TipJoy.com - The Joy of Giving Tips

Granted, the joy of giving a tip is a rather remote if not altogether nonexistent experience. Now thanks to TipJoy.com, a startup released earlier this month, you’ll get to easily tip sites, blogs and any other web-existing entity, and thus show your appreciation. Lots of the blogs and sites we love are kept as honorary hobbies, and updated not very often as a result of that, so by tipping them we could –even is ever so marginally— help them grow, or just let them know that someone cares. In order to start giving, users have to create an account with their email address (no credit card details are asked at this point yet); when visiting a site they like which has the button, in order to give a default 10¢ tip (it can be reset for as little as 5¢ to 50¢) users have to indicate their email address and that’s it. However, if the site they want to support does not feature the TipJoy button, all they have to do is submit it to the TipJoy site, which has an additional advantage: as the site you suggested gets posted in the site, you are also helping it to get more traffic.

Site owners who have a $5 minimum worth of tips to their credit can redeem the money (a 3% commission is applicable) by getting an Amazon gift card, or by donating to charity, but they can only get the money once the tipper has paid his/her account.

“Why is tipjoy better than the other methods earning money online?

Because tipjoy makes it easy for people to leave you money. Here's how:
1. Each click of the 'tip this' button is a fixed price, so your fans don't have to think about how much they want to give - they just get used to leaving tips wherever they see the button, without thinking twice.
2. There's no checkout process, so the users aren't taken away from your site to complete the transaction, and they don't have to go through multiple steps to actually pay you. All those steps and new pages that many other donation sites have scare off many fans who would like to give you something as a sign of their appreciation, but don't want to bother with a complicated and annoying checkout.
3. Your readers are more likely to thank you by leaving a tip than they are to click on an advertisement. Having tipjoy on your site will be yet another way for you to earn money - it will make it easy for your fans to connect with you and thank you”.

The reason why this startup could really make a difference is that it tackles a concrete wish: to give back to those who change our lives through their sites, plus since the whole tipping process is completely hassle-free (tippers are reminded once a month that they need to indicate their credit details), a larger number of people will be inclined to make donations.

Well, last time I checked showing care for someone/something did not forcefully involve giving money, and I don’t think it should either. By tipping a site through TipJoy users can skip getting charged by never submitting their payment details, however this doesn’t seem very much of a sensible business platform, and could render the service unattractive for website owners, as they are uncertain about getting paid for their tips. It seems to me that adding an honorary tip option could solve this problem; can this help TipJoy tackle these issues?