Remove thanks star only from text, not from footnote

Question

I use the \thanks command to include a first starred footnote with acknowledgments. The star should appear in the footnote, but there should be no star in the text (in this case right after the title). How can I remove the star only from the text and not from the footnote?

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\title{This is my title\thanks{Here I thank people.}}
\maketitle
Here is a sentence.\footnote{Here is a footnote.}
\end{document}

Answer 1

The \maketitle command in the article class redefines \@makefnmark in a group to print the marker in a zero width box, so as to preserve centering. Thus it's sufficient to define it to do nothing:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\maketitle}
 {\def\@makefnmark}
 {\def\@makefnmark{}\def\useless@macro}
 {}{}
\makeatother

\textheight=8cm % just to have a smaller picture

\begin{document}

\title{This is my title\thanks{Here I thank people.}}
\author{Sverre}

\maketitle

Here is a sentence.\footnote{Here is a footnote.}

\end{document}

The patch might be more detailed, removing all replacement text for \@makefnmark, that, with this patch, will become the replacement text for \useless@macro. But since it's in a group, the definition of \useless@macro will disappear as soon as the group ends.

Answer 2

You can insert the footnote manually with the appropriate identifier:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paperheight=20\baselineskip]{geometry}% Just for this example
\begin{document}
\title{This is my title\footnotetext{\llap{\textsuperscript{*}}Here I thank people.}}
\maketitle
Here is a sentence.\footnote{Here is a footnote.}
\end{document}