Be Professional When Accepting Tips From Medium Readers
Why I choose Ko-fi over Buy Me a Coffee?
If you have recently joined Medium and start writing, you might wonder if is there any chance of income other than the Medium partner program. Yes, there is. And it is provided by Medium itself. No illegal stuff.
I am talking about tipping or donation from your reader. Nobody can guarantee you 100% success of income from those donations, rather your work may convert some readers to donators. I mean, if you had worked hard.
So, in this blog, I will be talking about what tip is, how you can set up your profile in a professional way to accept tips and whether is it worth it.
Tips or Donations in simple terms:
Tips or donations can simply be understood as extra money given to you for your regular work. Similar to a tip provided to a waiter/waitress for their regular service. No extra service is needed to get a tip from their customer. If they are happy with your service, they will eventually end up tipping you. Similarly, writers on Medium can get tips/donations from their readers. Tipping is not mandated, but the user is also not denied.
If they want to tip you for your work, they can. Yes, they can. But where??
Here comes the second chapter of our blog:
Tip/donation can be received via various mediums. They can be either Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee or PayPal itself.
I hope, you know about PayPal up to now. In a brief, PayPal is American based digital wallet to collect your income from various sources. PayPal’s collected amount can then be transferred to a local bank or Payoneer account. Medium users can use their PayPal accounts to receive a tip from their readers.
The main point of this article is not about PayPal but about Ko-fi vs Buy Me a Coffee.
Both of them are popular online tip-jar. These two functions the same way in many ways and creating accounts on both platforms is relatively easy. You just need a Gmail account to sign up for free.
The main points that we need to check before adding them to our medium are:
1. Pricing
2. Outlook
3. Changing the statement: “Buy Me a Coffee”
4. Option for users.
5. Mobile Application
6. Sale of digital and physical products.
7. The Price tag on your products.
8. Instant transfer of your donations
1. Pricing
The pricing on these two platform is different. Ko-fi doesn’t take any percentage on tips/donations. It will take a 2%-5% cut on commissions and membership services. Additionally, if you be a gold member of Ko-fi with a $6 per month charge, you are exempted from those percentage cuts too.
On the other hand, Buy Me a Coffee will take a 5% cut on each donation and there is no monthly membership to exempt this percentage cut.
To conclude, if you are just starting and want to get 100% of your tip, you must join Ko-fi, and if you don’t bother about 5% cut on each transaction. Feel free to join Buy Me a Coffee.
2. Outlook
For the study purpose of this article, I signed up for both platforms, and on outlook, Buy Me a Coffee looks more professional, and Ko-fi is a bit casual.
3. Changing the statement: “Buy Me a Coffee”
The important feature that I want to point out as a beginner is: in Buy Me a Coffee you can change the statement, “Buy Me a Coffee” to “Buy Me Anything”. You are free to add emojis and words like book, beer, and many more. You don’t have to pay extra for this.
Whereas in Ko-fi, the change is limited to gold members only. You have to be in their monthly subscription to change the statement.
4. Option for Donators
In the case of Ko-fi, donators have two options while donating to you. They can either use their card or PayPal. This option is limited to the card in the case of Buy me coffee.
5. Mobile Application
If you are fond of mobile applications and want to use them on a mobile phone. The only option for you is Buy Me a Coffee. Mobile application for Ko-fi is still in the discussion phase.
6. Sale of Digital and physical products
You can sell your digital product on both platforms and the steps to place your product are quite easy. Both platforms handle your digital product in a quite decent way. But if you wish to sell your physical product. The only option left to you is Ko-fi. Ko-fi supports Ko-fi shops where you can place both your digital and physical products.
7. The price tag on your product
Once you place your products on these platforms, you have to stick price tag. If you want to put a fixed price tag for your product, Buy Me a Coffee does it well. But if you want to let your supporters/donators choose their price for the respective product, you need to switch to Ko-fi. In Ko-fi, you can set the minimum amount and let your supports choose the product price. Here, if you have done well, there is a high chance of extra payment from your supporters.
8. Instant transfer of your donations
They support the instant transfer of your donations to your stripe account. If you are from one of those countries not supporting stripe, you can withdraw the collected amount via bank transfer or Payoneer account. But if you want the instant transfer of your donations to your PayPal account, Ko-fi is the only option for you.
Both platforms do their job well. Setting and maintaining your account on these platforms doesn’t take much time. Once you set up accounts on one of these platforms. you can add a button like this in your article
Follow these steps and take a tip from your readers in a professional way.
- Click on your profile icon.
- Head over to settings.
- Click on the publishing tab.
- Find “Managing tipping on your stories”
- Paste your profile link from one of the platforms: Ko-fi or Buy Me a Coffee.
- Click Ok and enjoy.
The tipping button is now added to all your articles. Head over to your older article and recheck.
I want to put all my digital products for a minimum zero price and let my supporters put their prices and support me. As Ko-fi doesn’t take any fees for donations I received. For now, I have stuck to Ko-fi.
Clap if this blog adds value to your life. Let me know in the comment section which platform is best suited for you and why?
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