
Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you - jijosunny
Hi HN!<p>We’re Joseph, Aleesha, and Jijo, the founders of Buy Me A Coffee (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buymeacoffee.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buymeacoffee.com</a>). We make it super easy to accept contributions and recurring memberships from your audience.<p>A bit of backstory - Joseph and I grew up in India. When I was 12, I started making a little bit of money from my blog, and it had a huge impact on my life. I got to buy books and gadgets, pay for web hosting, none of which I could’ve afforded otherwise. We built our first product in 2010. It was an ad network for bloggers called AdIndigo. There were a bunch of Adsense alternatives doing well at that time, and it grew to serve 6 million impressions at its peak. We later had to shut it down because of the expenses. Buy Me A Coffee is our third (and only successful) attempt at building for the creators.<p>When we started working on Buy Me A Coffee as a side project, it was a quick way to spin up a page or a button to accept one-time contributions. For artists, OSS developers, and YouTubers, it was an unobtrusive way to monetize their work. They appreciated the simplicity and friendly branding and started requesting more features. Some even noticed that they’re getting more contributions compared to a Patreon or PayPal button. It’s probably because of the no-signup-required payment flow. Supporters also get to leave a note after the payment, and it ends up becoming this ‘wall of love’ for creators.<p>Today, you can do a lot more with Buy Me A Coffee. You can accept recurring payments and give rewards in return. For e.g. Maria Shriver is using Buy Me A Coffee to monetize her newsletter ‘The Sunday Paper’ (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesundaypaper.buymeacoffee.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thesundaypaper.buymeacoffee.com&#x2F;</a>) with a link in the footer of every edition. Slowly (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slowly.buymeacoffee.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;slowly.buymeacoffee.com&#x2F;</a>) is a self-funded team using Buy Me A Coffee to accept contributions and feedback from their users. We also built Widgets that allow you to accept payments right from your website. Built-in email features let you share updates and rewards with your audience. We’re also working on a community feature to create a group chat with your supporters. Creators are already doing this with Discord and Slack, and we&#x27;re excited to build something more focused.<p>We believe anyone, anywhere in the world who creates something that people find useful or entertaining, should have the option to get paid for their work.<p>We’re excited to hear all your questions and thoughts about Buy Me A Coffee :) Thank you!
======
ankeshk
This hits me with nostalgia. I had made the first buy me a beer / coffee
plugin for the wordpress ecosystem back in 2007. People consistently were
earning more from donations than from adsense through the plugin.

The idea wasn't originally mine. Paul Myers on the warriorforum used to have
"buy me a beer" in his signature. I just ported it to wordpress. Its amazing
to see you guys doing well.

~~~
jijosunny
whoa, it's great to hear from you. I'm pretty sure I've used your plugin on
one of my blogs. thank you!

------
danShumway
When I click the signup link, I get a message that by signing up, I agree to
your terms. But I don't see a link to those terms in the message, and I can't
find a link to those terms anywhere else on the main page. I also can't find
your privacy policy.

A couple of questions on that front:

\- Do your terms include mandatory arbitration agreements for creators?

\- Do your terms include mandatory arbitration agreements for tippers?

\- Your signup link mentions that you ban adult content. Do you have a clear
definition somewhere of what adult content is, or is this following the "know
it when we see it" model of platforms like Patreon and Steam?

On the privacy policy front:

\- What personal information do you require on signup (for creators and
tippers). Can I tip someone without providing them my address/phone number?
Can I create an account without providing you my address/phone number?

On the general feature front:

\- The site mentions that I can create webhooks, but doesn't mention whether
there's a general API for things like adding posts, updating pledges, etc...

This is my biggest personal problems with Patreon -- their interface isn't
particularly great, and I can't automate any of the stuff I need to regularly
do, so as a result I mostly ignore it or try to handle all of my reward tiers
outside of the platform. But on a wider, less personal level, it's also a way
to make it harder to migrate between funding platforms and to increase lock-
in.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
> Your signup link mentions that you ban adult content. Do you have a clear
> definition somewhere of what adult content is, or is this following the
> "know it when we see it" model of platforms like Patreon and Steam?

It's a little dismaying that so few -- quite possibly zero -- mainstream
creator-payment platforms like this are comfortable with adult content.
Patreon seems to still be trying to thread that needle, but there's a near-
annual ritual of "OMG Patreon is cracking down the porn" panic. Ko-Fi
explicitly (ahem) changed their policy to disallow NSFW content and BMaC here
seems to be starting with SFW-only in place.

And, yes, I know the fingers are always pointed at the payment processors
here, but that just shifts the question as to why payment processors do this.
We're not talking about 1-900 numbers or adult video stores in the divey-ist
parts of downtown that are going to face chargeback after chargeback as a cost
of doing business; is there truly a good business case for Stripe and PayPal
policing somebody's patronage of risqué catgirl comics or what have you?

~~~
DoreenMichele
I haven't specifically investigated the question of payment processing and
adult businesses. I have done some research into this issue wrt marijuana
businesses and bank accounts. Marijuana is legal in some US states but still
not legal at the federal level (last I checked). They have enormous difficulty
getting bank accounts.

