Add A Tip Jar To Your Lens

How to accept tips on your lens

Most of us probably came across a "Buy Me A Beer" button or similar somewhere on one of the forums. Even if you're not a beer drinker, it's a nice gesture to leave someone a tip for sharing a valuable piece of information.

Here on Squidoo, many lensmasters generously share information and advice that prove useful or solve a problem. If you'd meet face to face chances are you'd buy a helpful friend a beverage of his choice to show your appreciation.

While Squidoo currently does not supply us with personal "tip jars" there is an easy way to securely accept donations, or tips if you prefer, right here on your lens.

Real Tip Jars For Sale

In case you reached this page in search of "real" Tip Jars here are some suggestions you might like:

TipJar-721-5, 7" PF Slide...

Digital Coin Counting Mon...

Why Would You Want To Use A Tip Jar?

Isn't it like begging for dimes?

Tip jars are a personal choice. Some people prefer to sell their information by charging beforehand for an eBook full of "secrets" or a "$7 Report". Some give away stuff for free but benefit from the distribution by including their ads, backlinks, or other viral component. Others prefer to deliver the information first and let the reader decide if and how much they voluntarily want to pay for it.

Surely, not every bit of content warrants remuneration, especially not on revenue sharing sites like Squidoo. But if you provide something of tangible value that saves your readers time and/or money I think there's nothing indecent about providing a tip jar. Even Mr. Squidoo himself thinks that tipping is a way to acknowledge and stimulate great content, although in his post he'd rather have an advertiser pick up the tab (a minor faux-pas, I'm sure).

Accept Payments with PayPal

A quick and easy guide

In order to be able to accept tips you will need to have an account with Paypal, or any other service that accepts micro payments. PayPal's fees make it a bit inefficient for very small amounts and I'm looking into other, cheaper alternatives. But since many people already have an account there I will start with them. I'll post new services once I've checked them out.

So, begin by logging into your PayPal account.

To create the necessary code for a payment button or link, direct your browser to this page:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donate-intro

If you'd rather navigate your way to the page follow this path:

Within your PayPal account, click on the tab Products & Services.
On the right, look for Ways to get paid and click on Website Payments Standard.
Under "Option 1" look for "There are also buttons for donations and gift certificates." and click on donations.
Then click on Create your button now. In the next screen you can fill out the details for a new button or access previously saved buttons.

Fill out the form with your desired information. Choose whether to use the standard PayPal Donate button with or without Credit Card logos, or upload another image of your choice. I noticed that my own button image does not display, but if you're sure that the location is correct it will show up on your finished link.

For the quick and easy method, grab the code for "Email". To utilize a widget, grab the code for "Website".

Tipit.to

A more social tip jar

Another provider that provides a tip jar service for the web is http://tipit.to. It is a free service that enables you to start donating from 1 cent up. Tipit.to batches transactions together and takes care of foreign exchange so as much of your money as possible makes it to its destination. Tipit.to considers themselves a social tip jar where you can see what your friends donated and notify them of cool stuff you found. They're on twitter as well so you can quickly "tweet a tip" to someone from almost anywhere.

It only takes a couple clicks to setup a new tipjar on their website and Tipit.to provides code for some fun buttons, thermometers and other neat widgets that you can use on your Squidoo Lens. In most cases they're images with links to the tipjar page, which is all you need to get going. Here is a sample button:

Put The Tip Jar On Your Lens

The easy way

Ok, assuming that you set up PayPal and got your payment code it's time to create an appealing tip jar.

If you want to go with the standard "Donation" PayPal button that's the easiest option. But if you want to be a bit more creative you'd probably like to come up with a visually more appealing version.

Step 1: Pick a graphic you'd like to use and upload it to your favorite hosting place, like Photobucket. If your image states what it's purpose is then skip the next step.

Step 2: Get the "Email" version of your PayPal link as described above.

Step 3: Tell your visitors specifically what you'd want them to do. "Buy Me A Beer" or Coffee, Tea, etc. is a whole lot easier to say than "Give Me Money". And probably more effective as well. You could also state a goal that you would like to achieve.

Here's an example of a simple box with a picture, linking to your PayPal "Email" code. See "More Sample Images" for some pre-made images you can use.

Did you find something useful?

Add to the Tip Jar
:)

(PayPal Donation)

Get your own Tip Jar

And this is what the HTML code looks like. Get creative with your own graphics, text and style formatting. Or grab the code if you prefer (just don't forget to substitute your own URLs as indicated by the red parts. Also, you may need to play around with the height and width settings if your text/picture is larger).

<a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=XXXXXXX" target="_blank"><img src="http://your-image-url-here" width="100" style="border: 3px double #CCCCCC" /></a>Did you find something useful? Add to the Tip Jar :) (PayPal Donation)Get your own <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/tip-jar">Tip Jar</a>

Tip Jar Code in a Widget

If, for security concerns or whatever other reasons, you'd rather have the "Website" code that PayPal generates on your lens, you can embed it with the help of our trusty friend Clearspring.

Gather your PayPal code, and add your favorite styling HTML or CSS. Or copy the code below, substituting the red parts with your own URLs. Then embed it in a Clearspring widget by following the steps on my tutorial lens "How to add Amazon Associate Widgets to your lens". The procedure is the same.

Here's the code from our example I used for the simple box design:

<a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=XXXXXXX" target="_blank">
<input type="image" src="http://your-image-url-here" border="0" name="submit" alt="">
<img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1">
</form>Did you find something useful? Add to the Tip Jar :) (PayPal Donation)Get your own <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/tip-jar">Tip Jar</a>

Don't be alarmed if the box formatting doesn't look right on your Clearspring Widget Homepage. Once it gets embedded on your lens it will look just fine.

And this is what it looks like. You will notice that now the PayPal link is not visible in the status bar. You also cannot right-click the image anymore.

Sample "Tip Jar" Images

Use alone or in the "Tip Jar" Box Code

I've created a few buttons you can use if you like. Right-click and save image on your hard drive, then upload to your favorite image hosting service.

If you have some other ideas or wishes feel free to drop me a note. Same goes if you'd like to share some images of your own here.

It would be really swell if you could add the small line of code underneath your button that links back to this page, to help others find it.

Get your own <a href="http://www.squidoo.com/tip-jar">Tip Jar</a>

Will look like this:
Get your own Tip Jar

Square Buttons
Long Buttons
Small Buttons
Or, make your own text/color combination with this nifty tool:
www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm