Does this concept for online monetisation for non-commercial/free websites and apps sound good?

I think it's an excellent idea. The problem with the current system, as you say, I can't send just a small payment. I may want to help the website owner, but I'm not going to send him $10. So a micro-payment system is ideal. I would take it one step further. If it can be an icon I can click, as in a Facebook "like", that would be very easy. So an icon click would be a certain value. .001 bitcoins or whatever. It would also now be an impulse item. If the micro-payment system was pre-funded, like a debit card, or gift card, then I could without worry, click away, and help websites I like. When the balance on my account drops to zero, you could send me an e-mail telling me so. It would be a fantastic system, if it worked that way. It would be like those canisters at the checkout, where you could drop money into help the organizations you want. I think women would also be very comfortable with that system. I suspect they could be heavy users of that kind of the system. What's needed is trust, simplicity and volume.

Expanded to it's logical extreme, you're proposing a sort of meritocratic pay-per-use system. Sticking to theory, the simplest example would be if you paid your ISP not for general access or bandwidth, but for actual usage of websites. In turn, your ISP pays the websites a percentage of the fee. They're then run on a cost-plus model and it benefits them to increase access and speed, which is a pretty interesting side effect. Of course, this also has complications. Assuming a flat rate, spam suddenly becomes a much more lucrative business, and friction for users moving between websites increases. Ultimately, this is probably relegated to theory, even if you did convince ISPs everywhere that it was a better business model. So what can be done on a smaller scale more effectively? How about content-specific networks? A group of publishers could create their own network and readers within that network could pay a flat monthly fee or pay as they go, and have those fees distributed amongst all of the publishers (or only those they visited). There's the issue of getting users on board without requiring it, but one startup actually managed it: Readability. Of course, they wound up shutting the program down. The issue wasn't getting users on board or paying the $5 monthly fee. The problem was quite contrary to what you might expect: they couldn't get enough publishers to sign up, so they had $150,000 sitting in a bank account earmarked for outgoing payments. So again, in theory, it's a fine idea, but currency and transactional problems aside, real-world implementations of this have yet to be demonstrated to be stable.

There is a big lot in Internet users who won't spend a penny, as u can see the comparison b/w number of users of a free app and a paid app, all services which were able to gather huge user base were totally free. I don't think it would be reliable source of income for the developer/owner.

I don't think the problem is about actual payment technology. It is more about how site owner convinces users that she needs their help. Kickstarter campaigns are good at it. If you can take the kind of convincing great Kickstarter campaigns have and apply it outside Kickstarter, that'd be helpful. Basically a copywriting, marketing task, UX task.

So, https://flattr.com/?

I see both positive and negatives of the idea so I'll approach this question through the lens of design, psychology and usability. To the other responders' points, obtaining and maintaining users is paramount to the success of the concept. That said, can users buy into this idea? Literally. It's tough to project and the assumptions will need to be tested but there is evidence of methods that work. A lot can be achieved from the use of persuasive design. There is a book called Evil By Design written by Chris Nodder which outlines a few principles that may be applicable here. Whether or not all of the tactics in this book are completely ethical is up to readers but having an understanding of them is a great step towards positive choices. I've selected a few key lessons that could be considered to strengthen this model and quoted them below. How to apply these lessons will ultimately be up to you. Envy - create a culture of status around your product and feed aspirational desires "Emphasize achievement as a form of status. Give users more status when they achieve certain (company-serving) goals. This trains them to keep coming back for more." "Encourage payment as an alternative to achievement. Show impatient people a shortcut to improved status via their wallets." "Let users advertise their status. Encourage users to build and advertise their status within a community." Greed - keep customers engaged by reinforcing the behaviors you desire "Move from money to tokens. Tokens can have an arbitrary value. People respond to price points, so if you move them to a token-based currency, you can charge 99 tokens even if that equates to $1.50." Gluttony - escalate customers' commitment and use loss aversion to keep them there "Impatience leads to compliance. Put a time constraint on a task and then offer to help users through it." So, is the concept for monetisation in this space doable? Absolutely. It will, however, come down to the execution of the design, usability and intent of the business to determine whether or not the business becomes profitable and to what extent users enjoy benefits of the service.

Users don't want to pay for services, donation or otherwise. Regardless of how easy you make the donation process. If a startup relied on donations in order to scale it would fail. Paid services will always struggle to gain users, unlike fermium services. Let's face it, no one wants to pay for anything they don't have to. If you can provide a similar service for free, it will always dominate paid alternatives.

Well, it does sound interesting to me. But as far as I can make it, its all about donations. How can it replace the advertisements.