Tipjoy, a Y Combinator-funded micropayment startup that launched in February, has closed a Series A funding round led by Betaworks, with The Accelerator Group and Chris Sacca also participating. The company hasn’t disclosed the exact amount of the funding, but says that it is just shy of $1 million.
Tipjoy offers as a basic micropayment system that allows bloggers to leave virtual tipjars on their sites, asking for donations from users who appreciate their material. The system can also be used to collect money for any number of purposes, including charity and digital goods.
To enable Tipjoy, site owners embed a small piece of code on their page, which is linked to their main Tipjoy account. To leave a tip, visitors need only enter their email address and the amount they’d like to give. Tipjoy then sends them an email with their outstanding balance, which they can pay off using PayPal (credit card support is on the way).
The system’s most obvious flaw is that users are never held accountable for their tips – nobody comes after you if you fail to pay off your Tipjoy debt. But promising the payment was voluntary in the first place, so there’s not much of a reason to leave a fake tip.
Here’s a sample Tipjoy Tipjar, offering one of the site’s press releases for 99 cents (all proceeds go to charity):
I like this idea – if you come across great content you can reward the author with just a small but meaningful tip
Cool but their model will fail.
what is the minium and max range of payments. my guess is there will be a thousand of these voluntary donation apps in 5 years.
DonationLocator.com
We can technically handle $0.0000000001 transactions. The front end limits things to a $0.01. That can be upgraded if you need something better
We’re working on a more advanced API that can also handle it. Hopefully, it will power the backends of the thousands of donation apps a few years out.
Great service– a delightful alternative to the standard “you should add adsense ads to your blog/service so I can click on them” way of rewarding quality.
1 million funding lmaoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
1mil in funding? For this? WOOOOOOOOW
Good for them for getting their hustle on, but let’s all be serious here. I could code this shit in 2 hours. Give me a fucking break.
PS: Many sites already do this…pledgie.com being my favorite of the bunch.
But anyone with basic knowledge of HTML and a PayPal account can already wire up a button with the code they provide…in a minute or two.
I guess some VC’s just like burning money.
Thanks for the idea. I’m going to put it on Floort.com right away! Easy to code!
Yes, but now it’s quicker and doable for everyone. With less coding skills. Like an embed tag. See the good thing in that?
Have you ever actually used paypal to make a donation? It’s a 9 click process. Tipjoy leaves you where everyone wants you: right there with the content. Single click payment is very different than paypal.
If anything, this model has proven itself to be a failure. I doubt they’re raised more than $10,000 so far.
Neat idea. Yet surely that $1m in funding is going towards primarily a marketing budget. Because there is no way development costs are going to be that high for such a simple service.
Great Idea. I would use it. Just need to add more information about the charities. I would even prefer to give tip my favorite charity !
3% to tipjoy
3% to paypal
Meh. In reality if you’re just donating tiny amounts you can probably indirectly “donate” more money to your favourite content providers simply by clicking on some of their ads that interest you, and cut out these two middlemen.
Cut out the middleman with ads? Do you mean by adding the advertiser, the ad network, and google into the picture?
The site owner sees much less than 97% of ad revenue. And ads usually take a user away from the page. Why would a content creator want that?
Not only that, but if you’re not actually interested in what’s being advertised then you’re just taking money from the advertiser to give some to the publisher. Not the most honest way to give someone money.
All proceeds go to charity!?!?
Last time I checked, there was no way to cash out. You could only opt to receive an Amazon gift certificate.
What?
Well, check again.
We turned on cash out to a PayPal account
http://tipjoys2...ng-lead-by.html
I love the tipjoy concept, great to hear they raised good funding.
To one of the posters: no, this is not as simple as putting a PayPal button on a page. Those guys do it the smart way, which online, may mean the difference between a flop and a hit.
Alain.
Of course it’s not as simple, tipjoy gets 3%. That’s 3% the person receiving the tip won’t be getting.
The funding, and the site has FAIL written all over it.
reminds me a lot of it’s predecessor scratchback (and perhaps inspiration?)…
either way the services are nearly identical
Yes. This is redic.
Congrats guys, Betaworks is awesome.
I’d love to see an actual way to cash out instead of Amazon money.
The funding this company has received proves the power YCombinator can bring you as a startup. I’d like to know how the company plans on making money on a $0.01 tip. Are they going to be like those guys in Office Space, taking just “fractions of pennies”?
Jason Kiesel
Founder @ & CEO
http://www.freedomspeaks.com
Micropayments can be defined as tolerating small amounts, but they don’t need to be small. Imagine a web app that uses Tipjoy for one-click subscription purchasing. Sure they have a $1/yr mode (which is pretty much untenable without Tipjoy), but they might also have a $200/mo mode using the same API.
With billions of $1 mp3s sold, I don’t think I need to argue too hard for the market.
Ah, maybe that is why yesterday I get an unsolicited email asking about TipYouTipMe.com and TipYouTipMe.com, two domain names I own and am trying to figure out what to do with. Maybe a good time? Contact: http://buzzpal.com/contact
Correction (sorry for second comment): Should read “TipYouTipMe.com and TipMeTipYou.com.”
No one’s gonna buy your stupid domain name.
I’ll give you $25 in Tipjoy for each.
this is lame…paypal has donate button for ages…i believe even amazon has this kind of stuff….if bloggers really want peanuts like this those two services would have been very popular….don’t think this will take off….nice try though!!
with paypal do the same thing, but they have a million and this is the true
Are u able cash out or is it still only amazon gift certificates? If the latter, they are screwed. If the former, can’t this be used for money laundering and all sorts of shady stuff?
who would buy a domain
it is stupid to by a domain
it is to stupid to by a domain
why the hell would i use this and not just paypal?
imooch.com has a different take on a similar concept.
This is Dead On Arrival. DOA.
Huh? Ze Frank built this IN ONE NIGHT two years ago in reply to a user comment on his video blog. Then Google shut him down (and apologized) and he rewrote it for PayPal before the next show aired. He built the damn thing twice in 36 hours.
The concept is solid as he made SEVERAL THOUSAND DOLLARS per day (all donations were public) — but a million to fund this? C’mon. One coked up videoblogger can build it as a side project while writing and performing a daily performance show, sheesh.