With marijuana businesses, the issue is that the bank could potentially lose
access to the federal system for knowingly issuing a bank account to a
business that is violating federal law. This would basically shut the bank
down, from what I gather.

My assumption is there is likely a similar mechanism in place poisoning the
entire payment system for adult content. If I wanted to work on the issue, I
would dig until I found the root cause, which is very likely legal/regulatory
and very likely at the federal level in the US. Then put resources into
addressing the actual root cause instead of fussing at the payment processors.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
While I haven't dug really deeply, I don't think the situations are directly
comparable. Adult businesses aren't banned at the federal level, and as long
as there's no state law that bans them, there's nothing that _legally_
prevents them from opening a bank account, processing credit cards, and so on.

The problem appears to be specifically with the policies of payment
processors. As I understand it, the actual payment processing networks --
MasterCard, Visa, et. al. -- historically charged a significant premium to
process transactions for businesses that had a reputation for very high
chargeback rates (people calling to cancel payment). Adult businesses had that
reputation. From what I've been able to tell, this has persisted to today.
It's presumably just easier for payment processors like Stripe and PayPal to
ban adult content than to work out multiple rates with their credit card
networks, let alone try to make the (correct and I would argue obvious) case
that Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, Ko-Fi, et. al. aren't "adult businesses" even
if they allow legal adult content creators on their platform any more than
Amazon is an "adult business" if they let you buy books with explicit content.

That's a point I've always wondered about, actually; Amazon _does_ let you buy
books with explicit content, both text and visual (a search for Erika Moen's
"Oh Joy Sex Toy" right now immediately showed it was available both in
paperback and on both Kindle and Comixology!), so it's clearly not as verboten
as the crowdfunding platforms make it sound. I know Amazon has the advantage
of being Amazon -- MasterCard isn't gonna stop processing their transactions
no matter what they sell -- but I also know a few very small publishers who
sell erotic comics and that use Stripe and/or Square for payment processing.
Again, those publishers aren't really "adult businesses," per se (not all
their titles are adults-only).

I would really like a processor like Stripe -- or a competitor, but I suspect
size matters in this case -- to step up and _not_ ban legal adult material.
Maybe even just in small steps, by explicitly exempting publishers or
crowdfunding platforms that aren't _exclusively_ adult.

~~~
DoreenMichele
To be clear, I meant "Stop fussing at people like Patreon and Buy Me A Coffee.
The problem appears to be upstream and a real solution would need to somehow
address the root cause, which is not these online platforms. Their hands are
tied and taking a stand likely means going out of business."

Given that this is a Launch HN, that's all I'm going to say here. This is not
really the time and place to hash this detail out.

~~~
danShumway
Payment processors like Stripe rely on creator platforms like Patreon and BMaC
for non-trivial portions of their business. That kind of demand is _why_
Stripe Marketplace exists in the first place. If consumers aren't putting
pressure on every step of the chain, that pressure won't work its way up to
the payment processors.

In other words, if marketplaces themselves aren't going to Stripe and
complaining, Stripe will not fix its Marketplace TOS. A really good way to
create that demand is to hold businesses that build on top of these processors
accountable.

If I build a calendar app on top of Facebook, and Facebook requires me to
share all of my user data with them, you can make a reasonable argument that
this is all Facebook's fault for having bad terms. But even so, if my users
start asking me why all of their data is going to Facebook, that puts a lot of
pressure on me to look for other platforms that have better terms, or complain
to Facebook that their offering isn't good enough for me.

I'm not saying that Buy Me A Coffee should be abandoned or that I want it to
fail. We don't want to block better platforms or decrease competition in the
pursuit of perfection.

But even if on net Buy Me A Coffee is a good service, and even if we
ultimately want it to succeed, and even if the owners genuinely can't do
anything at all, it is still a good thing to force the owners to go through
additional friction and to endure additional criticism because of their
content decisions -- because if a better, more permissive payment processor
ever pops up in the future, owners that have gone through that friction will
be able to see a real business case for switching and revising their policies.
When Stripe advertises its Marketplace services, platforms like Buy Me A
Coffee will have an incentive to say, "yeah, but my users are still going to
chew me out over your policies. How can you help me with that?"

Criticism of creator platforms over payment methods creates demand for better
payment methods.

------
emptysongglass
Creators are already getting nickel and dimed. One of my big things when I was
managing musicians (really my friends whose work I loved) was I continually
refused to step into the that thick miasma of profiteering others in the
industry practiced.

Many musicians, for example, make less than 50 percent on distribution deals
with their labels. I'm leading with this because 5 percent on top of CC
payment processors' 30 cents + 2.whatever% is completely unethical from where
I'm standing. You can integrate Fosspay [1] with fewer bells and whistles but
totally free except for CC processors' cut (exorbitant as that in itself may
be).

We need to stop inserting ourselves between creators and their money. It isn't
worth whatever valuation we're fetching and it doesn't justify making us rich
while creators gratefully accept their pittance.

