Tipjoy | FAQ

Standard sign up for Tipjoy only requires an email address and a password. But if you'd like, you can instead create an account via Twitter OAuth. Eventually we'll support other forms of account creation, for example via Facebook Connect.

Once you are signed up, you can give to any URL, email address, or if you have your Twitter account linked in, tweet a payment to anyone on Twitter.

Earners can choose from a variety of ways to earn money from their content, including widgets which make it easy to earn money right on a site. Tipjoy givers just click 'give' to make a payment. For more information on how to make money with Tipjoy, see the next question.

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There are several different types of Tipjoy widgets, ranging from very simple to very custom. We also have a Payments API which you can use to charge your users for premium content and features. Click here to check out the available options.

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Go to our site search page and enter your website's URL or your email address. If anyone's left you money, follow the instructions to claim it.

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When deciding whether to email you or not, we are going to err on the side of contacting you less often, rather than more.

Currently, emails are sent if:

you create an account and need to activate it or confirm your email address
you modify your email address, we'll send you an email asking you to confirm the new address
you request us to email you a reset password link
you have earned money
someone wants to share some content on Tipjoy with you
have racked up a tip bill of $5.00 or more. This email will be sent once a month until the bill is paid or the account is closed.

As we expand functionality, it may be appropriate for us to send you additional emails. We will only send you emails if we believe you will really want them.

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Tipjoy...

...lets you keep more of your earnings for yourself. We aggregate payments and take a small fee, and so you get to keep a lot more of your money when you sell through Tipjoy than if you sell through other payment services.
...provides a much better experience for your customers. Buying with Tipjoy is one click and doesn't take your customers away from your page, unlike other payment services which are 9+ click process and take your users away from your site.
...encourages your customers to share your content with their friends, through feeds to social networks like Twitter and FriendFeed, RSS feeds, and emails.

Want more details? Here's an example of exactly how much more you can earn from Tipjoy than from Paypal.

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PayPal takes 2.9% of your earnings, plus $0.30.The reason PayPal is structured like this is that it is designed for selling very expensive goods, like cars, jewelery, and vintage toys. If you want to sell a $500 necklace, you get to keep $485.20, or 97% of your earnings. That's great!

But you can't charge $500 for MP3s, blog posts, and virtual roses. Probably you're going to charge some amount between 1 and 99 cents. And for that, PayPal really doesn't meet your needs. For example, if you earn $2 with PayPal, you have to pay them $.36. You only get to keep $1.64. That's only 82% of your total earnings.

Tipjoy is designed to sell virtual goods. Goods which cost how ever little (or much) you want.

At Tipjoy, we do payment aggregation. Which basically just means that people say they're going to buy a bunch of stuff from all sorts of different merchants, and then they pay for it all at once, in a single transaction. By grouping the payments together, the fees are divided across a much larger amount of money, and each merchant's individual fees get much smaller. So much smaller, that even with our 3% commission, you still keep more of your money with Tipjoy than with PayPal. The larger people's bill is when they pay it, the smaller your fees are. Currently, the typical Tipjoy bill amount is $5. This means that when you take $2 out of your Tipjoy account, you can expect to actually keep 86.5% of it, or $1.73. And it only gets better from there: as people buy more with Tipjoy, and their bills get closer to $10, you'll get to keep 89.5% of your $2. When they're closer to $20, you'll get to keep 91.4%.

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There are a few benefits to having extra money in your Tipjoy account:

No email reminders to pay your bill.
Money you've given will automatically count towards the content's rank on our 'popular' page.
The more you put in, the smaller the overhead you're passing along to the people you're giving money to. For more info on how the money moves, see this diagram.
The people you leave money for will love you.

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You can initiate payments via twitter. For example, you can tweet "p @ev $1 because twitter is fun" and send $1 from your Tipjoy account to @ev. For those of you who use Twitter, you'll be familiar with the terminology: 'p' is like 'd' but for payment, not direct messages.

While the 'p' format is the most popular syntax we've seen, we want to keep it flexible. So anything that has an @username, dollar amount, and a payment keyword in the first three words in any order will work. For example, "p @ev $1" and "@ev pay $1" both work.

And in addition to 'p', payment keywords are 'tipjoy', 'tip', 'pay', 'give', and 'rtip'. Case doesn't matter, so 'give', 'GIVE', and 'giVE' all work. What is 'rtip'? It's a retweet and a tip. If you really like a tweet, retweet it and send the author some love. For example, @badbanana just tweeted "My will to live is somewhere in that coffee pot." Such hilarity certainly deserves a dollar in my book, so I just tweeted "rtip $1 @badbanana My will to live is somewhere in that coffee pot."

If you've linked your Twitter account with Tipjoy, everything will work automatically.

Some suggestions for using Twitter hash tags for Tipjoy payments (courtesy of @hannah_lewis):

tag with #tipme #projectname and include a link to request social payments for your projects
tag with #tiptodo #projectname to offer to tip someone if they do a project

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Twitter's API lets sites like Tipjoy use Twitter. Using it, we can confirm you're the owner of a Twitter account, associate Twitter Payments with your Tipjoy account, and tweet from Tipjoy. Up till recently, Twitter required your twitter username and password to use the API. That meant sites like Tipjoy needed to ask for it. With a beta release from Twitter of something called OAuth, we don't need your password anymore. You only need to click a link that takes you to Twitter. There you grant Tipjoy access to your account via the API. OAuth also means that sites like Tipjoy can't share this access, unlike your password, which can be shared. At any time, you can revoke the access Tipjoy has to your account, without changing anything with other Twitter applications and without changing your password. It might be a bit strange at first to go to Twitter to grant Tipjoy access, but it's better for the security of both your Twitter account and your Tipjoy account, and it will be the standard way for third party applications to connect with Twitter going forward.

