How do you get more people top leave tips on blogs? Try to make your tip jar app into a platform that spreads the wealth to more people. Y Combinator startup TipJoy is trying to do that with a new platform API for Web applications that will let them share tips with users who contribute content. The platform is launching today in closed beta (the first 200 Web developers who mention TechCrunch in the application will get in).
TipJoy already makes a widget that bloggers can put on their sites to collect tips from loyal readers. Tips start at 10 cents, but readers can choose any amount. All they need to do is put in an e-mail address. Payments are made via PayPal (which takes 2 3 to 6 percent—TipJoy takes another 2 3 percent). With the new API, Web apps and sites that rely on contributions from the audience will be able to split up any tips with those contributors as well. The hosting sites will determine the split, but TipJoy founder Ivan Kirigin expects the most effective formula will end up giving the majority to the contributors. Some API partners testing the widget include bug.gd, Disqus, IJigg, OurDoings, and Weebly.
Below is an example of what a TipJoy widget looks like (any contributions will be donated to charity):
While I like TipJoy’s approach, the sad truth is that people in general are bad tippers, and that is doubly true for the Web. Since TipJoy launched in February, it has collected only 7443 (mostly 10-cent) tips totaling $2589.86 across all the 300 blogs that use it. And the payment rate is only 25 percent. Maybe if tip jars spread, that payment rate will go up. But don’t count on it.
hey guys here is my blog on tech and startups do visit and give suggestions http://www.thew...m.wordpress.com
I saw this on the other site yesterday:
http://jeffspos...web-20-startup/
My guess? TC deadpool within 4 months.
Anything that makes it easier to pay UGC contributers is cool in my book.
Also take a look at the Adsense API, which lets you do the same thing with advertiser money.
http://code.goo...nuesharing.html
“Since TipJoy launched in February, it has collected only 7443 (mostly 10-cent) tips totaling $2589.86 across all the 300 blogs that use it.”
Oh good Lord… That’s awful…
I suppose that’s the problem with the “freemium” model that’s so pervasive these days? We’ve gotten so used to “free” that even tips of .10 seem like too much hassle.
Bloggers wanting to accept funds can just use the Mpayy Widget at http://widget.m...mentWidget.html. They can grab it and put it anywhere and accept payments from users’ checking accounts.
It can be pre-populated and co-branded and the transaction takes place in a secure popup.
Why would bloggers want to pay TipJoy and PayPal for this service?
copycat idea
isnt the same as buy me a beer crap
i may be a dropout but i know copycat when i see it
deadpool.
fix the typo, you confused the hell out of me.
25% seems pretty great to me. TipJoy launched early to start understanding the market, so I imagine this number will climb.
We offer a free service and I literally can’t count the number of times that we’ve had someone email us and say, “Please add some Google ads so I can click on them to support you”. TipJoy is a great alternative to clickfraud!
Wow, seems to me that until individual bloggers are earning this much per month that the platform barely deserves recognition vs some of its competitors…
I’ve been using tip joy for a few weeks on my blog. I’ve been given $1.35 and I’m very grateful for that. Lets hope either tip joy gets more effective or my content improves.
http://ryanagraves.com/blog/
I helped a friend of mine who’s a freelance journalist in Africa set up a blog with a tip jar using ChipIn:
http://africanh...oes.tumblr.com/
It’s worked pretty well, she’s raised over $1,000 on her own. I think it helps not to suggest the amount to donate — you’ll fine people are quite generous if they believe in the cause (most ended up being chunks of at least $25). One person even donated money to her to pass onto someone she covered.
She calls it “media philanthropy”.
I’d say an important factor why tipjoy’s tipping effort is not working as it should is that the base idea is implemented poorly. I work with Tipit.to (http://tipit.to) and we’re seeing a payment rate upwards of 50%. That is counting unverified accounts, excluding those returns a pay rate upwards of 75%.
What Tipit.to does differently:
Real money
Tipit.to does offer the option to withdraw real money (unlike Tipjoy). If you’re doing this with play money, you both will not get serious tippers nor will you get serious tip receivers on your side. I think that is partly to blame for the difference in payment rate. Why pay if it isn’t real money anyway?
Free
Tipit.to charges only the rate our payment provider (currently Paypal) charges and this rate is somewhat higher than 2% as quoted in the post. Any lower rate we can negotiate will directly benefit our users.
The Tipit.to service itself is completely free. We only ask an optional tip from people receiving money out of the system.
Tipjoy charging 3% for their service begs the question, if they themselves do not believe in tipping as a viable business model, why should their users?
