TipiT.to

Today is a nice start of the week for us. Lots of new stuff!

New payment options

We had been working on new payment options for a while and these are finally done. We are now allowing you to pay your tips using either credit card or iDeal (for Dutch customers) thanks to Adyen.

Payout options right now are limited to IBAN bank transfer. We are working to add mailed checks for US account holders this week or next and we recommend parties not covered by these options to get in touch to discuss a viable option to receive money from us.

There are some kinks in the credit card processing right now which should be ironed out during the course of today. iDeal is working fine. Update: Credit card processing is also working now.

Also see FAQ pay and receive money.

New site design

You may have noticed the new frontpage design which is not the only thing that is simpler in the new site. The entire interaction for a first time user coming in and tipping your site has been simplified to the point that a tipper does not need to create or verify an account to be able to pay their tips.

This is good news for tipjar owners because it further lowers the barrier to tip.

Integration with your website is already very easy but to make it even easier for you Wordpress users, Coen Jacobs has written this awesome TipiT Suite Wordpress Plugin which puts links on most places where you would want them.

A new design of course brings some bugs which we will be working on removing this week, if you stumble into anything, get in touch either here or at Get Satisfaction.

Funding

And last but not least we’re happy to announce that we have received an investment from the Dutch Creative Internet Fund, giving us the resources to focus on improving TipiT.to and build on the knowledge and experience of those already in the network.

See: press release, Dutch piece in Emerce, Webwereld, Freakenstein, Bright

Like I explained in this comment on Techcrunch, we think that tipping online (or any kind of voluntary payments) is just at the start phase and will experience a massive increase and development during the next years. We’re starting something new (again), join us and tell us what you think.

Here are the two press releases we sent out post launch to various media outlets in the Netherlands and outside. We tried to convey as much information in a readable way.

I’ve pasted them here below for future reference:

Tipit.to is a new Dutch/English tipping startup enabling people to show their appreciation by donating small amounts of money.

Today Tipit.to is launched to the public at http://tipit.to enabling content owners to create tipjars and receive money for their efforts. Tipit.to works as a catalyst in an economy where content is free by default and money is made increasingly by voluntary mechanisms. We see a great need for donation systems where the person giving has maximal control and is subject to a minimum of hassle.

What is tipit?

Tipit.to is an online service which facilitates the donation of small amounts of money to webites as a token of appreciation for the content they have made available. People receive a widget they can put on their sites. Visitors clicking on this widget are taken to Tipit.to where they with minimal friction can store a tip intention. After tipping they are returned to the original site.

Tipit.to is a secure service which takes care of all the details for these microtransactions. Tip transactions are batched together to save on transaction costs. Transactions are done using Paypal for payment processing but other payment methods are in the works. Tipit.to is a free service and depends on the tips of its users for its income.

Tipping has always been a social phenomenon. To facilitate this Tipit.to publishes tips from public profiles so people can publish their tips, subscribe to others’ tips and site owners can display their top tippers. Besides that Tipit.to shows the most popular sites on the web by amount of tips received (forthcoming).

After development and finalization of legal and financial details in 2007, Tipit.to has found its way to an early 2008 launch. Site owners can put “Like it? Tip it!” buttons on their sites and start receiving donations from their visitors today.

Tipit.to is founded by Reinier Zwitserloot, Jeroen van Embden and Alper Çugun, all alumni of Delft, University of Technology. They are available to answer all your questions regarding the service and its socio-economic implications.

and in Dutch:

Tipit.to is een nieuwe Nederlands/Britse startup die mensen in staat stelt hun waardering te uiten voor online content door een kleine hoeveelheid geld te doneren.

Vandaag is Tipit.to publiek gelanceerd (op http://tipit.to) met de mogelijkheid voor site-eigenaren om fooienpotten aan te maken en geld te ontvangen voor hun werk. Tipit.to neemt een rol in als katalysator in een economie waar content bijna altijd gratis is en steeds meer betalingen vrijwillig zijn. Wij zien een grote behoefte aan donatie-systemen waar de donateur maximale controle heeft en minimale moeite hoeft te doen.

Wat is Tipit.to?

Tipit.to is een online dienst die het doneren van kleine bedragen (fooien) aan websites mogelijk maakt. Site-eigenaren kunnen een knop op hun site plaatsen waar bezoekers op kunnen klikken om een fooi te geven. Ze worden dan doorgestuurd naar naar Tipit.to waar hun fooi-intentie wordt opgeslagen. Na het geven van de fooi worden ze teruggestuurd naar de originele site.

Tipit.to is een veilig platform dat alle details van deze microtransacties afhandelt. Betalingen worden samengenomen om niet teveel geld kwijt te zijn aan transactiekosten. Tipit.to gebruikt nu Paypal voor de transacties maar er wordt gewerkt aan meer methoden. Het gebruik van Tipit.to is gratis; gebruikers krijgen de optie om Tipit.to fooien te geven voor de geleverde dienst.

Fooien zijn een fenomeen dat deels werkt op basis van sociale normen. Om die dynamiek online te bewerkstelligen, publiceert Tipit.to fooien van publieke profielen zodat mensen hun fooien kunnen tonen, zich kunnen abonneren op de fooien van anderen en site-eigenaars hun fooigevers kunnen laten zien. Daarnaast introduceert Tipit.to binnenkort een lijst van de meest populaire sites van het internet op basis van ontvangen fooien.

