be a member in order to leave their ‘tip’.  Few members means few sites want to offer the facility, and with few sites offering the facility there’s little incentive for readers to sign up.  A classic chicken and egg.

Now though, Swedish company Flattr is attempting to use social ‘approval’ buttons to allow readers to reward content producers.  Think in terms of Twitter’s Favourite button or an Instagram Like (not a Facebook like yet however).

The process is simple:

1. Sign up to Flattr and pay in a monthly donation to your account
2. Link up your social accounts to the service
3. Use social as you normally do
4. At the end of the month, your monthly donation is divided up between all the sites you liked or favourited that month (minus 10% for Flattr)

A slight catch of course is that the blog or user you liked has to be a Flattr member as well.

Obviously users have control over how much money they deposit into the system each month, but it does nonetheless provide a new angle to their liking behaviours.  Of course, with Twitter tightening down on how applications use their ecosystem, it remains to be seen how they’ll respond to this kind of service, especially with their drive to further monetize their platform.

How much is a like worth to you?