Multi-currency
Seeing as the dollar has weakened and most people don’t use it, Tipit.to has an internal foreign exchange system and offers tippers the possibility to pay and keep their tips in either Euros, Dollars or Pounds (with more currencies to be added on demand). This circumvents foreign exchange charges which would otherwise be crippling to an international service such as this.
So on first glance we might be similar services, but we eat our own dogfood and try to execute seriously.
We are hard at work adding new features and partner site support was on the roadmap and will be implemented after we finish the current batch.
TIPS – To Insure Prompt Service
Tips are for restaurants not blogs. When I write my blog I don’t ecpect readers to compensate me, just comment.
http://www.gift...forcollege.com/
I agree with this idea. Paying UGC generator and allow for their contributions to be compensated (assuming they are rated) is a solid way to generate more content and innovation.
Ryan
lessons in brevity
Congratulations to the TipJoy team for getting this released. I think it really has a lot of potential.
For us over at http://bug.gd — this is really a handy concept. We thrive off of users contributing their findings back to the community.
Over the years, it’s always struck me as odd that there hasn’t been an easy way online of showing one’s token of gratitude to those who saved you lots of time. Now sites can build that plumbing into their communities without much hassle at all.
For those sites that are about users helping users, this is likely to be quite popular. It’s one thing to put a big donation button on your own blog for a site you own, but it’s a big step beyond that to let your users give back to people other than the site owner.
Generosity within these communities needs to be encouraged, and my hats off to TipJoy for pushing this forward.
I think it is a super service, except a dam tip should be at $1.00 minimum, what the fck is $0.10, crap even $0.50. LOL
Really it is great, as contributors to my blog that are not on the payroll may earn from what they post, so if they keep earning they may become a hot writer or even start their own blog.
Now my blog is in BETA so virtually no one reads it, but that is fine, I am loving it and do not care for advertising. If you look closer at its objective you will see why.
Techcrunch I am no ass kisser, so up yours. LOL. But Thanks for all the GREAT info, news, post, comments. You and your team are super. Keep up the good work.
TipJoy I think will do well, as it has a cool name, also I think they make it personal so it has a different feel. All in all they are a new name and new style so the old may go out the window if it catches on on Facebook.
I can see TipJoy being more useful for non profit blogs or non profit websites versus any blog, but who knows? I like the name tho, very cute.
Oh yes, and I agree with Senior Editor–a 10 cent tip is not even worth giving. Why not just give a dollar?
The crucial bit here is to get people used to actually tipping something. It has to be a fairly ubiquitous service and notion to really properly take off. I think folk here are wrong to be so judgemental at this stage as it’s quite a new idea and these things often take time.
It might be worth considering these ideas in the context of art and musicians, instead of merely the blogs everyone is talking about. I’d be much more inclined to tip a good artist than a blog.
I admit that I like how Tipit.to is using their own tipping model as their business model. It is a risk, though.
@Clara & @Senior Editor – tippers can set the tip amount, up to $0.50 here: http://tipjoy.com/settings
Then each click will be $0.50.
When you tip, you’ll see a “give more” link. You can give a lot there. Here is where you’d go to give more to TechCrunch, for example. [it only works if you're logged in and have given to that piece of content.]
http://tipjoy.c...emore/?joyId=64
AAHHHH, just when you think it is over, the fun just begins.
I have a “Hot Babes” section on my newspaper as it will remind me when I was a boy and use to see naked breast of beautiful women in the daily STAR.
However I did not plan to use naked breast just yet but women in Bikini’s. Had and still have a problem of getting the right girls and enough of them to even post their pics. Problem is they all wanted money.
After several rejections and promises, I created a Facebook group called Hot Babes (since deleted by me) to cut a long story short I got some hot pics in my new group.
Then the thought came to me right before I went to take a crap on the John. Why not post the pictures and use TipJoy as a means for the girls to earn some cash? While taking my crap the revelation came to me “naked Tits” and Bikinis + TipJoy = cash for the girls.
I then realize I would be running a cyber strip club, but I would not be the pimp but TipJoy, would as they would earn proceeds form girls tips based on generous men and women who like their photo them tips. This would be great as the girls earnings would be seen and their ratings move up on the page as their earnings increase.
Now I do not want to be a pimp or a strip club owner but the idea is tooooo great to pass up. Once again. Thanks Techcrunch. LOL.
Really, I would like them to see the amount for what I have in mind. This should be an optional feature so the hottest girls can brag, hey you saw my US$1,000 tip from some dude out of cali?
