059 - Jijo Sunny (Buy Me A Coffee) On Creator Monetization Ideas

Going well, it's awesome to be here.

Sure, so if you're a creator, and by that I mean if you have some audience on the internet, Buy Me a Coffee is the easiest and fun way to monetize your work. We have over 70,000 creators on the platform right now, ranging from small-time artists to YouTubers and Instagrammers with millions of followers. So most of them use it as a way to access support or as a way for their fans to say thank you and somehow set up rewards like exclusive content and monthly memberships. So I'd say it's sort of like a creative way for creators to get paid.

Backstory, I grew up in India, and I used to have this blog when I was 12, 13 years old, I guess, and I used to make some money from it, like 300, 400 bucks a month. And the thing is, it had a huge impact on my life, like if you're living in India, 300 for someone 15 years old, it's life-changing. I used to buy books, I used to pay for my web hosting. I remember getting this Calvin and Hobbes book set when I was 14, and it was the best day of my life. So I totally get when creators, why creators, how much it means for them to make this additional income. For them, it could be to pay their bills or to buy equipment to do their next creative endeavor or anything like that. It doesn't have to be this full-time income; it just has to be that extra income. And as someone who grew up there, I get what it means for people from India or some place in Africa or South America to have this life-changing effect with their online content. And building for creators, it's almost fun, like my makeover was a no-brainer. We used to work on this product called Publisher, which was a product for writers, and when I saw that buy me a coffee dot com was available, it took me like two minutes to purchase it. It was like 1500 bucks, I guess, because the phrase was known, like I used to see the buy me a coffee pages on blogs and YouTube everywhere. So it was like a no-brainer for me to jump on that and start building for it and focus on that, and I sort of put Publisher aside and started focusing on Buy Me a Coffee.

Sure, these are like really simple tools. Like thanks and reward is basically this payment success page which you can edit. So once someone buys you a coffee, or coffees or monthly coffee or something like that, you can set up custom rewards for them. It could be a simple thank you message, showing a gratitude, or something as a reward like a digital download or your Calendly link to book a one-on-one call with you. We have seen all sorts of interesting stuff that creators do with their links, so yeah, that's what the thank you page does. And the coffee links is probably the easiest way to sell online. So we had this huge requirement in Buy Me a Coffee where creators wanted to sell this really simple stuff, but it's not big enough for Shopify or something like Gumroad or something like that. So we created something really simple; you just enter your link, you set a price, and you share with the audience. It's that simple. So that's what it does. Yeah, but the core product, it's super simple. You set up your page, you connect your PayPal or Stripe, and you sort of modify your page, add your picture and everything, and you just share it with your fans.

Right, and you're spot on. Like you can pick the coffee amount, so it could be from two dollars to ten dollars per coffee a month, but we recommend setting it up anywhere between three to five dollars. And the interesting thing is that most often we see the average payment amount is anywhere between 10 to 15 dollars, which means three to five coffees or more than that. We always see 50 coffees and 100 coffees. So the product is built, it is designed in a way that it's pay what you want. And when you say something like buy me a coffee and be a part of this creative journey or support my work or help me buy this equipment or say thanks, for your super fans, it's so much fun to do that, and they can leave a comment with it, like they can say all nice things about you. And for you as a creator, it's like your own wall of love where all your positive comments, because nobody pays money to leave negative comments on a page, right? So it's always this positivity on Buy Me a Coffee pages.

Right, creative examples. I haven't thought about that, but off the top of my head, I have seen makers, really part-time makers coming up with these cool side projects and sharing their pro versions or ad-free versions as a coffee link. That's really interesting because we have this API which they can use to see who actually bought that coffee link and sort of open up the premium version for that. And my favorite one, now that you ask, is this game developer who shares every new version of his game as a coffee link. So whenever he releases a new version of his indie game, he set up a coffee link to share that with their fans, and that's amazing. He made a bunch of money with that.

Right, yeah, totally. I definitely think it's an addition to it, although we have seen creators totally replacing their ad-driven content with Buy Me a Coffee links. Off the top of my head, I know this website, I have no TV dot com, which is solely relying on Buy Me a Coffee to fund their website; they don't have any ads on their site. And I have seen podcasts who don't do sponsorships using Buy Me a Coffee as a way to monetize their work. So yeah, we see that a lot, but I'm totally for ads. Like ads are great, especially on podcasts, I guess. It's really tasteful most of the time, and it's a fun way to discover new things, and most of the time it pays really well, except for YouTubers, I guess. It's been steadily declining for many industries like YouTube and AdSense income, I guess. But apart from that, whatever works for creators is really good.

Yes, yeah, I have met Li, the owner of that blog post. Yeah, she's amazing.

Right, that's a great question. So I think more people are trying to create online, and because who doesn't like the idea of getting paid to do something that they love, right? And these platforms like Podia and Substack and Teachable, these are amazing platforms, and it makes it so easy for you to start a video course or a newsletter, and all you have to do is focus on your content and nothing else, not the tools, not payments, or not even the distribution strategy, right? Because that's all figured out by the members. So I really like when these new content platforms sort of start spreading on the internet, like even if it's Substack or even it was TikTok or YouTube, I always say this: if it wasn't for Twitch, there would be no Ninja, and if it wasn't for YouTube, there would be no Casey Neistat. And it's empowering to think that these individuals who are followed by millions of people or tens of millions of people are, these platforms are partially responsible for that, and that's amazing to me. So yeah, I think it's fun to do things that you love and make money from it, so it's sort of obvious that 100x more people will do that in five years or 10 years. So yeah.