[1] [https://github.com/ddevault/fosspay](https://github.com/ddevault/fosspay)

EDIT: The word "free" is tossed around so frequently on
[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ko-fi-
alternative](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ko-fi-alternative) I feel I have to
re-check my own reality of what free means. The service is very much not free
when the price is being extracted from every purchase a customer makes.

~~~
mgraczyk
This is essentially a Luddite argument. This particular product isn't going to
be "inserting" itself anywhere, it's just a new way for creators to get paid.
Over time, products like this expand the number of "creators" who actually get
paid and make it easier to scale to bigger audiences.

Nobody is stopping you from putting your hat out on the street or signing with
a huge label like you'd likely have to do a few decades ago.

~~~
Semiapies
And nobody's going to help money get from consumers to creators for free.

------
fredley
How do you differentiate from [https://ko-fi.com/](https://ko-fi.com/)? My
partner has been using this for a year or so, and hasn't had much revenue.

~~~
jijosunny
Buy Me A Coffee is more than a simple donation button/link. We help creators
set up memberships, publish members-only content, website widget and more. You
can read the full comparison here - [https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ko-fi-
alternative](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ko-fi-alternative)

That said, we're big fans of all creator monetization companies like substack,
patreon, ko-fi, etc.

~~~
Semiapies
One of the features you list over Ko-fi is a mobile app.

Why on Earth would I need a mobile app to use this? What does it provide that
a well-designed mobile site doesn't?

~~~
herenorthere
I have no idea, but I'd assume the mobile app would be for use of the people
receiving the money. Which would be a nice add if I were a content creator.
But that's just a guess.

Edit: As for your notion that an app isn't necessary when there is a well-
designed mobile site, I def agree. However, that's just not the case anymore,
how else do you expect companies to so easily collect your personal data! /s

Edit2: Id wager some companies intentionally don't focus on having a nicely
compatible mobile site. For example, my bank's website sucks when I visit from
a mobile web browser, however their app is great. I believe this is their
intention, in order for people to download their app. Which has obvious
benefits for the company; in particular, the data collection

~~~
egypturnash
I make most of my rent drawing comics and getting via Patreon and I’ve never
had any use for their app. YMMV.

~~~
herenorthere
yeah agreed. I prefer to not have to use an app if I don't have too. Or unless
there's some great benefit that the app has that the mobile site doesn't

------
ronilan
I’ve been following Buy Me A Coffee since it publicly launched (not today) and
it’s great to see that a side project can get support from YC. It’s not an
easy space.

I work winters as a snowboard instructor. Over a typical winter I’d teach
literally hundreds of people. Every once in a while I’d get a gift card, if
guest is American, I might even get a cash tip, but generally, it’s Snow
School pay. So, I thought something like Buy Me Coffee might come handy...

Being the summer software developer that I am, I ended up building something
from scratch. It has a slightly different “flavor” than Coffee, mainly trying
to make it work better in real-life interactions. But it’s in the same problem
space.

It’s here: [https://www.feedback.land](https://www.feedback.land)

Profiles look like this:
[https://www.feedback.land/ronilan](https://www.feedback.land/ronilan)

I run the experiment last winter. I’d have printed “business cards” with QR
codes in my pocket (app makes a printable version for you) and I’d hand them
out at the end of lessons (mittens snowflakes and all).

Bottom line. Got some feedback. That’s it ;)

Might give it another try this winter, but I’m generally off to other
interests. If anyone has interest in the product/software (node/Mongo/react)
contact is in HN profile.

~~~
herenorthere
cool idea. I always thought it would be awesome to figure out IRL non-cash
tipping

edit: and somehow make it not awkward, cumbersome, or time-consuming

~~~
coachtrotz
There's a company called Mezu which does this - you'll never reveal your
identity or personal info the people you tip and vice versa.
[https://www.mezu.com/](https://www.mezu.com/)

------
heymijo
> _unobtrusive way to monetize their work_

I have seen this movie before and I know how it ends. [waves at Patreon]

Help me understand why this a venture scale business and not a non-profit, a
benefit corporation, a co-op or some other model I am unaware that does not
demand venture-scale returns.

~~~
Kiro
What's wrong with Patreon?

~~~
Dylan16807
There are two big problems with Patreon that come to my mind immediately. One
is repeated issues with kicking creators off for poorly explained reasons.

The other is that they seem to hate the idea of batching transactions. For me
the biggest draw of Patreon is that I can have 10 $1 pledges and only pay one
credit card fee each month. But they keep messing with the backend and they've
forced new creators into a completely different system that does separate
charges. According to them they don't even make more money off this, so why
are they so stubbornly insistent on charging these pledges a 40% overhead?

Overall they don't listen very well, and they grabbed this big pile of VC cash
to do god-knows-what with and motivate them way too much to increase fees.

------
OJFord
No pricing information before sign-up?

It's not likely that this is a novel idea to anyone signing up, so the number
one thing they want to know (surely?) is 'how much are you skimming'.

Personally I'm not willing to sign-up first in the hope that maybe more 'how
do I actually use this and what does it cost me' information is available
afterwards.

~~~
jijosunny
sorry for the confusion. It was there until we recently redesigned our
homepage to focus more on our creators and less on the features. We're
planning to add an FAQ section on the homepage.

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
>we recently improved our homepage to focus more on our creators and less on
our features.

I would reconsider that move imho.

I doubt many contributors are going to browse the homepage and try to
contribute.

They will most likely only visit the subdomain of the contribution page they
are trying to donate to.