I like this. I am going to work with it. i think all my models will be quite happy about this feature. Except me of course. Where is my cut? Would that make into a pimp? I am not for pimping. So I guess I do not want or need a cut. But dam what if it took off through the roof? Oh well.
Question: Will the Tip Joy button appear on a Wordpress blog? I have had issues posting HTML codes in my blog. Testing PayPal and had to use another web page for the buttons to appear. I guess the same thing will happen with this. Takes away from a seamless experience though. Anyone know how to get around this wordpress HTML (button) issue let me know.
Charity? Gift Card? Interesting.
Charity sounds good. But maybe not for the girls who own their photos. Still a good concept none the less.
i think the bigger prize is just proving that micropayments are feasible economically, and build the infrastructure. once that’s in place, we can talk about subscriptions, etc.
some of my favorite content – i would have gladly paid for, and still would, if they’d only bring it back.
http://politicaltheory.info/
there are lots of things that i’d pay a little bit for – maybe even more than a little bit.
FYI– some additional general discussion from our blog on the TipJoy integration (it didn’t Trackback properly, I guess):
http://blog.bug...de-with-tipjoy/
Amazon has had their Honor System online since around 1999. Same idea, copy and paste an button on to your site. Minimum donation is $1.00 http://zme.amazon.com
Pay Pal did the same thing around ‘99 or 2000. https://www.pay...e-intro-outside
@Steve A major difference with a site like Tipit.to is that your donations do not disappear into a black hole but are published (if you choose not to stay anonymous) both on your page and on the tipjar pages. This way tipping becomes a more social action as it should be.
#32. Exactly. So the feel is almost interactive and almost like a game. Crap dudes could end up tipping big bucks to win over a chick on my Hot Babes page.
I see this with huge potential. The very idea of playing with tips in a social network seems cool. Spin off or no spin off the thing if handled correctly will rock.
@Kristoffer Lawson, you may be on to something re. artists and musicians. Ijigg is getting a lot of tipjoy for music, and the first real tipjoy on OurDoings is a theatre company:
http://ourdoing...verlandtheatre/
They have good family-friendly shows coming this weekend north of Boston.
I find it interesting that all the positive comments are coming from the YCombinator people. I think they’re all delusional.
Another issue with TipJoy is how many people are actually pushing it? I’ve had it up for a while but it’s just another bit of javajunk floating in between posts. I just put up an actual request for donations:
http://fatbasta...ing-for-change/
We’ll see how that works out. It seems like a good idea, all we have to do is convince readers. Or more to the point they’ll let us know if they agree.
And as for 10 cents being nothing, if every reader gave 10 cents you would be getting $10.00 per thousand unique viewers, as far as I know that would be a good CPM rate.
And Alper, Tipit.to looks interesting. After I play around with TipJoy I’ll check it out.
What is YCombinator?
#36. Re the $0.10, we all know that high volume on anything will amount to be huge later. But for low traffic websites like my blog (in BETA) and even then the largest online paper here has way less that 70K uniques, thus 10 cents is small for low traffic sites.
Most likely very few readers would tip a large newspaper site anyway, after they know the paper charges for the hard copy. But you are absolutely right on what you said.
“my blog (in BETA” lolololol
yeah, like not released for prime time. simple enough yes.
Technology is released in “beta”, not blogs. Sorry, but that is pathetic. One does not “release” blog content, one simply blogs. No beta. Total misuse of the term, but typical.
yes it is a blatant misuse. But it is not content but the site and name of the site that will be for release with certain features, sections, and functionality.
A blog is no different than a website.
And by the way I know that, but obviously you never read most of my post on tech stocks. That makes me feel much better, knowing that you are not in my league.
When you can predict in public 4-6 weeks prior a Google stock price falling by almost half, and the actual offer value for Yahoo 4-6 weeks before a whiff of it even reaches the public then come and talk to me. To top it off, web you can determine how to make Yahoo fail then come talk to me.
Alper, in comment #32 you say: “This way tipping becomes a more social action as it should be.” Another example of a Web 2.0 “new” idea that’s really an old idea like Amazon’s & PayPal’s with an added “social’ tag? Take an old idea that didn’t work, say “It’s the Myspace/Facebook of (fill in blank)”.
@Steve Not really. Think about why tipping works in real life. It does so because there is a social norm and pressure to do so and not doing so is visible both to your party as to your service provider.
Translating that dynamic online is admittedly difficult but that is what we’re trying to do. So allow people to publish what they have tipped and who has tipped them etc. This way we try to create the conditions for a social dynamic to spring up around the phenomenon.