Yeah, I do. So I think it's not a trend for sure. People have been building MVPs or really basic forms of what they are going to create in really simple ways, like Ryan Hoover building Product Hunt as a newsletter, right? So it's been there forever. I don't think it's a trend, so I don't think it's going to go away. So I'm really bullish on this, all these tools like Webflow and although the tools is apr and I have seen Buy Me a Coffee listed as one of those, so I'm really bullish on that. And whatever works for people to solve problems for others or to validate their ideas or to sell something, that's net positive for everyone. And yeah, I really like the idea of Buy Me a Coffee being a part of that because payments were a tough part of that, but Stripe and PayPal, all these amazing platforms, have almost solved that. And in India, you have UPI payments, that's exploding, it's amazing. So yeah, I'm really excited about that.

Yep.

Right, so I would say keep doing what they were doing before that, like keep creating great content, and tell your audience that they have this option to support you and be a part of your creative journey. And it's super amazing if you have some reward for them to support you, like exclusive content or a shout-out on your social levels, because that means a lot to them, right? That moment of recognition is what matters to them more than anything else in the world, I guess. I think that's partially why Twitch works the way it does, like when you tip someone on Twitch, your name appears on the stream, and that's something that we tried to replicate on Buy Me a Coffee, where when you buy someone a coffee, you can leave a comment and it appears on the creator page on top of it. So that's a great experience. So yeah, just let your audience know that they have this option to support you and keep doing what you do, create great content or create something useful or entertaining.

Yeah, because it works.

Right, yes, you can do that. You can share any kind of reward for your supporters, be it a private podcast feed or a private audio file, whatever format you want it to be. But what's most interesting is that you have this direct access with your supporters, the people who paid you X amount of money, you have their email, you have this email feature built in with which you can use to share any sort of reward, and you have that forever. It's like building this email list, it's like building your supporter list. So on Buy Me a Coffee, we made sure that you have full ownership of your audience, so it's totally up to you what you want to do with it. And our challenge, our goal, is to see what creators are doing with it and then building for them. So we noticed that creators are creating a lot of communities, like chat rooms on Discord and on this course as a forum, so we're trying to build that as a better experience, as a more relevant experience for creators and supporters. So Discord is not really built for creators; it's built for gamers, so we wanted to create something much more meaningful for supporters and creators, and we are working on that right now, and we have tested it with some creators, and it's amazing. Like it's more about your interaction between your fans more than it is with you, and it's like creating value without spending a lot of time. And whenever you publish a post or a video or something like that, they chat about it and they give you feedback and suggestions in a more meaningful way because it's all your paid supporters who have skin in the game in your success.

Right, our goal is to build this homepage for creators, where their best content meets their best fans, I guess. They can share their exclusive content or give access to their community or sell something. And what we actually look forward to is paying out tens of billions of dollars to creators at some point. And I think it's only a matter of time, right? Shopify did more than 15 billion dollars in volume this quarter alone, and I think it's only a matter of time before creators and communities catch up with that. So that's what's most exciting to us.

Right, so we just launched our referral program like last week, but almost all of the creators who joined Buy Me a Coffee sort of saw it from some other creator. Like when you share your Buy Me a Coffee page, more creators see it, right? So if you go to YouTube dot com and type in Buy Me a Coffee dot com, you'll see a bunch of YouTubers sharing their links. So I think it's an unfair advantage building for creators, right? Just like Substack or Patreon, the word gets spread easily, and creators are really vocal, which is a good thing and a bad thing if you fuck up, I guess. So we had that unfair advantage with Buy Me a Coffee, and the last time I checked, our backlinks are more than three million on Ahrefs. So what it means is that three million pages from all over the web are linking to Buy Me a Coffee pages, crazy to think about.

Right, maybe find something really fun to do, I guess, because making money isn't always that fun, right? Like I worked on this SaaS product before Buy Me a Coffee, it was called WhatRuns, it was a free browser extension for you to look up the tech stack of any website. Like you can go to Google dot com and click WhatRuns, and you'll see what it is built with. So it was fun until I launched it; after that, I lost all my interest because, yeah, so finding something really fun to do, I mean, because you're going to end up spending a meaningful portion of your time doing it, and there are going to be hard times and good times. So unless you're having a really good time with it, I don't think you'll have the persistence or something to endure that, and it's a long-term game, right? So I would give that more weight, having fun.

Totally, yep. And you need this patience, right? Like I really like this quote by Naval: 'Impatience with actions, patience with results.' I always think about that, like as founders, we have this inherent sense of urgency which will lead us to making a lot of bad decisions. So I think it's sort of important to have this patience to wait out for the results.

Right, Twitter, the most obvious answer. So I'm active on Twitter, it's Twitter dot com slash my name, and to Buy Me a Coffee, you just got to buy me a coffee dot com and try creating a page, it takes two minutes.

Yeah, yeah. So thanks so much for building a product that I might, you know, I might start using, and thanks for coming onto the pod. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.