I’ve tried a handful of websites based on “tip with micropayments” in the past. They come and go. That’s fine. From a publisher perspective, it’s low-commitment. I’ve never earned a ton, but it was typically enough to be worth it.
Now Bruce has me trying Coil. It’s compelling to me for a couple reasons:
- The goal is to make it based on an actual web standard(!)
- Coil is nicely designed. It’s the service that readers actually subscribe to and a browser extension (for Chrome and Firefox) that pays publishers.
- The money ends up in a Stronghold account1. I don’t know much about those, but it was easy enough to set up and is also nicely designed.
- Everything is anonymous. I don’t have access to, know anything about, or store anything from the users who end up supporting the site with these micropayments.
- Even though everyone is anonymous, I can still do things for the supporters, like not show ads.