New registrants on the other hand, who are interested in your service and it's
features, will most likely visit the homepage first.

~~~
jijosunny
>I doubt many contributors are going to browse the homepage and try to
contribute.

I agree. Our goal was to showcase the most common use-cases and types of
creators who use us, and not for discoverability.

------
cwkoss
Reading
[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/terms](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/terms)

These potentially seem like some fairly onerous restrictions, and would
potentially exclude nearly all of my favorite youtube channels.

What is your definition of "creators who involve with:" \- does this only
cover content posted on your site, or any content the creator makes across any
publicly available service? To what extent can creators discuss these topics
if they don't actively manufacture/promote/distribute them?

Could you be more specific about creators that are "involved in weapons" \- is
this anything that can be used as a weapon or specific to military/semi-
military applications? Would Joerg Sprave's slingshot channel be prohibited?
What about someone who makes videos about forging/sharpening knives? Are
creators who discuss war journalistically or historically disqualified? Non-
miltary RC drone hobbyists like Tom Stanton?

"Chemicals" seems pretty vague. Does this preclude all chemistry and biochem
related content? I'm a big fan of channels like NileRed, CodysLab and
ThoughtEmporium, would they be prohibited? Would videos which discuss water
treatment or concrete chemistry or metallurgy be disqualifying?

"seeds or plants" \- are creators who discuss gardening or farming
disqualified? Cooking vegetables? Primitive Technology-style makers which
discuss creating objects from plant materials?

How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on
LGBTQIA activism? Does this include creators who create instructional content
while showing non-nipple cleavage? Does this include creators involved in sex-
ed/harm reduction campaigns?

Also, are there any geographic restrictions? Can creators outside the US use
your service (in countries which are NOT on the US OFAC sanction list)?

~~~
jijosunny
>Also, are there any geographic restrictions? Can creators outside the US use
your service (in countries which are NOT on the US OFAC sanction list)?

Yes, Buy Me A Coffee is available to creators in almost all countries. Here is
a breakdown of all accepted countries:
[https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/articles/3314992-countries-...](https://help.buymeacoffee.com/en/articles/3314992-countries-
supported-by-buy-me-a-coffee)

>How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on
LGBTQIA activism? Does this include creators who create instructional content
while showing non-nipple cleavage? Does this include creators involved in sex-
ed/harm reduction campaigns?

None of these are against the terms AFAIK. We unpublish creators who promote
explicit pornography or nudity. Broadly speaking, we abide by the content
restrictions of the vendors and payment processors we work with. More on that
can be found here: [https://stripe.com/restricted-
businesses](https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses)

~~~
danShumway
> None of these are against the terms AFAIK

How can this be AFAIK? Aren't you one of the founders? If you don't know what
your site allows, who does?

At the end of the day, someone has to make the final decision over whether to
ban an LGBTQ+ activist. Who is the person who will make that decision on BMaC?

I get that you're beholden to your vendors, and to a certain extent there's
nothing you can do about that. But I also assume you're not planning to just
forward literally every content decision you have to make to Stripe's legal
team for their input. So if a vulnerable person starts using your service,
they need a better guarantee than "dunno, we'll have to flip a coin and see."
You're still one of the people who are going to be enforcing this, you're
still one of the people who have the power to decide how this will work.

~~~
jijosunny
To be clear, there are no circumstances under which we'll unpublish an LGBTQ
creator. Here's a fantastic writer that I've been following for years who
recently joined Buy Me A Coffee -
[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pSzjB85](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pSzjB85)

Our community manager deals with account reviews, and she is more
knowledgeable to answer the initial question. I shouldn't have said 'AFAIK'
either way, my apologies.

~~~
wizzwizz4
> _there are no circumstances under which we 'll unpublish an LGBTQ creator._

Does that grant them immunity from rules violations, then? I think you said
the wrong thing here; what did you intend to say?

~~~
aryamaan
IMO the intent is to say that they wouldn't unpublish anyone just because they
create content around LGBTQ. However, if they violate any other rules, then
they will go through the same consequences as a not-LGBTQ content creater
would go through.

~~~
jijosunny
You're right. Thank you.

------
herenorthere
Being in YC, I assume your plan is to be headquartered in the US, or at the
very least, do business with US customers/entities.

I notice your team doesn't involve any compliance people. As you probably
already know, you are a MSB in the US, do you have plans to expand your
required compliance policies? Does your team already file on any potential
BSA/AML concerns?

Or is this like a "when we get to that bridge we will cross it" type of thing?

As you grow larger, regulators will inevitably take notice. And I know this is
probably a super boring question for mist people here, but as someone who
works in BSA/AML compliance for a tech startup MSB -- I am very interested to
hear what you have to say regarding this!

Love the site btw, the simplicity of the payment flow is A+. I could see this
taking off.

~~~
jijosunny
first off, thank you for the kind words!

Payment fraud and AML - we're a PayPal and Stripe Partner and do not hold the
money that we process. We use their marketplace products to handle payments,
fraud and compliance so that we can focus on the product.

~~~
alasdair_
>Payment fraud and AML - we're a PayPal and Stripe Partner and do not hold the
money that we process. We use their marketplace products to handle payments,
fraud and compliance so that we can focus on the product.

If someone pays with paypal, can I still get the money in my stripe account?
If not, what's the main benefit over using your service versus just using
paypal and stripe directly? Do I still need to create a paypal account and a
stripe account to use your service?

