Ko-fi

If the below looks irrelevant to you, feel free to ignore it. There is a new Battle Vixens to read which posted an hour ago, so you can scroll right past this to read that if you want.

 

I'm "reposting" this post to announce that I'm now using ko-fi for essentially the same purpose that I briefly used "digital tip jar" for before that website closed down. The reason for me to do anything like this at all is basically expressed in the original post below, from a couple of years back. I still feel pretty much the same way as then, although the specifics of how this platform works are different from that one.

Ko-fi works a little strangely, where I have to set a "unit price" and people donate a discrete amount of units instead of just deciding on an amount of money. I set the unit to $1, which will hopefully work okay. Also, there are the usual paypal fees, I think 2.9% + 30 cents, so keep that in mind if you decide to send anything.

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Original post (titled "Digital Tip Jar" at the time) below:

This is the kind of post I don't really like to do; I prefer every post here to be either a caption, a story, or something like that. But there is something I think I should specifically address.

At this point, at least two people have said something about wanting to send me monetary support (well, specifically asking whether I have a patreon), and I wanted to have some kind of response to it (since, as a proportion of the amount of comments I get on a regular basis, two is actually a large number). I think it's perfectly natural when people are offering one money for one to want to have a way to accept it, after all. So I started exploring options.

The issue for me with patreon is kind of twofold. First, patreon is modeled as a kind of continual kickstarter, with stretch goals and rewards and stuff. This makes me kind of uncomfortable because I abhor the idea of putting any of my work behind any kind of paywall, and I don't want people to feel like I "need" money sent to me in order to keep doing this. Second, I feel like getting a patreon sends a message like "I'm making this thing my job now, so become my patron and send me money please", which couldn't be much farther from the truth. I have a day job, it pays my bills, and I like it just fine. I write what I write here as a way to relax, and only when I have both the time and inspiration to do so. I don't want to feel like other people are paying a subscription for content that may or may not arrive, and I don't want to create a situation where people feel I "owe" them more writing because they sent me money.

So I went looking for other options. One option was to get a paypal "donate" button, and I'm still considering doing that. The issue is that I'm not really entirely sure how anonymous I can be behind one of those, like if it would show whoever donated my real name or the email address associated with the account or something. Also, I'm not sure it's legal? My research online suggests that the donate button is supposed to be for charitable organizations, and while people can still use it for supporting their website, blog, etc., paypal will start asking questions if more than a certain amount is "donated" in a single year. While I seriously doubt I would ever raise that much, it would be yet another thing I needed to watch out for (close the donation link if it gets too close to that amount!), and the track record of the adventure site is a good indicator of how I am at remembering to do things on a regular basis.

For those reasons, what I'm trying for now is a "Digital Tip Jar", the button for which can be found over on the right side. I want to emphasize that this is specifically for people who already wanted to send me money. I am not asking anyone for money, and I don't want anyone to send money under the misapprehension that I would owe them anything for it, either. I like the message that "this is a tip jar", i.e., putting money through it just signifies appreciation for things already done, and not the purchase of any future stuff. Again, I do this for my own enjoyment, and I don't want it to turn into any kind of obligation. The disadvantage of this option is that it goes through stripe, so it only accepts credit/debit cards and has fees associated with that (which the "donation" page itself will also warn you about). If that's an issue for someone who wanted to send money, let me know and I'll look into maybe adding a paypal button as an alternative--if I can make it anonymous enough. (Speaking of anonymity, the digital tip jar appears to allow one to remain anonymous on the "sending" side as well as the "receiving" one, which is another reason I favored it)

Anyway, sorry about this being the post that comes up after a bit of a drought. Hopefully I'll be able to push this down with some more actual writing soon.