Launch HN: Buy Me a Coffee (YC W19) – Give your audience a way to thank you
We’re Joseph, Aleesha, and Jijo, the founders of Buy Me A Coffee (https://www.buymeacoffee.com). We make it super easy to accept contributions and recurring memberships from your audience.
A bit of backstory - Joseph and I grew up in India. When I was 12, I started making a little bit of money from my blog, and it had a huge impact on my life. I got to buy books and gadgets, pay for web hosting, none of which I could’ve afforded otherwise. We built our first product in 2010. It was an ad network for bloggers called AdIndigo. There were a bunch of Adsense alternatives doing well at that time, and it grew to serve 6 million impressions at its peak. We later had to shut it down because of the expenses. Buy Me A Coffee is our third (and only successful) attempt at building for the creators.
When we started working on Buy Me A Coffee as a side project, it was a quick way to spin up a page or a button to accept one-time contributions. For artists, OSS developers, and YouTubers, it was an unobtrusive way to monetize their work. They appreciated the simplicity and friendly branding and started requesting more features. Some even noticed that they’re getting more contributions compared to a Patreon or PayPal button. It’s probably because of the no-signup-required payment flow. Supporters also get to leave a note after the payment, and it ends up becoming this ‘wall of love’ for creators.
Today, you can do a lot more with Buy Me A Coffee. You can accept recurring payments and give rewards in return. For e.g. Maria Shriver is using Buy Me A Coffee to monetize her newsletter ‘The Sunday Paper’ (https://thesundaypaper.buymeacoffee.com/) with a link in the footer of every edition. Slowly (https://slowly.buymeacoffee.com/) is a self-funded team using Buy Me A Coffee to accept contributions and feedback from their users. We also built Widgets that allow you to accept payments right from your website. Built-in email features let you share updates and rewards with your audience. We’re also working on a community feature to create a group chat with your supporters. Creators are already doing this with Discord and Slack, and we're excited to build something more focused.
We believe anyone, anywhere in the world who creates something that people find useful or entertaining, should have the option to get paid for their work.
We’re excited to hear all your questions and thoughts about Buy Me A Coffee :) Thank you!
181 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 222 ms ] threadBut the money won't be spent on coffee, otherwise the influencer will OD. "Buy me a chance to escape the rat race" might be a more accurate title.
“We have a different pricing model” is a lot less compelling. But it has worked before!
That said, we're big fans of all creator monetization companies like substack, patreon, ko-fi, etc.
Why on Earth would I need a mobile app to use this? What does it provide that a well-designed mobile site doesn't?
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
See here: https://i.imgur.com/MClWgIX.png
on Desktop, Firefox 70.0.1. 1440p monitor.
EDIT: happens on Chrome as well.
Nice idea though. You could have a Buy Me A Coffee link on your own site for those who like the idea but aren't customers.
So if someone donates $1, I would receive 95c in my bank account?
How do you make money on this when Stripe is likely charging you quite a bit more than 5c in transaction fees?
If you don't mind me asking, What makes Buy Me a Coffee different from setting up a Patreon or a go fund me?
technically, the biggest difference is that you can also accept one-time payments using Buy Me A Coffee, and not just memberships. We see more than half of the payments from one-time contributions. More comparison here - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patreon-alternative
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/
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.
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.
I agree. Our goal was to showcase the most common use-cases and types of creators who use us, and not for discoverability.
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 numbers will be more reliable because people wont be quickly bouncing while waiting for the page to load.
I'm on a powerful 8-core desktop with a dedicated GPU and the page really stutters while scrolling. I'm not sure what the deal is since there really isn't anything super graphically intensive on the page.
If I remember correctly, you got accepted to YC with a different idea — some sort of podcast app. Can you explain why you decided to pivot back to Buy Me A Coffee?
That'd be Brew [0]: https://brew.com
As for the pivot, I'm not sure it qualifies as a pivot since buymeacoffee.com predates brew.com. Separate businesses, and it seems to me they're simply re-announcing buymeacoffee again [1] and possibly shifting focus to make it the main product.
Another YC company https://kyte.ai (AI for SMS inboxes) did that recently and pivoted to https://khatabook.com (Credit/Debit Book Keeping app for Indian SMBs) [2].
Of course, https://brex.com famously did the same, too (not launch with the idea they applied / did YC with) [3].
[0] https://www.ycdb.co/company/brew-com
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16484040
[2] https://www.ycdb.co/company/khatabook
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17418813
I don't want to speak for YC, but the partners want you to iterate and succeed. Many of the successful YC companies (Reddit, Brex) got accepted for a completely different idea.