~~~
jijosunny
Yes, you need a PayPal or Stripe account to start receiving payments. The main
benefits are the community and publishing features. You can share rewards or
exclusive content with your supporters.

Also, a significant portion of the activity that we see is driven by
gratitude. People love supporting a creator and leaving a positive note.

~~~
pheme1
When I started using buy me a coffee(6 months ago?), the payment portal was
Payoneer. Is my payment portal still valid or I need to migrate to
Paypal/Stripe?

~~~
jijosunny
It is still valid, but we'd recommend connecting PayPal or Stripe for all
these new features like instant payouts :)

------
Mojah
I've been using this for a few days now on my own blog [1], but so far it
isn't "catching on". That is to say, the revenue I seem to be making from a
donation system like this is still many times smaller than a traditional
advertising system or promotion of reflink services.

This isn't an issue with Buy Me a Coffee, I think it's a fundamental issue
with how we perceive value of things we read & ingest online. It's hardly ever
apparent how much time the author spent on a piece and the consumption of it
might only take 2 minutes. Most people don't value online content to be
valuable - after all, anyone can do it - right?

In my case, with ~10.000 pageviews/day (mostly helpdesk-style articles) I get
about 1 coffee donation per day. Detract any costs by CC processor and the
service itself, and what's left is about 0.70€ (that's 70 cents).

[1] [https://ma.ttias.be/blog/](https://ma.ttias.be/blog/)

~~~
jijosunny
Hey, I just came across your tweet [1] and wanted to say that we think about
this a lot. The most effective way to attract more contributions is to offer
something extra or exclusive. Obviously, this is not possible for everyone, so
we designed Buy Me A Coffee in a way that every supporter and their comment
gets featured on the top. We then notify the creators and encourage them to
reply. This way, the act of supporting itself becomes the reward.

Thanks again for the feedback, and thank you for your blog!

[1]
[https://twitter.com/mattiasgeniar/status/1202111712264163328](https://twitter.com/mattiasgeniar/status/1202111712264163328)

------
pryelluw
You really need to optimize tge landing page for mobile clients. Im using a
powerful android phone and it struggles to load. Just shows a blank page.

You should also remove the letter by letter animation on the headline. I don't
have time to read all of nouns you have listed. Just cycle through whole words
using a faster tick speed.

And better yet, turn this landing page into a static one without any JS.
Conversion numbers will be more reliable because people wont be quickly
bouncing while waiting for the page to load.

~~~
RussianCow
> Im using a powerful android phone and it struggles to load.

I'm on a powerful 8-core desktop with a dedicated GPU and the page really
stutters while scrolling. I'm not sure what the deal is since there really
isn't anything super graphically intensive on the page.

~~~
wizzwizz4
I don't use JavaScript and the page scrolled fine. No links worked, but it
scrolled smoothly.

------
hluska
Holy shit, you folks have gotten a lot of negativity out of HN today. I don’t
have anything negative to say. Congratulations on making it into YC and
getting to launch! You’ve got a great story.

I’m about to launch something that could use this. I’ll sign up in a few days.

Best of luck and congratulations on your launch!!

~~~
jijosunny
haha, thank you so much!

I'm at jijo@buymeacoffee if you have any questions while setting up your page.

------
liamcardenas
Congratulations on your announcement, I’ve been following you and Buy Me A
Coffee for a while.

If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different idea — some
sort of podcast app. Can you explain why you decided to pivot back to Buy Me A
Coffee?

~~~
huangc10
Agreed. This is a little weird. I wonder if they got YC's "OK" to use the
Launch HN tag with (YC W19) for a product that was not actually within the
batch. It's a little deceiving.

~~~
jijosunny
We are the same company/team, and our goal is to help creators get paid for
their work. With Brew, we focused on audio creators. Everything we built so
far revolved around this vision :)

I don't want to speak for YC, but the partners want you to iterate and
succeed. Many of the successful YC companies (Reddit, Brex) got accepted for a
completely different idea.

------
primitivesuave
I did a similar project for a hackathon several years back, we made a service
that let you buy someone a drink (presumably alcoholic) at a bar near where
they live. Creators would choose the bars and patrons would sponsor a
beer/wine/etc at a particular bar. We would recover payment processing fees
from bars which would sell us drinks at a significant discount (so the $5 beer
you bought for someone cost us $2 - $3). We incentivized bar owners by
pointing out that most people would only be redeeming one or two drinks, after
which they would likely pay for additional ones.

Thankfully none of us quit our day jobs to pursue the idea - aside from
personally receiving ~$200 of free drinks at an SF bar where we knew the owner
(presumably funded by hackathon participants who enjoyed our presentation), we
couldn't get bars to sign up - nobody wanted to train their bartenders on how
to accept our virtual drink coupons, especially without a guarantee of a large
audience. We did sign up a couple content creators, which is how we learned
that even a large following doesn't translate to much patronage.

------
_raul
The implementation looks pretty slick to me!