Na ontwikkeling en afronding van de site in 2007, is Tipit.to vroeg in 2008 gelanceerd. Mensen kunnen vanaf vandaag “Like it? Tip it!” knoppen op hun site zetten en donaties van hun bezoekers ontvangen.

Tipit.to is een initiatief van Reinier Reinier Zwitserloot, Jeroen van Embden en Alper Çugun, alle oud-studenten van de Technische Universiteit Delft. Zij zijn beschikbaar om vragen over de site en gebruiksmogelijkheden te beantwoorden.

After the launch this Wednesday, we saw we needed to add some features and clarification here and there. Both based on your feedback and on what we had lying around ourselves.

First the frontpage with the statistics for popular sites has been added. Because we are in the early stages now and don’t have many real tips yet, we have chosen to list tip intentions in the statistical views of the site.
We are still debating how far we should weigh intentions, but the plan is to show them for now but phase them out in the near future. People tipping large bogus tips, will immediately get notifications that they should pay up.

Further we are going to add more lists with interesting data through various places so that you can browse through the site and have something to look at. And a nice way to find and add friends will be added.

In the mean time, keep the feedback and the tips coming.

So the launch is on and we are being covered by various websites over the web. Here’s a preliminary list:

• Genbeta: TipIt, nuevo sistema de donaciones para sitios web
• Webrazzi: Web siteniz Tipİt ile bahşiş toplasın
• web2null: Tipit
• Frankwatching: Site gespot: Tipit.to
• Mashable: Tipit.to: Digg for Cash Tips?
• Alcides Fonseca:LIKE IT? TIP IT!
• TipIt, otra forma de monetizar un blog
• Tip it: gostou do blog, faça uma doação!
• Ekudos: Fooi ontvangen voor interessante content
• Killer Startups
• Sync.nl: Fooi voor online content
• Witheet: Fooi voor online content
• MADBELLO
• Jeronimo
• Webwereld: Tipit.to onthult online fooiendienst
• Katie Lips: Tipit launches: let’s get tipping!
• ReapMoneyOnline: Tip It to (me) has finally launched!
• Ldvd: Een fooienpot
• Alper’s blog
• The Next Web: Competing for tips: Tipjoy & TipIt.To (oh, and Paypal!)

Add your site to this list!

So that’s it, we’re live. A lot of work remains to be done though.

The site in its current form is pretty stable but we’ll be adding two important things in the next couple of days:

• An aggregated list of popular sites to the front page, so you can drop by and see what’s hot right now.
• A rich and secure widget with which you can tip without leaving the parent website.

Lots of other stuff can also be improved. Your feedback is very valuable and tells us what to focus on. Expect to see many of these things fixed in the following days.

That’s it for now. Happy tipping.

Tipit.to will launch fully operational within the next day. We have been working hard for this and we’re quite excited.

Stay tuned.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

We are thrilled to see that Chris Anderson’s next book “Free” is addressing the same topic we have been occupied with; we termed it Voluntary Economies. We believe abundance of information and connections are causing it to make sense to give stuff away and get paid in novel ways.

Financial testing is wrapping up and we think we may be able to go into soft launch before the end of the year. Those of you who have registered, can expect an early warning when we are ready.

Alper will be attending Software Social this Friday to close off the year with our startup friends.

Finances finished

This week the last bits of financial integration for Tipit.to were finished. This means that if everything goes according to plan, testing is the only thing that stands between us and launch.

Barcamp London

This weekend Reinier is headed to Google’s London Headquarters for Barcamp London to learn, to talk about Tipit and to give a presentation on Voluntary Economies. We at Tipit.to believe that tipping and other forms of voluntary transactions are going to be very important in the near future.

Launch planning

That said we think we should be able to launch within the next 2-3 weeks. Expect a definitive announcement and invitations to a launch event soon.

Good press

I spent today picking Rodger Buyvoets’s (Pixelindustries) brain on launch strategies, mechanisms and comparing notes about how you can best get out of the gates fast. A lot of comparable but also some new stuff which means lots and lots of more work for me keeping track of people, publications, writing press releases etc.

There is a fine line when an e-mail promoting a service is unsollicited and spammy and when it actually is something good that will add value to a website. We will err on the side of caution in these matters (We hate spammers just as much as you do.) but we may still be sending out some mails. Rest assured that if we do we will do it with integrity and back it up with our genuine conviction.

Launch update

There is only so much promotion that we can do proactively pre-launch. We can keep telling you about how good our site is but until we can back it up with something live, those are just words.

Reinier is now busy finalizing agreements with a payment provider and as soon as that has been done, we can launch. Right now we are looking at a timetable of a couple of weeks.

Reinier and I just got back from a short trip to London and Brighton to attend dConstruct and Barcamp Brighton. Reinier showed Tipit to some people at Barcamp and had a pretty positive response (more about that later).

We are still working hard on launching the site but a lot of it is out of our hands. Here is a small update:

Functionality wise we are mostly feature complete. The software is ready and demonstrable. Some functionality which we are planning for post-1.0 may make it into this version, but we currently have all the stuff we think is essential for a launch.

The thing that is holding us back right now is the agreements and details with the financial partners that will process our transactions and which laws we need to adhere to and which guarantees we can and will offer to our users. Getting this stuff right is essential for any business in the financial sector and it is not very easy.

We are working hard and making progress here so you will not have to wait much longer. Because a lot of this is not in our hands we cannot really give any indications on how long it will take, but we hope to launch soon.