How to Create a Buy Me a Coffee page for Your YouTube Channel

If you’re planning to monetize your channel, Buy Me a Coffee is a great option for off-platform monetization. Like Ko-fi, it works both with unit donations (the “coffee”) and membership subscriptions.

That means your fans can either opt to buy you a coffee as a one-time “thank you”, or to commit to your channel on a more permanent basis.

One of the biggest differences to Ko-fi is that Buy Me a Coffee offers more payment methods for supporters. Your fans can pay via PayPal, credit card, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. It also has a good mobile version, and makes analytics data visible to creators. This makes it a valuable player in the creator economy.

Over on Ko-fi, you have to pay for the Gold plan to access many of the features that are included here. Buy Me a Coffee instead takes a flat 5% cut of all revenues from your offers. This is the same as Patreon’s lowest tier, but it comes with a few more features.

Here’s how the YouTube creators behind Chateau Life connected their channel to Buy Me a Coffee:

Feel like this is the right fit to monetize your channel? Here’s the run-down on how to create a Buy Me a Coffee profile, and what to watch out for.

Buy Me a Coffee — Basic Setup

The Buy Me a Coffee homepage is very to the point. Just type your preferred URL in the center box and hit Start my page.

If you want to skip that for now, use that button or the top-right Sign up to get to the next stage.

Next, there’s a sign-up form. You can log in straight away with Google, Facebook, Apple, or Twitter. Alternatively, create an account with your email and password.

On the next screen, tell Buy Me a Coffee Yes, I’m a creator. If you ever change your mind about monetizing on the platform, you can change to a supporter account later.

If you didn’t do it on the homepage, you can now select your custom link — as long as it’s not already taken. You can still change it later on.

Unlike Patreon or Ko-Fi, which we’ve covered in our previous guides, Buy Me a Coffee keeps focused on creators’ needs by going straight for payment options.

These are PayPal and Stripe. If you’re in India, you can also connect a Razorpay account.

Note that you’ll actually be connecting your payment provider to Publisherr Inc, the platform’s parent company.

We’ve gone ahead and connected PayPal, which you can now see on the settings page. Here, you can also set your preferred currency, of which 6 are available.

There’s also an option to add any credit card fees on top of your supporters’ payments. They will otherwise be subtracted from your share.

Why not add Stripe, too?

This takes care of the bare bones of creating a Buy Me a Coffee page for your YouTube channel. It’s already live — no launching required — but there’s no personal touch other than your name yet.

In the next sections, we’ll change that.

Personalization Settings

Once you’ve gone through the above process to create a basic Buy Me a Coffee page for your YouTube channel, the platform will make some suggestions.

One of them is setting a goal to motivate your supporters. We’ll show you how in the animation below:

Unlike other monetization platforms, Buy Me a Coffee hasn’t yet asked what you actually do.

It gives you a lot of freedom here: In the Page Settings, you can type in whatever tags you like (up to 5 of them), though they should obviously be relevant. Among other things, this helps you get found on the platform’s own search.

As you can see on the screenshot above, you’ll find options to change your page link or to connect a Google Analytics account.

Finally, there’s a setting to declare your content as NSFW. While this will limit your visibility on the platform, it is mandatory if you make 18+ content.

From this dashboard, you can also add a brand color and a profile pic:

With these design choices out of the way, we can go to the next step. And that’s adding subscription membership tiers to your YouTube channel’s freshly created Buy Me a Coffee page!

Buy Me a Coffee Membership and Levels

Memberships are essentially a subscription for your supporters, usually in return for goodies from you. Buy Me a Coffee lets you set up tiers for different subscription amounts and different benefits.

Let’s get started, then!

First, hit Members in the left side bar. You’ll see a bit of info on how memberships work on the platform, but the main thing to do here is to switch the feature on in the first place. To do so, use the Enable membership button.

Now, you get to set up your first level. Give it a name and a price first. Note that you can also freely set an annual price. It makes sense to make it slightly cheaper, like we’ve done below, but you don’t have to.

You can also pick an image, and you should definitely write a description.

Then, carefully pick the perks you want to offer on that tier. A preview to the right tells you how the level will appear to your fans later.

You might consider limiting how many people can subscribe at this level. You might want to do this if the benefits include time-consuming work. Of course, as Buy Me a Coffee itself points out, it also works well to establish some exclusivity and urgency.

Finally, you can write both a welcome and a thank-you message.

Save and you’re done with that level! While you could just offer a single, one-size-fits-all subscription, it often makes sense to offer several. To do so, just repeat the above steps.

To get a community started, you can also award free memberships. You can find this in the membership Settings page — just invite your chosen few. If you don’t want to offer annual subscriptions, this is also where you can switch that option off.

Buy Me a Coffee Extras

In addition to straight donations and subscriptions, creating a Buy Me a Coffee page for your YouTube channel also gives you Extras.

Extras are spaces for you to give access to something special — physical items like art prints, Zoom calls, commissions, and anything else you could think of selling. It’s essentially a storefront. It’ll show up on your page as a separate tab.

For example, the fire art group Fuel Girls currently offers both merchandise and individual classes:

While you’ll still need to take care of physical items yourself, Extras are great for digital items and services.

Now, let’s look at how to create an Extra on Buy Me a Coffee.

First off, hit Extras in the left sidebar. Creating one of them is simple: Just pick an existing template — or create one of your own — then fill in the form.

The settings are similar to those for tiers: An image, a description, custom thank-you message, and the option to limit the number. This can be useful for limited-edition merch, but also for one-at-a-time services such as art commissions or calls.

You also get to set a different member price, and to ask extra questions — which you could, for instance, use to ask for a shipping address.

With a goal, memberships, and Extras set up, our page is now basically ready to monetize. There is, of course, no content yet — that’ll be your job.

Here’s what this finally looks like:

Now post, promote, create your content, and welcome your fans!

Conclusion

Buy Me a Coffee is a very straightforward alternative to other subscription platforms. One reason is that, while it does take a cut of your earnings, it’s only 5%. Other platforms either ask for more here or require you to pay a subscription.

Creating a Buy Me a Coffee page for your YouTube channel is also pretty simple, as we’ve shown in this guide.

Lastly, Buy Me a Coffee is a simple solution for all basic monetization strategies. It continues to add features quickly: With donations, extras, and membership levels, it’s a great platform to engage with your fans.