If you're taking care of most/all the technical details, the only blocker that
would prevent me from this kind of service is the unknown legal/compliance
work I'd need to do in order to start taking this kind of money and have
access to those users' data - is that something you can provide guidance on?

~~~
jijosunny
thank you, raul! yes, we have spent a fair bit of time to tackle these for our
creators. Please drop me a line at jijo at buymeacoffee. We'd love to get you
started!

------
securingsincity
I've been a user for over a year. It has worked well for people to use as an
alternative to github sponsors and open collective. When i joined i got a
single letter vanity page...
[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/j](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/j) probably not
what they would have intended...

~~~
jijosunny
:) yeah, we stopped accepting usernames with less than 3 chars, but thank you
for being an early user!

------
alasdair_
How do the instant payments work? Is my paypal going to get shut down for
months due to a "fraud" alert being triggered from having tons of random
payments sent to me?

This seems like a great way to quickly cash out stolen credit card numbers to
a bank account - how do you differentiate between something like that and
simply a creator that got to the front page of Reddit and had a huge spike of
legitimate traffic? If you fall over in the latter case, I'd be extremely
pissed. (And if your answer is to rely on Stripe's fraud detection, it's very
likely they will block exactly this kind of spike in usage from an otherwise
unknown account).

Finally, can you actually make money from a credit card payment of $1 when you
only charge a 5% fee?

------
adim86
Hi great story! I have been watching Buy Ma Coffee for a couple of years now
and I had no idea it was a side project. How do you monetize Buy Me a Coffee?
Do you just take a cut from the contributions made? or do you have a different
model?

~~~
jijosunny
thank you! Yes, we take a 5% cut like Kickstarter.

~~~
alasdair_
>thank you! Yes, we take a 5% cut like Kickstarter.

So if someone donates $1, I would receive 95c in my bank account?

How do you make money on this when Stripe is likely charging you quite a bit
more than 5c in transaction fees?

~~~
Wouter33
They charge 5% besides any Stripe or Paypal fees. The users connect their own
Stripe and Paypal accounts and Buy Me a Coffee charges a platform fee.

------
NonDescriptName
This seems like a great service! I will definitely be setting up an account to
cover the cost of running my podcast.

If you don't mind me asking, What makes Buy Me a Coffee different from setting
up a Patreon or a go fund me?

~~~
jijosunny
awesome - we'd love to have you on the platform!

technically, the biggest difference is that you can also accept one-time
payments using Buy Me A Coffee, and not just memberships. We see more than
half of the payments from one-time contributions. More comparison here -
[https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patreon-
alternative](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patreon-alternative)

------
ben_jones
The community feedback and rewards features are really interesting and remind
me a lot of the Twitch model which is wildly successful. How do you plan to
bridge the gap between user's eagerness to donate to a twitch streamer versus
their historically poor record of donating to a blog via a donate button? I
think its definitely possible but the form-factor of the content (video
w/validation through a strong emotional reaction by the streamer versus the
abyss of blog comments/email) really matters.

~~~
jijosunny
Twitch partially inspired many of our features. In fact, a big chunk of our
active users are YouTubers who don't have a viable alternative to monetize
directly
([https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=buymeacoffee.co...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=buymeacoffee.com)).
Same with Instagram influencers and Podcasters. Our goal is to help them
connect with their "superfans" through shout-outs, rewards, and exclusive
content.

To answer your question, we have seen that users are more eager to pay when
creators host their best work on the platform. Here's an example -
[https://freebird.buymeacoffee.com/](https://freebird.buymeacoffee.com/)

~~~
ben_jones
Appreciate the reply, and I do think this idea has legs if grown thoughtfully
and realistically. Hope to be a happy user some day!

------
mr_puzzled
I came across your twitter profile a couple of times, wasn't it called brew
before? It was initially something like a patreon clone then became a podcasts
app if IIRC and now it looks like you're back to buy me a coffee. Can you talk
a little about the journey of what you learned through the different pivots
and what you learned along the way? Can you also talk about your experience in
YC? Good luck.

------
fasicle
I'm getting about 90% whitespace on the home page (using a Pixel 2). I have to
scroll loads to get to the bottom 5% of content. Just an FYI

~~~
jijosunny
fixed -- thank you for taking the time to report this!

------
spike021
If Patreon were to add a feature to do one-time, no sign-up required
contributions to any of the orgs currently using it, would this be survivable
for you?

Do you have ideas of ways to increase value to make using your service over
others more worthwhile or is the one-time, no sign-up required contribution
process the primary feature right now?