Our insight after getting into the audio space was that podcasters are relatively happy with monetization. This is obviously not a popular opinion, but that's what we saw first hand. Ad rates are pretty good, and unlike other content types, listeners enjoy host-read ads. Meanwhile, Buy Me A Coffee started getting a decent amount of traction even among podcasters, so we wanted to go all in and build it out :)
Awesome work guys! Thank you team BMAC !
If you're taking care of most/all the technical details, the only blocker that would prevent me from this kind of service is the unknown legal/compliance work I'd need to do in order to start taking this kind of money and have access to those users' data - is that something you can provide guidance on?
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.
Here's the problem. Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, etc are another middle man between creators and supporters.
That's another mouth to feed on top of Stripe/PayPal and possibly a Credit Card Company.
There is a very good reason PayPal has for eternity pushed/prodded and dark patterned users to death trying to get them to pay via bank transfer instead of credit card--credit card fees are business killers.
Now, why does this matter?
Even at venture scale, a Patreon/Buy Me a Coffee is the 2nd or 3rd middle man to the game. That means they need massive volume, but it's not enough. The perverse incentive cat is out of the bag and the good natured startup that just wanted to empower "creative economy types" starts doing all sorts of things that are in the company's best interest and not in its users' best interests.
Here is an HN thread from 18 days ago discussing the Patreon's CEO view that "the company's generous business model is not sustainable."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21550645
So I asked OP, in frustration because this seems like a failure to learn from history (very recent history at that!), but also in earnest--why should Buy Me a Coffee be a venture-backed business and not some other model.
The other is that they seem to hate the idea of batching transactions. For me the biggest draw of Patreon is that I can have 10 $1 pledges and only pay one credit card fee each month. But they keep messing with the backend and they've forced new creators into a completely different system that does separate charges. According to them they don't even make more money off this, so why are they so stubbornly insistent on charging these pledges a 40% overhead?
Overall they don't listen very well, and they grabbed this big pile of VC cash to do god-knows-what with and motivate them way too much to increase fees.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21550645
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.
Payment fraud and AML - we're a PayPal and Stripe Partner and do not hold the money that we process. We use their marketplace products to handle payments, fraud and compliance so that we can focus on the product.
edit: now that I think about it, I would imply that one is better than the other. Because if you are just a UI/UX improvement on paypal/stripe, then you would be out of the regulatory umbrella of FinCen I believe.
If someone pays with paypal, can I still get the money in my stripe account? If not, what's the main benefit over using your service versus just using paypal and stripe directly? Do I still need to create a paypal account and a stripe account to use your service?
Also, a significant portion of the activity that we see is driven by gratitude. People love supporting a creator and leaving a positive note.
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.
edit: and somehow make it not awkward, cumbersome, or time-consuming
The box Abe is building won't work. He's got it wired wrong. And if they fix that I’ll start actually taking pieces out of it. It's just a gimmick. It doesn't work anymore. Your double will say they have to move on to something else. And mine will agree. They're friends.
It’s been a decade.
Do you have ideas of ways to increase value to make using your service over others more worthwhile or is the one-time, no sign-up required contribution process the primary feature right now?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/this-is-how-yo...
Well done.
I’m about to launch something that could use this. I’ll sign up in a few days.
Best of luck and congratulations on your launch!!
I'm at jijo@buymeacoffee if you have any questions while setting up your page.
We designed the 'pay what you want' model on Buy Me A Coffee to tackle this problem.
Their pricing page claims the fee is only 5%. Is this not true?
Donor $ -> PayPal/Stripe, subtract Coffee's taste with Coffee never touching the donor's money per their comments in this thread -> Creator's PayPal/Stripe minus any PayPal/Stripe fees.
I'm guessing that's just PayPal taking their cut from the creator on top of Coffee taking their cut. It looks like they had an idea, got into YC, then were like "eh, let's just be Patreon 2: Electric Boogaloo." and then did the payment processing the simplest way they could.
This effectively makes it: "Don't pay the creator via PayPal/Stripe, instead let us act as a pseudo-affiliate and go ahead and keep 5% of that for ourselves and then we'll tell PayPal/Stripe to pay the donor for you. In exchange we'll tell people that visit our website that you supported the creator".
It appears they add no value to the transaction that can't already be obtained from Patreon. They're just a much smaller outfit, with a horribly buggy website with partially baked features and apparently consistently unpleasant mobile experience.
This seems like a great way to quickly cash out stolen credit card numbers to a bank account - how do you differentiate between something like that and simply a creator that got to the front page of Reddit and had a huge spike of legitimate traffic? If you fall over in the latter case, I'd be extremely pissed. (And if your answer is to rely on Stripe's fraud detection, it's very likely they will block exactly this kind of spike in usage from an otherwise unknown account).
Finally, can you actually make money from a credit card payment of $1 when you only charge a 5% fee?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs :)