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Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

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Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#31

Post by jijosunny »

pryelluw wrote: post #12

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 n…

We do! Sorry for the bad experience. It's a fairly new design implementation and we have a lot of work to do to optimize the homepage.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#32

Post by Semiapies »

jijosunny wrote: post #11
fredley wrote: post #3

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

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

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?

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#33

Post by 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.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#34

Post by herenorthere »

s17n wrote: post #29
herenorthere wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet Google's founders are glad they didn't consult you first when they were creating a search engine.

They had a pretty easy to understand value proposition - “our results are more useful than existing search engines’”. “We have a different pricing model” is a lot less compelling. But it has worked before!

I'd respectfully disagree that that is the only difference. I've been through the BMC payment flow and would much prefer to use theirs over the competitor mentioned above. I wasn't even referring to the pricing model, although you're right, that is another difference too.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#35

Post by petargyurov »

jijosunny wrote: post #11
fredley wrote: post #3

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

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

The giant image on that page seems to be obscuring the Ko-Fi side of the table.

See here: https://i.imgur.com/MClWgIX.png

on Desktop, Firefox 70.0.1. 1440p monitor.

EDIT: happens on Chrome as well.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#36

Post by 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

Profiles look like this: 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.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#37

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

jijosunny wrote: post #14
OJFord wrote: post #10

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.

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.

>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.

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#38

Post by herenorthere »

Semiapies wrote: post #32
jijosunny wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

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

Re: Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you

#39

Post by petters »

pryelluw wrote: post #12

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 n…

Broken for me in latest mobile Chrome.
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