~~~
jijosunny
that's a great question! broadly, I think it's an overkill for certain types
of creators (say an Instagrammer or Twitch streamer) to launch a Patreon. Buy
Me A Coffee is a far more casual and friendly way to accept contributions from
your fans. We also differentiate from Patreon in a lot of ways. For e.g.,
creators love that we're putting fans/supporters in the front-and-center (like
Twitch), which also encourages more contributions.

~~~
rvnx
A copy of Patreon to encourage your favorite creators to get addicted to a
substance that has very negative side-effects when you quit it.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/this-is-how-
yo...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/this-is-how-your-brain-
becomes-addicted-to-caffeine-26861037/)

Well done.

------
peterwwillis
Does "buy me a coffee" support, or plan to support, the option to send money
directly to charities rather than creators? I feel like this would make both
the creator and the consumer feel their money is doing the most good, as it's
both thanking the creator and helping someone in need at the same time.

Part of that could be to create a new class of payee, and then add an
integration so that a creator can internally redirect payments to a particular
payee. As part of the redirect you register something separate from a
"payment" that you would display for the creator's page ("N people have
donated Z dollars to Y on behalf of X"), and then the final payee would also
have its own independent "payment" register ("N people have donated Z dollars
to Y"). Don't know what the tax implications (if any) would be.

------
elietoubi
Awesome stuff ... looks great! Tiny bug when I go to:
[https://thesundaypaper.buymeacoffee.com/](https://thesundaypaper.buymeacoffee.com/)
and I press the burger icon and explore creators then I get a 404.

Hope that helps and keep kicking asses!

~~~
jijosunny
noted, thank you!

------
sarbaz
I am looking for a service that will allow me to directly pay creators at the
same price as an ad impression, paying per page view. So far ways to pay
creators are almost always based on dollar increments, but I would have much
more use for a service that lets you pay in increments of $0.001. Today this
is basically impossible because payment fees make direct payments of this
scale impractical, but it could theoretically be solved the way the ad
industry does - by paying a lump some once a month.

~~~
Wheaties466
Have you seen BAT and Brave? Seems like exactly what you're describing.

------
fabstei
Buy Me a Coffee tells exactly the kind of story that DLT (blockchain) startups
often tell - connect creators with their fan base etc., just the "let's cut
out the middlemen" is obviously missing.

I totally get why you'd go for Stripe to build a mature, scalable product open
to as many users as possible. But just out of curiosity: did you spend some
time thinking about DLT to cut out middlemen, did you actively decide against
it, are you experimenting with it - what's your stance?

------
mrwebmaster
Been using it for a while and like it so far. A downside for me is that from
every $3 coffee paid by supporters, I only receive $2.39 in my Paypal account
:(

~~~
alasdair_
>Been using it for a while and like it so far. A downside for me is that from
every $3 coffee paid by supporters, I only receive $2.39 in my Paypal account
:(

Their pricing page claims the fee is only 5%. Is this not true?

~~~
ryanmercer
From what I've read in this thread it sounds like:

Donor $ -> PayPal/Stripe, subtract Coffee's taste with Coffee never touching
the donor's money per their comments in this thread -> Creator's PayPal/Stripe
minus any PayPal/Stripe fees.

I'm guessing that's just PayPal taking their cut from the creator on top of
Coffee taking their cut. It looks like they had an idea, got into YC, then
were like "eh, let's just be Patreon 2: Electric Boogaloo." and then did the
payment processing the simplest way they could.

This effectively makes it: "Don't pay the creator via PayPal/Stripe, instead
let us act as a pseudo-affiliate and go ahead and keep 5% of that for
ourselves and then we'll tell PayPal/Stripe to pay the donor for you. In
exchange we'll tell people that visit our website that you supported the
creator".

It appears they add no value to the transaction that can't already be obtained
from Patreon. They're just a much smaller outfit, with a horribly buggy
website with partially baked features and apparently consistently unpleasant
mobile experience.

------
zyx321
Okay, deep breath, this will be unpleasant.

1\. Do you ban creators for "hate speech"? 1b. If yes: What is "hate speech"?

2\. Will you ban creators for content published outside your platform? (e.g.
erotic content published on other platforms but not mentioned in their BmaC
profile)

3\. Will you ban creators for content completely unrelated to your platform?
(e.g. drunken Twitter rants)

------
mikekchar
As someone who will eventually have to deal with this, is there an advantage
to using "Buy Me A Coffee" over just implementing a Stripe/Pay Pal interface
for myself (assuming I have the skills and time to do so)?

I'm mostly interested in payment workflow discussions. I actually don't care
about sales/marketing possibilities.

------
emilsoman
Love the feature where creators can message their supporters. Congrats on the
HN launch!

~~~
jijosunny
thanks - glad you like it! :)

------
0xCAFCAF
Hey, just wanted to let you know your developers page is not working:
[https://developers.buymeacoffee.com/](https://developers.buymeacoffee.com/)

~~~
jijosunny
Hey there, thanks for letting me know. Developer features are in beta -- I
have removed the link from the footer.

------
kerkeslager
I really hope this is the way content creation funding goes in the future.

~~~
jijosunny
Connecting with the audience directly is always a great outcome for creators!

------
tomaskafka
> Membership-only content.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs)
:)

------
FpUser
Among the other things their terms say something in tune of:

    
    
      If you hurt us in any way you are liable for damages
    
      If we hurt you: f.. off, tough luck

------
yosefzeev
I'm not sure "useful content" should be the only metric. Think of all the
things you learn in school that you think are useless until later.

------
chrshawkes
5% fee + "Payment processing fees charged by PayPal and Stripe are also
applicable."

So a donate button from paypal is equivalent but the creator can save 5%?

------
teamigo
There are already two "buy me a coffee" websites - Open Collective and Patreon
- for any project other than (or used by) Webpack and Babel.

------
interactivecode
What is your motivation of doing YC now? and how do you plan to scale your
market share?

