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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

#111

Post by romwell »

jijosunny wrote: post #101
romwell wrote: post #88

>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.

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

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 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.

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

#112

Post by Kiro »

heymijo wrote: post #26

> 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.

What's wrong with Patreon?

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

#113

Post by dannytatom »

romwell wrote: post #88

>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.

like someone else said, it's likely not up to them. i had looked into starting a market place for that kinda stuff, since they're constantly kicked off of every other platform. but almost no payment processor allows you to do it.

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

#114

Post by meddlin »

romwell wrote: post #111
jijosunny wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

If I had an upvote button, I would on this response.

I was critical of your previous comment, but these are the questions I think deserve an answer for this general concern. Good on you, and thank you for asking them.

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

#115

Post by jijosunny »

ben_jones wrote: post #9

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…

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...). 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/

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

#116

Post by dannytatom »

romwell wrote: post #111
jijosunny wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

to answer #1

- stripe: 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

"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

"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.

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

#117

Post by OnlineGladiator »

meddlin wrote: post #114
romwell wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If I had an upvote button, I would on this response. I was critical of your previous comment, but these are the questions I think deserve an answer for this general concern. Good on you, and thank you for asking them.

> If I had an upvote button

You don't have an upvote button?

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

#118

Post by jijosunny »

mfkp wrote: post #89
jijosunny wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So... what is the pricing?

We charge a 5% platform fee. This is on top of the payment processing fee charged by Stripe and PayPal.

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

#120

Post by chipotle_coyote »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #107
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 f…

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.

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