This is pretty great.

First, a new, in-depth journalism project called Matter set a fundraising goal of $50,000 on Kickstarter.

They reached it in 38 hours.

They set a new goal of $75,000.

They reached it in four days.

Related: What’s Evernote for? How about making a vast, searchable archive of all your files

They kept going. This time, the goal was $100,000.

It took them nine days.

Can we stop talking about how people don’t want long stories online? Some people obviously do.

Let’s start talking about the best way to give them those stories.

The post Long-form journalism project asks for money, raises $100,000 on Kickstarter appeared first on John Tedesco.

Kachingle’s still around?

Turns out, Kachingle has launched in beta, and at long last I got to sign up with a convenient service to pay my favorite blogs and news organizations. But so far, it looks like I’m one of only a relatively few Kachinglers out there.

What exactly is Kachingle? You sign up with a Paypal account, commit to $5 a month, and when you visit a Web site that has a Kachingle badge, you can choose to support the site. Kachingle remembers your favorite sites, and your monthly $5 will be distributed among them, based on your surfing habits. Here’s a nice overview. I have yet to get a badge for my blog, but I signed up as a Kachingler to pay the blogs I like. (Update: Just got my Kachingle Medallion and already have some followers — thanks.)

I appreciate Kachingle for its ease of use. Once you click on that Kachingle badge, paying your favorite blog a little pocket change is automatic and easy. That’s a big deal at a time when news organizations doing expensive watchdog journalism are looking for new revenue streams on the Internet.

But to really work, a lot of Web sites and Web surfers have to know about Kachingle and sign up. And so far the top Kachingle site is … Steve Outing’s blog, with 53 people supporting it on Kachingle — including me. Outing has earned $65.08 during a four-month period from Kachingle, but it’s still early and he’s hopeful it’s the beginning of an upward trend. “I still have a sense that this model can take off,” Outing wrote. “We’ll see. I do know that individual tips jars on sites and blogs won’t be worth much; ask the Miami Herald.”

I haven’t seen an explanation from Kachingle about how RSS feeds work into its business model. Do you have to visit the actual Web site to give a blog a financial boost? If so, bloggers will miss out on some profits.

Related: Sign up for blog updates from John Tedesco

I’ll give Kachingle a chance and see how it works. I like the idea of making it easy for people to pay for online content they appreciate. But do enough readers care enough to actually sign up?

The post I am officially a Kachingler appeared first on John Tedesco.