PayPal micropayments are working!

$.25 in, $.19 out! It works! Not only am I out of PayPal jail, but PayPal knows about my bank account (and is happy with it). I converted the tip-joy.com donation button to my new micropayment-enabled PayPal account, asked my wife to donate a quarter (which she happily agreed to do -- you, too, can donate!)... and received $.19 in my account:

$.25 - $.05 = $.20
$.20 - 5% = $.19

As the tipjoy.com folks have pointed out, it's a whole lot of steps to make a PayPal payment -- even one as tiny as 25 cents. But, it's super-clear about what you're doing; no surprises, plenty of confirmations, etc.

I still have some polishing to do on the tip-joy.com site, but we're getting there! Any suggestions for the next poem?

I've been sprung from PayPal jail!

Real people to the rescue! Thanks to "Haley" at PayPal's "Account Security" department, our new-yet-sorta-pending tip-joy.com micropayments account at PayPal is back in a standard holding pattern as we wait for our bank to respond.

The interesting thing about the experience was dealing with PayPal's automated voicemail tree. Their customer service number sounds really promising, but just walks you through the standard menu of features that you can find on the web site. Remember, if you want a real person, press "0" -- it still works.

(Don't abuse that; if the tree helps, use it. But in this case, I was in the odd position of trying to convince a computer that I didn't need it to ask questions that I had no way to answer. That takes a human to understand.)

What I loved (in the really freaky/disturbing sense of love) is that, as the automated system tells you it's going to e-mail you some information... you hear fake typing in the background! I'm not kidding! "I'm sending you that information now [tippity-type-type-type]" Really weird -- kinda cute, kinda engaging, kinda strange, kinda "wow, this is totally fake, and I wonder what other fake stuff PayPal is doing..."

Our first PayPal problem

We knew it would happen eventually... but I didn't think it would happen so quickly!

PayPal offers micropayments directly, without having to deal with an aggregation site such as tipjoy.com.

That's good news! Why? Because, at the moment, every donation at tip-joy.com in appreciation of a good cow-themed poem costs me at least $.35 (plus a percentage) because it goes to my personal account. That's the purpose of a micropayment solution -- to bring those fees down to the point where it makes sense to collect tiny amounts of money.

The catch to PayPal's solution is that you can only convert a "business" account to the micropayment scale; it can't apply to a "personal" account.

I'm not a business. I'm a person. But, hey, that's okay; there's got to be a way to make it work, right?

They force you to choose a category, and while they have plenty of categories, most of them are in the "selling things" world. Whatever I picked, PayPal didn't like it:

We require additional information about your account for the following reason(s):

May 13, 2009: PayPal requires accounts within the charity / non-profit category to provide us with some additional information regarding their organization. Your account was identified as falling within this classification upon a recent review. If we do not receive a response, we may have to place limitations on the ability to access your account.

Now, I appreciate that PayPal is trying to avoid becoming the fraud capital of the internet; right now they're somewhere between "fraud third-world country" and "fraud second-world country" and they want to stay there... but I'm starting to wonder if the PayPal horror stories were true, and it sure looks like PayPal isn't a good micropayment solution for "the little guy".

All to say that something like tipjoy.com (the micropayment site) is a good idea... except that your collected funds get sent back to you via... wait for it... wait for it... PayPal!

(In fairness, that's not the only way you can get it... but if you want "real" money, that's the way it happens there...)

PayPal didn't have any sort of "discuss this account hold" contact form, so I submitted a .gif screenshot (only images are accepted -- no .txt or .pdf) of my explanation that I'm not claiming to be a legal non-profit (and have switched my category to "Entertainment - Digital Content", even though I'M NOT SELLING ANYTHING!).

More to come, I'm sure!

What should we name the cow?

Is "Moo" a good name for the cow? Got any alternatives? "Tippy the Cow" doesn't quite have the right ring to it...

The tip-joy.com logo came about in a flash of inspiration. I don't know how I can describe it; as soon as the tipjoy vs. tip-joy topic came up, I saw an upside-down cow with its tail swinging down to form the tail of the "Y".

Once we had that, and remembering the Chevy Neon commercials from the 1990s... the graphic for the blog (or Twitter, or whatever) accounts became obvious:


That works... though I wonder how long it's going to be before someone realizes that the full-size cow has actually been decapitated.

I also wonder if people are going to say "It's a skinny cow leaning its head over a wall"... without realizing what it spells...

What on earth are you doing?

Just a quick post to get things started; more details to follow as I get the chance to write them up. I'm not a domain squatter, and I actually love tipjoy.com and their concept of micropayments -- it's something I'd tried to launch myself in 2002 (when the idea of "guy in a basement with a great idea" wasn't as crazy as it is... well, it's not even crazy now, is it?).

So, since I love the site and the concept, I was shocked, stunned and appalled that they hadn't purchased tip-joy.com... especially since their logo puts a "*" over the "j" so it looks like it might be two separate words.

I Tweeted about it. I called Ivan himself and told him to grab it. He said he didn't see it as a big deal. I mentioned it to my wife, who said, "You should buy it!" I got Facebook comments from friends saying, "You should buy it!" When my neighbor asked, "Why don't you buy it?"... I spotted a trend.

So, the next day, after waiting 24 hours (longer than any sensible domain squatter would...) for Ivan to make a move and realizing that he really didn't want to have the domain... I got it. I splurged and grabbed this one, too.

Total cost: $8.88

There's something poetic (or, at least, round... perhaps even spherical) about that number.

As someone who's been talking about domains and typo-squatting and "protecting your brand" for years, I figured this would be a good home for those conversations.

More to come. Until then... feel free to comment here and let me know what you think. Let's get the conversation going!