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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

#151

Post by Semiapies »

mgraczyk wrote: post #147
emptysongglass wrote: post #143

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…

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 dec…

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

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

#152

Post by 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/

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

#153

Post by jijosunny »

danShumway wrote: post #127
jijosunny wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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-... >How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on LGBTQIA activi…

> 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…

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

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.

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

#154

Post by jijosunny »

cwkoss wrote: post #135
jijosunny wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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-... >How do you define "adult" content? Does this include creators working on LGBTQIA activi…

Thanks for the response. I'd strongly recommend trying to clarify "chemicals" and "plants and seeds" as those are incredibly broad categories that encompass many use cases that stripe does not find objectionable as per the restricted-businesses list you linked. "Pharmacologically active, explosive or poisonous chemicals, plants, or seeds" may be suitably restrictive for your needs. The "weapons" restriction would als…

Noted. We're working on a Community Guidelines page, and I'll make it a point to address these concerns. Thanks for taking the time to share this!

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

#155

Post by jijosunny »

emptysongglass wrote: post #143

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…

Hey, this is Jijo from Buy Me A Coffee. Thanks for the feedback! We believe 5% is a reasonable fee to build and maintain a platform that allows creators to connect with their audience and generate more income.

One way to look at it is the % of additional revenue they earn because of Buy Me A Coffee.

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

#156

Post by jijosunny »

dessant wrote: post #131
cwkoss wrote: post #87

Reading 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'…

> Do not attempt to decompile or modify engineer any software included on Buy Me A Coffee site. This is also a bit dated policy. I've reported bugs on Patreon before that involved looking at the source code and modifing it, but it did not cross my mind that they'd reserve the right to ban users for doing so. I think this is a case of copying TOS sections from other places which are not a good fit for this service. Th…

We do have a bug bounty and encourage bug reports from our users (https://twitter.com/PJijin/status/1186904518341955584). The policy mentioned above is to avoid any damages to the creator(s) on the platform. Thanks for the feedback!

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

#157

Post by wizzwizz4 »

jijosunny wrote: post #156
dessant wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do not attempt to decompile or modify engineer any software included on Buy Me A Coffee site. This is also a bit dated policy. I've reported bugs on Patreon before that involved looking at the source code and modifing it, but it did not cross my mind that they'd reserve the right to ban users for doing so. I think this is a case of copying TOS sections from other places which are not a good fit for this service. Th…

We do have a bug bounty and encourage bug reports from our users ( https://twitter.com/PJijin/status/1186904518341955584 ). The policy mentioned above is to avoid any damages to the creator(s) on the platform. Thanks for the feedback!

Instead of "you are not permitted to reverse-engineer", maybe "you are not permitted to interact with the server except through the user interface produced by a web browser in accordance with the HTML-based instructions sent to your machine by our web server unless given explicit permission by us"; that effectively prevents people from using that reverse-engineered knowledge to attack your site, whilst still permitting bug reports.

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

#158

Post by wizzwizz4 »

jijosunny wrote: post #153
danShumway wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 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.

> 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?

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

#159

Post by 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?

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

#160

Post by 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)

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