adrianmott.com

I’ve written about it before on this blog: I really believe that it’s time to begin to break down the walls of free value on the web in the form of excellent media and content.  So with that being said, I get really excited when new ideas around revenue generation within the web realm pop up and have some success.  It’s probably the reason that I really like the idea of Tipjoy, the Arlington, MA based company that focuses on social micro-payments in the form of ‘tips’.  These guys have set their focus on using their service to ‘gift’ money to people, causes and content that you get value from.

If you like a site or some content or just someone, you can ‘tip’ them on Tipjoy’s site.  As you leave tips around, the service tabulates your running total of tips which you can pay off at any time.  You can cancel your tips once you’ve left them, but you can’t refund payments you’ve already made.  If people have left you tips, then you can cash them out (once they’ve exceeded $5 in total) into your Paypal account or turn the money around and tip someone else (they recommend charities…noble of them) or get an Amazon gift card.  The company makes money by charging a 3% transaction fee when you ‘cash out’.

The company has also recently introduced integration with Twitter that not only lets you login using your Twitter account, but also tweet a payment through the service or set up fundraising campaigns that you can then tweet as well.  There is also a widget for bloggers and site owners to allow readers and content consumers to make these micro-payments to the people who run the sites they love.  An API was also released recently that allows site owners to handle payments from within their sites and integrate with Twitter for communicating about it.  I am seriously considering implementing the Tipjoy widget on this blog as well as The Fresh Dish.

As I think about the service a little bit more in depth, it seems like this service is perfectly suited to sites that produce great content. but don’t yet have the sort of readership that will allow them to gain significant revenues from online advertising.  I for one will start using Tipjoy to tip content that I find really useful and I urge content producers to ask for tips as well…it’s really a great model.

The last thing I should mention about Tipjoy is the utterly excellent simplicity that the application has developed.  The site’s web interface is super clean and easy to use – it only includes a few pages and isn’t confusing at all.  Unfortunately, during my testing of the site, I wasn’t able to pay my tip balance the cash-in systems were down for maintenance….oh well, maybe I’ll tip some more before I make a payment…It’s so damn simple.  Happy tipping!