Buy me a coffee

[Jon12345]

I came across this the other day, and I am tempted to put it on my forum: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/

Currently, I have a couple of ad networks for monetisation, but no memberships or anything like that. I'm wondering if this kind of deal might be worthwhile. They can do a one-off or recurring coffee payment! And there is something nice about the "Buy me a coffee" concept, rather than the "give me some money" concept.

Anyone using something like this? Any opinions?

 

[MattW]

One of the DJ's who I follow has been using something similar: https://ko-fi.com/

Not related to forums, but he's been using it to accept small donations as a "thank you" for the time / effort spent on his podcasts and twitch streams.

Kutski's Ko-fi Commissions

Ko-fi Commissions Open! Click to see Kutski's commission menu.

ko-fi.com

 

[Jon12345]

Wow, the similarities between those two sites is very close! Both have a similar Alexa rank too. I prefer the "Buy me a coffee" wording. Does Ko-fi have some meaning? Oh wait, I just got it as I phonetically heard it in my head! lol

Do you know if the DJ gets much revenue from it? No idea how effective these things are.

 

[MattW]

Do you know if the DJ gets much revenue from it? No idea how effective these things are.

No idea, but it's been almost a year since COVID stopped all gigs, and he's still able to keep making music and hasn't had to get a day job

 

[Jon12345]

Nice! A recurring revenue would be great. I used to have 3 membership options on my site, where the members didn't really get massive benefits, except no ads etc. Some said they would like to contribute, but the minimum membership was $27 I think, and that was too high for them.

 

[victoriad]

Hi! We have an add-on called Donate that may help with what you are trying to accomplish as well. Please let us know if you have any questions about it.

 

[Jon12345]

Hi! We have an add-on called Donate that may help with what you are trying to accomplish as well. Please let us know if you have any questions about it.

I like those type of apps. If the app says Donor on the persons profile, I think that is a good thing.

 

[John71]

I like this idea and I'm gonna give it a try.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Interesting. I like that the free tier of Ko-Fi takes no additional fees from the contributions. If I could drop this in a sidebar widget, that'd work well for us. The drawback is that the free tier will not permit recurrent payments and if that's the case, the Buy Me A Coffee site's fees are a bit lower for the lowest tier. I'll have to investigate those more fully.

We have an old HTML donation page but I need to dump the site that it is hosted on and put it into an XF page node or help page, and unfortunately we can't submit forms back to PayPal that way.

I looked at a few Donate addons for XF but they are severe overkill for what we want. All we need is a place for members to enter the amount they wish to pay, choose whether it's recurring or not, and submit it. I would do donations through XF's built-in account upgrade system, but it only lets us use fixed amounts, and recurring transactions don't happen here either. (We don't offer account upgrades or banners for contributions, though--we found that these members then expect preferential treatment when it comes to forum behavior.)