How to Add a Tip Jar to Your Blog

By: Brenda Moody

Let's face it, bloggers do spend a lot of time on articles, links and trying to provide good information for their readers. The work does pay off, but it takes some time before a blogger can have enough of an audience to impact the money they make. There are two ways a blogger can make money. One is through people clicking on their advertisements. Unfortunately, because of this there are a vast amount of sites plastered with ads with no real content. The other bloggers work very hard at content and establishing their blog to make money from either adsense clicks or from affiliate advertisements. Growing slowly is another way to make money, a tipjar. This is a real incentive for bloggers to provide quality information on their sites.



The question is, if a blogger does want to add a tipjar to their blog, what are the options?



Paypal offers a simple donation button that can be added to your blog. It is inserted easily by copying a pasting the html code into your template. In order to get the button, you must first have a premier or business account through Paypal. Upgrading doesn't cost you anything. There are, however, small transactions fees for payments you receive. The benefit of using Paypal is that it is a trusted and secure method or giving or receiving payments and most online users are familiar with Paypal. A user can use a credit card or debit. There is no muss or fuss with paypal and you cut out the middleman.



Here is where you can find out more about setting up a donation button at Paypal:



Log in to your account and choose Merchant Services.



Under buttons, choose donate.



Create your button as you choose.



Add code to your blog template.



You will need a Premier or Business account to use this feature.



Another option is Tipjoy. With Tipjoy, both the sender and receiver of the tip need to have a Tipjoy account. The person tipping can wait for a bill at the end of the month or pay sooner if they choose. The receiver can wait until they have accumulated enough funds and then cash it out through paypal.



The sender intially only has to provide his email and the amount of his tip to tip a blog. He can tip several blogs and at the end of the month, pay his bill at Tipjoy. The payment will be through Paypal.



The receiver also must eventually have an account. Although a Tipjoy tipper can tip to any website url, even those with no Tipjoy account, in order for them to recieve the payment, they need to set up an account. Tipjoy notifies them when they have enough money tipped to be paid.



The downside is that the tipper must have two accounts, Tipjar and Paypal. The upside is that because fewer transactions are made, the blog recieving payments keeps more of the tip than with Paypal donation.



Another tip jar available for bloggers is called Scratchback. Scratchback adds another element to tipping. The blogger can set the tip rate and for each tip recieved, the blogger provides the tipper with an image or a link as a thank you.



The way the fees work at Scratchback as of this writing is that the blogger keeps 90% of the tip after the Paypal fee is taken out.



So for those of you who love the information you can enjoy on blogs and for those of you blogging, tipjars are something you might want to consider. Even a small donation of less than a dollar can put a smile on the face of your favorite blogger. The point is that you are showing encouragement for the continued effort. For bloggers, this is an incentive to create and continue adding quality news for your readers.

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