Comments on: Why Online “Tip Jar”-Style Payment Systems Don’t Work

By: Dave Dugdale

Dave Dugdale — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 17:35:22 +0000

Thanks Mathew, I really appreciate it.

Also thanks for using my photo, I love to see them viewed by as many people as possible.

Dave

By: Eric Ferraiuolo

Eric Ferraiuolo — Tue, 17 May 2011 01:03:34 +0000

@Mathew, would you tip Dave for his Flickr photo you used?

By: Eric Ferraiuolo

Eric Ferraiuolo — Tue, 17 May 2011 01:00:30 +0000

@Yacko, I think it’s the point in the consumption cycle when you leave the tip that’s very important. Making the decision to pay (or being forced to in the case of paywalls) before you consume causes people to go into purchase-mode, even for small amounts of money. But I find it pretty easy and low-key using TipTheWeb to tip a buch of stuff right after I consume it, and not disrupt my normal browsing flow: http://tiptheweb.org/tipstream/3mtvsfracef58/

By: Eric Ferraiuolo

Eric Ferraiuolo — Tue, 17 May 2011 00:54:05 +0000

@Niraj, right. Streamlining the process _very_ important. Could you see yourself tipping if doing so was about as much work as bookmarking the page you’re on?

By: John Humphrey

John Humphrey — Fri, 13 May 2011 06:04:37 +0000

Without defining success it’s going to be difficult to determine how Flattr won’t work. For me it’s already a huge success because it allows me to express my appreciation for content authors. I hate ads and use AdblockPlus to create a browsing environment that isn’t stupid and humiliating. Flattr lets me pay back. I’ve been using it since it launched and I’m very impressed with how well it works and how quickly it’s growing.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:50:53 +0000

Yes, this is one of the things Clay Shirky mentioned in something he wrote about micropayments years ago — the “social friction” of having to make those decisions over and over, even for small amounts.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:46:31 +0000

Thanks for pointing that out, Dave — I was under the impression that attribution and a link to your Flickr page was enough, but obviously I didn’t read the page carefully. I will add a link to your site.

By: Yacko

Yacko — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:26:58 +0000

If they are willing to punch a “like” button every 60 seconds, then perhaps a “pay 10¢” might work.

By: Dave Dugdale

Dave Dugdale — Thu, 12 May 2011 14:29:09 +0000

Mathew,

I am so glad that you liked my Flickr photo so much that you included it on this page about tip jars.

I enjoy when people use my photos that I work hard on, but as I noted on Flickr below each photo I let people use my photos on the condition that they provide me credit to my learningdslrvideo.com site. Please add my link when you can.

Thanks,
Dave Dugdale

By: Yacko

Yacko — Thu, 12 May 2011 11:05:08 +0000

People will pay. Whether Flattr goes flat won’t be for that reason. It will be whether they make the process friendly.

There are two obstacles:

1. The service must be seamless and ubiquitous and not be cumbersome. Anything that requires special sign-ins, special web sites will never work. If every micropay service were different that’s fragmentation. Why an outfit like DISQUS can’t move in this direction I don’t know. You can comment on an article, you can punch a like button, but you can’t pay a tip. And it has to be secure, not for the pennies you will spend that day, but for the link to the credit or debit card that backs it. No one is going to trust a service with credit or a debit card that mainlines to a bank account just to disperse $2 a day. Especially now, thank you Sony.

2. There has to be a way to move payments as low as pennies efficiently. Not that all transactions are that low, but without beggar level coin, a service will not have oomph. People may tip well in a restaurant but the Internet tip will be 1/100th. Doesn’t mean you couldn’t also purchase music and video and software at higher amounts, but it has to scale down to even a single penny for money transfer service like this to gain traction. I might be willing to throw a buck or two a day among the 200 articles I skim a day. Many will get zero, a couple might get a quarter and the rest it is going to be pennies.

Forget about growing fast. If an existing entity can put something together with a couple of hundred million users from day one and meet the above two observations, then we have something.