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We're working on bringing the new OAuth capabilities to our Tipjoy widget. In the meantime we'll need your password in the widget so that when you make a payment using our Twitter widget, we can automatically tweet a message to your Twitter stream about it. This is important because by tweeting your payment, you're letting your followers know that this is something that they should check out and consider giving money to as well. You're helping the cause by spreading the word. We can't tweet the message if you don't enter your password.

But don't worry, your Twitter password is completely safe. No one has access to it. Even the founders of Twitter have used Tipjoy to send money to people:

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When you give money to something great you've found online, it's natural to want to share it. Your friends will probably also love that video of a walrus playing the sax. A great way to do this is to setup your tipjoy account to automatically tweet your tips.

Set this up by going to your settings and filling out the Twitter info.

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Once you're logged in, the front page of Tipjoy shows you a list of everything you've given to, as well as what your friends are giving to. Add to this list by searching for your friends and then choosing to follow them. Your friends can also follow you. Send them a link to your Tipjoy profile page.

You'll notice that some people have a 'request to follow' link. That means they've protected their giving history. They'll get an email and you'll be able to follow them once they approve you. To make your giving history private, go to your settings.

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We want to make it really easy for you to give money to great digital content. So we make it so don't have to put in all your payment info every time you want to buy something. You only have to pay your bill once a month to take care of all your transactions all at the same time.

To pay your bill, click the 'Pay' button in the top of any Tipjoy page, or click your balance info on any Tipjoy button. To add money, click the 'add' button. We accept payments via MasterCard and Visa.

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If they are a Tipjoy user, the money is automatically transferred into their account as soon as you pay your bill. If they are not a Tipjoy user, we keep track of all the money they've earned (by associating it with the URL/email address submitted), and once it reaches a certain amount, we will contact them and help them get signed up with Tipjoy so that they can claim their earnings.

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We will contact the earners on a periodic basis (not so often as to become annoying, but every so often as a reminder) to let them know there's money waiting for them, and help them get signed up with Tipjoy. However, we cannot guarantee that a person you give money to will sign up for Tipjoy and claim the money that's been left to them. Since money given is not refundable, as long as the money remains 'unclaimed' it will remain with us indefinitely. We encourage you to try and convince the people you've tipped to sign up with Tipjoy to claim their money.

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If you have not yet paid your bill, you can change your mind about stuff you've given to. Go to your transaction history and then click the 'cancel unpaid items' link. Once you've paid, the money is non-refundable.

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Tipjoy charges a 3% transaction fee when users spend their earnings.

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We want it to be simple to pay, earn and give money. Therefore no matter how much you buy, your account will reflect that full amount. And when you earn money, we'll show you the total amount you've earned. However, there is overhead to putting money into a Tipjoy account - credit card processing fees, mailing fees, 3rd party payment processing fees, etc. So, although you see the full amount in your account, each transaction is actually worth a very slight bit less. When you go to spend your earnings, the amount available to use reflects these overhead fees, plus the 3% Tipjoy transaction fee. All in all, you'll be able to actually use about 86.5% of the total amount you see in your balance.

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Your balance is how much money is in your Tipjoy account. Whenever someone pays the money they've left you, this money is added into your Tipjoy account. Each time you give money, your default amount (which can be changed in settings) is withdrawn from your Tipjoy account. Anyone can go into the negative -- users are allowed to pledge to give first and pay later. If someone with a negative balance leaves you money, we'll still track that that earning in the 'You're earning money' sections of the site - however, that money will not appear in your Tipjoy account until the giver puts cash into their Tipjoy account.

So, it is possible that although you are seeing money come into your account, you still may have a negative balance. There are two possible explanations for this: either people who have left you money you have not paid yet, or you've given more money than you've earned.

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If you have at least $5 available for cashing out, you'll see a 'cash out' button at the top right of any Tipjoy page. Click it, and from there you can cash money out of your Tipjoy account into your PayPal account. You can also give your money to another website (a charity, maybe?), or have us turn it into an Amazon gift card for you. For legal reasons, if you're going to cash out to PayPal you'll need to tell us a bit of info about yourself (name and address), which we will keep private in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

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The star image next to a person's user name indicates that they are 'verified' with us. This means that they've followed through and paid their bill at least once already.

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A 'verified' user is someone who has followed through and paid their bill at least once already. 'Verified' status is also indicated with the star image shown next to a person's user name.

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To become 'verified', just pay your bill.

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Frequently asked questions

Getting started

The whys

How can I share the great content I'm tipping? How can I find more?

Money, money, money

Your tipjoy reputation

answers

How do I sign up?

How do I get money with Tipjoy?

How can I check to see if someone's left me money?

What sorts of emails will Tipjoy send me?

Why is Tipjoy better than other methods for selling my digital content?

I want an example. Exactly how much more will I earn from Tipjoy than from Paypal?

Why should I put extra money into my account?

Leaving someone money using Twitter

How does Twitter OAuth work? Why don't I need to enter my Twitter password?

Why do I still have to enter my Twitter password on the Tipjoy widget?

Auto-tweeting your tips

Following your friends' giving history

How and when do I pay for the things I gave money to?

How does the money move?

How does the person I left money for get what I left them?

What happens to unclaimed funds?

Can I cancel money once I've given it?

How does Tipjoy make money?

How is my total available amount for spending get calculated?

How is my balance calculated?

I want to spend my money. What do I do?

What's that star image next to people's names?

What does 'verified' mean?

How can I get verified?