------
amerine
Nice! I tried something similar with pint.me a long time ago with some friends
in Bend.

------
mdszy
So you've made ko-fi.com

~~~
cr3ative
But with VC funding!

------
tomcooks
I cannot find any info about rates, or how expensive this is

~~~
jijosunny
We charge a 5% platform fee. So if you earn $50 on Buy Me A Coffee, we'll take
$2.5 as our cut.

------
st3fan
Does this work in Canada? I like coffee.

~~~
jijosunny
Yes!

------
gaoryrt
Great work, thank you!

~~~
jijosunny
Thanks!

------
romwell
>We do not allow adult content

I just expressly wanted to un-thank you for this.

Sincerely hope you would either change this - or fail. It's 2019, and "adult"
content creators could do with less of this nonsense.

Erotic content creators (let's call things what they are) drink coffee too.

~~~
jijosunny
We hate to do this, but payment providers have clear terms around hosting
adult content. I sincerely hope this will change one day.

~~~
romwell
Thanks for the response and consideration - and my apologies for wrongly
assigning the blame.

Several questions:

1\. Which payment providers specifically?

2\. What do you mean by "hosting", and what are the rules?

3\. Do I understand it correctly that adult content creators can use your
service as long as their actual buymeacoffee.com page does not show "adult
content"

3a. If so, it would be better if you clarified this with a <see more> link
after the "no adult content" blurb.

4\. Since the restrictions come from payment providers, you would be better
off telling what the restrictions are and where they come from to avoid
confusion.

~~~
dannytatom
to answer #1

\- stripe: [https://stripe.com/restricted-
businesses](https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses)

"Pornography and other obscene materials (including literature, imagery and
other media) depicting nudity or explicitly sexual acts; sites offering any
sexually-related services such as prostitution, escorts, pay-per view, adult
live chat features; sexually oriented items (e.g., adult toys); adult video
stores and sexually oriented massage parlors; gentleman’s clubs, topless bars,
and strip clubs; sexually oriented dating services"

\- paypal:
[https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/faq569](https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/faq569)

"We don’t permit PayPal account holders to buy or sell: Sexually oriented
digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium. Downloadable
pictures or videos and website subscriptions are examples of digital goods.
Sexually oriented goods or services that involve, or appear to involve,
minors. Services whose purpose is to facilitate meetings for sexually oriented
activities."

\- amazon:
[https://pay.amazon.com/help/6023](https://pay.amazon.com/help/6023)

"Adult Oriented Products and Services — includes pornography (including child
pornography), sexually explicit materials (in all media types such as
Internet, phone, and printed materials), dating services, escort services, or
prostitution services."

so on and so forth. it's questionable whether this site would break those
rules, since they aren't directly selling anything. otoh, it's likely the
payment processors would shut them down and so probably not worth the risk.

~~~
romwell
TL;DR: this does _NOT_ answer #1 as buymeacoffee.com is not a store. It's a
donation platform. You do _NOT_ pay for any goods or services there, "adult-
oriented" or otherwise.

As you said: they aren't directly selling anything. In fact, they are not
selling anything at all, directly or not.

"it's likely the payment processors would shut them down and so probably not
worth the risk" \--> so.. FUD. As I said, we need less of that. One way to
avoid it is getting an explicit answer from the payment provider, and quoting
it on the TOS on BuyMeACoffee.

BuyMeAcoffee, are you simply deflecting the blame on payment providers? Please
tell us what restrictions made you make this choice. It still doesn't seem to
be a reasonable one.

_________________

I fail to see how Buy Me A Coffee would fall under these restrictions, as the
payments are not made _in exchange for_ any of the restricted categories.

The payment is _for coffee_ , if you wish. Joking aside, no goods or services
are being sold on buymeacoffee.com pages. You get nothing for paying. You
can't violate these TOS if the recipients happens to do something "adult-
oriented".

So, to clarify:

1\. These ToS don't restrict the kind of content that may be displayed on
buymeacoffee.com page, just the kind of transactions.

2\. Buymeacoffee.com is a donation site; the payments are not made in exchange
for any goods or services, sexual ("adult") or otherwise.

3\. PayPal/Stripe do not restrict _who_ can get the money. What the recepients
do outside of the transaction is none of their business anyway.

Therefore, I repeat the question: what makes you restrict "adult content" on
your pages?

Restricting the kinds of content that recipients create would be even more
nonsensical. In the same vein, it would be stupendous to say that you can't
sell a rug on eBay because you also posted an adult cartoon on deviantart.com
at some point in your life.

------
dragthor
Nice. A lot better than alcohol.

~~~
jijosunny
well, users can also use buymeabeer.com if they like :)

~~~
tunesmith
that's pretty funny. :)

~~~
agustif
as a creator myself I would be interested in a buymeamacbook.com platform

~~~
jijosunny
lol ok i should add this to feature requests -
[https://building.buymeacoffee.com/feature-
requests](https://building.buymeacoffee.com/feature-requests)

------
VarunNair
I have always made sure to recommend to my fellow influencer friends about
Buymeacoffee and they are thanking me for a wonderful product you have
implemented!

Awesome work guys! Thank you team BMAC !

~~~
jijosunny
that's awesome - thank you so much!

