How IndiTip works
In my last post I talked about the motivation behind IndiTip, and how we wanted to make it easy to appreciate the work of people online with real money.
First observation:
There are plenty of ways to transfer money on the Internet.
… but here’s an opinion:
If you need to transfer ₹200, you’re willing to spend maybe 30 seconds without complaining. And if you’re transferring a lakh, you’re probably okay waiting 24 hours.
However, what if you’re spending less than ₹20? It seems a bit tedious to go through a login / OTP flow for an amount this small, and especially if the payment is voluntary.
“Don’t break my flow”
A tip should be quick, painless, and not distract you from what you’re doing. Nobody wants to get into a payment flow while reading a fitness blog, or a testimonial on depression, or about a new JS library which saves you a week of coding. Browsing-and-reading time is not bill-paying time.
Tip now, pay later
Using IndiTip, you make tips by clicking our tip buttons (and tip links! More on those later) on websites. This is similar to clicking a Like button or a +1 — you click the button, it changes to “thank you” and you move on.
At the end of the month IndiTip will send you an email reminding you that you have unpaid tips.
If you’re ready to pay those tips, you come to our website and go through a standard payment flow. If not, we remind you after another month.
There are no deadlines to pay because deadlines are annoying. People who have no intention of paying won’t click our tip buttons, and therefore people who do click the buttons will eventually pay.
Once you pay your tips, IndiTip holds on to ₹1 per tip and forwards ₹5 (per tip) to each beneficiary.
Why ₹5
Five is somewhat arbitrary; we wanted a small amount but ₹1 seemed too small. What we were clear on was that the amount be fixed — because making a tip should feel like a Like and therefore should not prompt the tipper to choose an amount in some popup window. Nobody wants to make more decisions right? If you want to give more there are plenty of money transfer services available.
What it’s not
IndiTip is not for subscriptions — you can’t make recurring tips to a creator. Each tip is separate, generally for a single piece of high-quality content and entirely voluntary. And yes, voluntary = cancellable before payment.
Our design doesn’t let publishers use tip buttons to implement a paywall — IndiTip buttons are meant to be used with free content. (There’s nothing wrong with paid content, but IndiTip doesn’t fit that model).
Summary
So that’s it! Fixed size voluntary tips with no payment deadlines, for you to appreciate good online content. Because giving feels good, and you already want to.
