I was reading through a list of Drupal modules and spotted one that supported tipjoy integration. This brought me back to thinking about tipjoy and its potential.

The service launched in Feb 2008, so is a relatively new venture. The simple idea is that a virtual tip jar is added to your site / blog to help monetise the content. A tip is added by a happy consumer that wants to reward the author with 10 cents (for example) made as a micro-payment.

Tipjoy sees some of its benefit and differentiation in terms of streamlining the micro-payment to 'one click' donation (this is quicker than PayPal Donate for example).

I think I am still correct in saying that tipjoy still uses Paypal accounts as the primary payment method.

So from my perspective is this service useful?

Well, question 1 is "will I install the module and create an account" - answer is 'no' and that is a decision I have taken about supporting monetisation in a wider context.

Do I think others will use this service to drop tips? Um, I'm skeptical. I did look at the tipjoy transaction throughputs and there is certainly some money changing hands. I personally think a Digg, blog comment, or recommendation through Twitter or one of my social accounts is sufficient, and I do not envisage wishing to tip content. I have on occasion used PayPal Donate, but this is for very specific community sites that I wish to actively support in terms of hosting costs.

Data collected by tipjoy will be of most interest. I think interesting mashups will emerge as analysis of successful content gets spliced with tipping as a voting mechanism. Will it scale into a viable commercial enterprise? In the spirit of not wishing to see anything fail, I would hope for the creators that it is successful. The problem is, if there are enough people in the world like me, then no amount of bells or whistles will induce adequate tipping volume.

Keep an eye on the tipjoy site, and certainly check it out from both content production and consumption perspectives. If you have success stories I'd be happy to receive them...