the story of micropayments

The clock is ticking on tip-joy.com...

2010-04-26T20:46:00.002-05:00

Just a quick update on the domain-name side of this little micropayments conversation here. I promised that I wasn't in this for the "money" (ha! like there's any money to be made in micropayments...) or to be a domain squatter, and I meant it.

The registration on tip-joy.com and tip-joy.info will lapse next month and I'm going to go ahead and let it expire.

If anyone is interested in buying one or both domains... either sharpen your skills at bidding in a few weeks, or contact me now and make an offer so we can execute the transfer before it's too close to the expiration date.

The blog mooooooved...

2009-10-20T16:43:00.003-05:00

There's a cow pun in that title. "Mooooooved." Get it? Never mind.

Anyway, I got a nice e-mail from Ivan Kirigin of TipJoy (who, by the way, apparently now works for Facebook?) regarding the now infamous domain-with-a-dash permutation over at tip-joy.com.

(I'm still working on the cow poems. As my girls get older, genuine cow art might not be far behind.)

Ivan's not interested in buying the dash-domains (which makes sense, given that he's not pursuing the TipJoy project anymore) but he was concerned that people might get confused with all the micropayments talk here on this blog.

Fair enough. So, rather than keeping this on the dirt-cheap .info domain that I picked up at the same time I bought tip-joy.com, at Ivan's request I moved it over to my own personal "collective" domain. Further micropayments discussion will happen here, at inv.ention.net/micropayments.

(That's been a fun domain to have through the years. There's already a lot of traffic for fairly obscure cable TV hostesses at the sister site: att.ention.net. I'm building an empire of random stuff, one subdirectory at a time...)

For the record (for anyone who's reading this looking for internet-related advice), blowing an old domain completely away -- the .info site throws 404s right now and will eventually just redirect at a top level over to tip-joy.com -- is a horrible thing to do for SEO ("Search Engine Optimization"). If you were/are running a business and were doing this "for real," you'd never do that. Instead, you'd set up redirects so the old content is still "live" to Google and the rest, but gently directs everyone over to the new web site.

But in this situation, we really do want the old content "gone" -- there's nothing to be gained by people getting confused about the facts that a) TipJoy really is no more and b) I've got absolutely nothing to do with TipJoy or any other micropayment service. Not that there was confusion before... but we might as well head it off at the pass.

How do artists get paid?

2009-10-20T15:17:00.004-05:00

For various reasons I've been thinking about how an artist could get compensated for his or her work. Now that tipjoy.com has gone under, there's one less service available... though something like the PayPal micropayments that are used on our parent site could be nearly as good; other than reducing fees (which PayPal has effectively done in its own micropayments offering), I don't see much value in "aggregation services."

So what's the real problem? In general, I'm betting that people (let alone "average internet users") don't really like to pay for things that they already have. Granted, the iTunes store took MP3s out of the realm of "theft" and into the legitimate world of "purchase"... but, other than that, do we have an examples where people pull out their wallets to compensate someone for content that's freely available?

Of course, this is nothing new. The great art of hundreds of years ago was bought and paid for by a patron who wanted it... so maybe the only sustainable financial model is for free content to disappear and "subscription" (or even "pay-to-create") content will replace it? That's the way newspapers are going, right?

Poor technology predictions...

2009-07-24T12:46:00.002-05:00

I've never been known for an ability to predict what's going to be popular or successful... but I have to admit that I'm a bit surprised at how little discussion there's been about the actual tipjoy.com site and the idea of micropayments in general.

Given the economy these days... don't people want to make money? :)

Personally, I've still got some disrectionary income -- not much, but I still buy coffee most days -- and would be happy to send a few cents to people who post something particularly entertaining or moving. Shouldn't a couple who's innovative enough to do a wedding march dance get some sort of reward?

Not that my cow-themed tip-joy.com site qualifies as entertaining or moving... but what about the concept itself?

Back to the poetry...

2009-06-04T13:43:00.003-05:00

After a break (which, I'm sure, will be common; there aren't enough donations to keep this thing rolling as often as I'd like)... I'm back!

Come on, people -- send a few cents to keep me motivated!

In case you don't know how... go to tip-joy.com and click on the Donate button to send me a "micropayment" of a few cents. As long as it's at least $.07 or $.08, I'll get a profit -- though not too much at that point, given that PayPal starts by taking a nickel.

Seriously, money is good, but I'll take comments on the blog as well. Some sort of feedback is nice...

PayPal micropayments are working!

2009-05-14T13:11:00.003-05:00

$.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!

2009-05-13T17:40:00.003-05:00

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

2009-05-13T13:32:00.003-05:00

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?

2009-05-11T20:24:00.004-05:00

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?

2009-05-09T10:49:00.003-05:00

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!