Sure mate, buy me a bloody coffee

I don’t usually get involved in the internet reply-fest du jour, but this time I thought I’d give it a go. It involves coffee, just in case you wondered.

My sister-in-law gave me this espresso cup. It’s pretty cool.

BTW: I’ve used a bit of the antipodean vernacular in this post. You have been warned.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle last week on the IndieWeb about whether or not people should have a “buy me a coffee” (or equivalent) link on their blog. The argument of the article that sparked the debate¹ being that this is rampant capitalism, everything is getting monetised these days, it’s not going to cover your hosting costs, hosting doesn’t cost much anyway, so why bother, and please just stop. Well, that was my impression.

I can understand the perspective. It seems that everything on the internet is being monetised in some way or form. “Don’t forget to like and subscribe!”, “Join my newsletter!”, “Read my Substack!”, “Buy from my affiliate links!”, “And now a word from this video’s sponsor…”,² etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam. And I get that, I really do. There’s just so much advertising everywhere that it’s hard to get away from. I agree: it’d be nice if there were islands of quiet in the online world where no call to monetary action existed.

And I get it that personal blogs don’t strictly need a virtual tip jar. My guess is that very few people are making any real money from them. But it’s not about the money. It’s more about recognition for the hard work that writing entails and about being seen for that work and someone going “Hey mate, love yer work, here’s a couple of bucks, good on ya!”. So I’m throwing my hat into the ring on the side of the “Yep, have a ‘buy me a coffee’ button” group.

If you look around my blog, you’ll see a buy me a coffee button at the bottom of my articles. I don’t get much money through those links. If anything, I’ve received all of about 10 € over the blog’s entire lifetime. It’s definitely not enough to cover my hosting costs. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that each time someone drops me a tip via the buy-me-a-coffee button, I am absolutely overjoyed. Someone read an article! It was useful to them! And they liked it! Wicked!

It’s brilliant. It’s feedback. Something I’ve written was valuable to someone! Yay! [insert short dance in front of laptop]

I rarely get emails about my blog articles.³ Most responses have come from someone giving a tip and saying, “Hey, nice article”. That’s so cool! It’s not money I can live off (otherwise I’d be living under a bridge⁴); it’s a signal, it’s feedback, and it’s one of the small pieces of connection I get from the wider world after having put my thoughts and experience online.

Yes, most of the stuff I write is for me (or more realistically, for my future self). Yet, when I write, I often have some imaginary “reader” in mind–someone who is going to benefit from the knowledge or experience I’m documenting. So, if someone out there thinks “That was good, I’ll throw this bloke a couple of Euros his way and say hello”, then that’s bloody awesome.

To be honest, if someone just dropped me a line via email and said “Hey, cool post, gudday mate” I’d also be over the moon. For instance, the other night I was at the Hannover TeX user group meeting and someone mentioned that they’d stumbled across an article of mine (one that I’ve referred to myself many times) and found it useful. I was totally stoked!

Imagine a busker playing their guitar on a street corner, a hat sitting in front of them to collect what cash bystanders might throw their way. Are they monetising what they’re doing? Strictly speaking, sure. Are they paying rent from it? Most likely not. Is this the evil tendrils of capitalism threading their way into every facet of our lives? Ah, that would be a no. Are you obliged to put money into their hat? Not if you don’t want to. If you enjoy their music, you can give them a nod and a smile and a bit of applause. That’s great feedback for the musician. And if you really like what they’re playing, you can throw a few coins into their hat. That’s how busking works.

For small creators on the IndieWeb it’s exactly the same: people putting their stuff out there and maybe–just maybe–someone will connect with them and say “Hey mate, I liked what you wrote. Nice stuff!” And, on the off chance that someone liked something enough, they might buy you a virtual coffee. It’s the same act as someone moving forward from the crowd gathered around the busker, dropping coins into their hat, nodding and giving them a smile. I can tell you, getting that recognition and some nice words via my buy-me-a-coffee link not only makes my day, it makes my frikken week. The money doesn’t go far,⁵ but shit, it’s a nice feeling to know that something I created was sufficiently worthwhile for someone that they tipped me for it.

Will the money ever cover my hosting costs? I don’t reckon, eh? Am I over the moon if someone buys me a coffee? You betcha! And I think that’s the case for a lot of creators with such links on their blog: they’d be totally stoked to get a small donation and a “hullo” if someone liked one of their posts.⁶

So sure, mate, buy me a bloody coffee!⁷ Or buy someone else a coffee. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. No one’s forcing you.

And if you don’t want to dish out for a coffee, why not just drop me a line and let me know what you thought? That would rock!

1. The discussion surrounding this post has really taken off. For most of the discussion, see the links in the coffee saga follow-up post by the same author. Unfortunately for them, the article ended up going viral on Hacker News. That’s probably a lot more attention than they expected to get from the post. And wow, when people have opinions on the internet, they really have opinions! ↩

2. Although, I have to say that the Simplicissimus segues from video topic to sponsor advertising have to be some of the smoothest, subtlest and well thought out I’ve ever seen. Sometimes I find myself waiting for the ad, just so I can see how they handle the transition between topic and ad. ↩

3. I don’t have and don’t want a comment section. There’s a reason why the phrase “don’t read the comments” is basic internet wisdom. ↩

4. And the animals I’ll have trapped will all have become my pets. But I digress… ↩

5. I think most of my buy-me-a-coffee money has gone to Cameron Kaiser’s blog Old Vintage Computing Research. His posts are amazing! Go check them out! ↩

6. Case in point: after I’d written the first draft of this post, spu wrote an article about how moved they were after receiving a buy-me-a-coffee donation. Small donation. Nice message. HUGE effect. That’s what I’m talking about. BTW: go buy that person a coffee; they write good stuff. ↩

7. BTW: I frikken love coffee. ↩

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If you liked this post, please buy me a coffee!