The folks that created my favorite web analytics tool, Clicky, have recently launched a new website called Contenture.com. The creators of Contenture believe they have introduced a way to revolutionize monetizing websites. While I’m not sold that this idea is going to go gangbusters, I do think that Contenture is an interesting product and could become very popular in niches like Internet marketing.
So, what is Contenture? Basically it is an improved version of a micropayment system. Here’s how it works:
- Members pay anywhere from $5.99 to $50 per month into the Contenture pool.
- Whenever a member visits the website that is registered with Contenture, the visit is counted.
- At the end of each month, the system takes the amount paid in by the user and allocates it out to all of the registered websites the user visited.
- The more often the user visits a particular website, the higher the percentage of the user’s funds pool belongs to that webmaster
I decided to sign up with Contenture to give it a try and will see how it goes after a month. I imagine that the majority of users will sign up at the minimum contribution level of $5.99 per month, but we’ll see. As a webmaster, there are several reasons that you might be interested in signing up. First and foremost, it’s completely free to register your website at Contenture. You aren’t required to contribute at all in order to start earning money. Also, Contenture has made it really easy to add premium level features to your website or blog. You can choose to give paying Contenture users priority access to new articles, exclusive archive access, or eliminate ads for paying users.
Effectively, Contenture is making it very easy for web users to get premium features and special perks at a bunch of different websites in exchange for a small monthly cost. Plus, users are getting the satisfaction of knowing that they are helping to contribute to their favorite websites without having to do anything other than browse as they normally would. The Contenture service is still in its early stages, so I don’t expect to see any huge earnings on my websites, but as its popularity grows, it could become a significant source of web revenue.
Those of you that are webmasters should definetely head over to Contenture and add your site. That way you can be sure to get some of my Contenture money next time I visit one of your pages, haha. Like I said earlier, I don’t know whether this service will ever take off, but I find it to be a very cool idea and I’m happy to contribute a little bit of my money each month to help keep my favorite websites up and running. I hope you’ll jump on the bandwagon also and support your favorite sites!
